and we're back!

Finally! We're connected to the rest of the world at the lightning-fast speed of -oh, I don't even know, it's abysmally slow. I'm just glad to have something. And my first order of business is to attract visitors... so the new house is amazing. It's on a peninsula so we're steps away from the water in any direction - I love it!

Just past the palm trees is a 4 or 5 foot drop-off and then, the beach.

The back of the house has a mangrove forest leading into a lagoon, which will be perfect for kayaking when or if we eventually have kayaks.

And did I mention that it has walls? It does. It's my favorite part of the whole house. I can't even explain how happy I am to have walls again. I didn't realize how much I missed them. The old house only had screens from floor to ceiling. It had interior walls, but it's so nice to know that a strong breeze won't blow the curtains straight out so I flash the neighbors when I'm changing. Walls are pretty cool.

And now I need to get to work on those old Arts Festival posts. It was probably the coolest thing I've ever gone to so I have tons of photos to dig through.

*sigh* I love that kid

Julia: We have to remember to take that fan with us when we move.

Simon: Yeah, because it keeps us warm so we're not burning burning hot. We used to be burning burning hot. *sigh* I love that fan.

so much to blog about...

We loved seeing all of you who came to visit before we left! I wish I had been a bit more on top of the picture taking though - we hardly have pictures of any of you! We finally finished up all the moving/packing/cleaning details the evening before our flight left, although at times it seemed that we'd never get it all done.

The trip here was fairly uneventful, although there were some differences. The flight from Hawaii to Pago was the only flight I've ever been on where the flight attendants walk down the aisle with seat belt extenders before take-off (the kids kept confusing rocket & airplane terminology and asking when we were going to "blast off" - the flight attendants and I were amused by that). We also noticed that people were much more polite on that flight than the other two we'd been on earlier.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the kids were so exhausted after 24 hours of traveling that they fell asleep on top of the luggage as we were waiting at baggage claim in Pago Pago.

Although they did get to play some computer games in between flights.

We met a very nice, informative Samoan woman during our layover in Hawaii. Since then she's stopped by our house a couple times - she found the place when she spotted the boys outside (it's a small island!) and just tonight she brought by some fresh bananas. It's been a nice reminder of how interconnected we all are on this island.

Our first couple days here were pretty slow. The High Court put us up in the Tradewinds Hotel where the kids enjoyed racing each other in the pool and we had some time to get over our jet lag.

It was a good transition to a completely foreign-feeling place because we still had American style lodging. When we got to our new house, we had some adjusting to do! It's a lot like camping. And we have these bugs that are like mini-ants on crack. They are superspeedy and basically act like vacuum cleaners because they completely devour any dead bugs or food that we don't clean up right away. It's pretty weird living in what is essentially a screened-in porch, although the geckos that crawl on the ceiling at night are pretty cute.

A couple days ago we had a bit of excitement when Clif caught a tiny one and it crawled around on him. The kids loved it and insisted that we let it go in their room so it could eat their bugs.

Simon's had a bit of a rough time of things the past week. Our last night in our Boise house, he got a spider bite that made his arm look a bit like Popeye's. I didn't think to get a picture until after the Benadryl so you don't quite get the full effect.

Then we went swimming/snorkeling in the ocean on Saturday where he fell and cut his hand on the coral. It's doing fine now, but he was nursing injuries for a couple days.

Everett is adjusting very well. He's generally pretty oblivious about many details and it's coming in handy! He doesn't seem to notice that things are not as sanitary as we're used to or that the grass is maybe a bit too rough to be rolling around on or that he's one of the only palagi's in his class at school -which means he doesn't really have to adjust at all! He did let out quite a squeal when he realized that the shell he picked up at the beach wasn't just full of dirt. The hermit crab that lived inside started to emerge on our way home!

And, as promised, we've got pictures of creatures! Our second morning here we woke up to find a poisonous centipede in our bedroom. We sprayed it with extra-strength Raid and it seemed to have no effect. Clif wanted me to step on it - in flip flops. There's no way that was happening; the thing was at least 4 inches long! So we got out the only trusty weapon we had - the frying pan!

We're on our way!

It's going to be a long day after two long weeks of visitors, packing, and test taking! We have about 12 hours of flight ahead of us, and we're excited to get there (in about 20 hours, bleh).

Clif and I have been talking about how we love to see people's reactions when we tell them we're moving to American Samoa. The reactions are pretty crazy, especially when we get lazy and just say Samoa. Here are some of my favorites:

- "Where's that? Arizona?" (seriously, twice!)

- "Are you taking your kids with you?" (I kept wanting to say, "Oh, we're just putting them in the storage shed with the rest of the things we want to keep" but I never did)

- jaw drop - "why!?"

- "oh yeah. That's in Hawaii, right?" (from the cool people who are very sure of their knowledge)

- "I knew Samoa was a place. There's a girl I know who thought Samoans were from Hawaii."

- "He'll do his time easier than you'll do your time in Samoa" (Clif's boss after a client was sentenced to prison time)

- "Will you send me a postcard?" (which only sounds weird when you know it was a random person I sold a piece of furniture to through craigslist)

I think Erin has heard the best one when two people started discussing the "fact" that Fijians live in Samoa and Samoans live in Hawaii.

And, it turns out that I grossly underestimated our time in the air - by an HOUR! And yes, an hour makes a huge difference.

mostly photos this time

Swimming lessons:

The kids and their teachers at The Learning Tree:

Now we're just frantically moving and packing and entertaining guests (as best we can). The biggest challenge is trying to get everything that we own, and would like to continue to own, to fit into a 12x5x9 storage shed. Fortunately we've sold most of the larger pieces so it actually seems possible. And, we've still got the MPRE to take and attempt to pass on Friday. This next week is going to be crazy!

whew!

I'm so glad to be done with the bar! Now we've just got about a million other things to do - we can't wait to see those of you who are coming to visit in the meantime!

Preparing for the Dive

Preparing for the move to Samoa has been increasingly difficult (to say the least). You would be amazed at all of the things that you have to do to move out of the country (lol). Anyway, I recently decided that I would resurrect my decade old diving license so that I can get even closer to the sharks while I am in Samoa. I had to get a new license online from PADI. It is a lifetime license, which is good and bad. Good because getting a license is expensive and bad because I got my original license when I was 14 and never dove again. So essentially I could walk into a diving store, rent equipment, and then quickly proceed to kill myself because I have absolutely no idea what I am doing. See, I knew that being a boyscout could kill me (they are still after me). Well I had to take this picture of myself for the new license at work with the camera on my cell phone.



I tried a fake smile but it didn't work out too well.

on the way to Home Depot (again)

kids: We don't want to go. Do we have to go in? Why do we always have to go in?
me: you know, there's no Home Depot in American Samoa.
kids: Yay! How long until we move?!

From Here to There

Since we are moving to Samoa we thought it would be fun to create this blog site. Very unique, huh (we in no way stole, thought of, borrowed, plagarized, copied, or in any other way or means took this idea from current clerks in American Samoa...lol)? Right now we are in the process of fixing up our house.

Well actually, I am in the process of finishing up the work we started. Julia started studying for the bar and the, "Oh crap, I'm in trouble" moment finally hit her. All of the attorneys out there know what Im talking about. I'll post some pictures later showing the progress that we have made on the house.

Anyway, we are going from here:

To There:

CH