Ketchu/>

Ok folks, this is my ketchu/> (catch-u/>) />ost to tell you a bit about our crazy life in the />ast few weeks and why I have been unable to write sooner. (As a sidenote: the ketchu/> in Samoa is kindof gross in our o/>inion. It comes from New Zealand where they />ut cloves in it.)

First of all, the letter "/>" on our com/>uter...the real one....has gone a bit bizzerk. The last few times that I have tried to />ost something, the />hantom "/>" that just won't ty/>e any other day began to fill the />age infinitely. My backs/>ace key was no match for the eternal lines of real />s that just ke/>t comming. Then, one day, our /> just went back to being its normal nonworking self again. Nuts I tell you! After that, we thought our modem was stolen. It was missing for over a week before we found the little guy. Now that we a/>/>ear to be back in business, my head is buzzing with so many stories to tell that I though I would give a quick rundown on our life before />osting more s/>ecifically about any one thing.

To start with, It is sim/>ly rediculous that I have not yet written anything about our />u/>/>ies! They have consumed almost every second of the />ast 8 weeks of our lives and I have tried on two se/>erate attem/>ts to />ost />ictures of the little darlings, but both times the /> went haywire and the />hotos were deleted, so for the moment I will just tell you the Readers Digest version of the story and />ut u/> some />ictures another day.

The Sunday before Mother's Day, I was taking a blissful afternoon na/> only to be awakened by the kids whis/>ering in hushed voices on the />orch. This is rarely a good sign. I went outside to find all 3 children and Trevor huddled around a filthy cardboard box. Trevor and Adah had gone for a walk and heard chir/>ing noises comming from the elementary school dum/>ster. Two newborn />u/>/>ies had been thrown into the garbage. They were maybe a day or two old, eyes shut, covered in their own feces and millions of fleas. In a string of />rofanities that I save only for such occasions, I set straight to work to bath and dry and feed the little guys. We made a tiny 1 oz. baby bottle out of an old medicine bottle with a dro/>/>er. We made our own />u/>/>y formula from a reci/>e that my ste/>mom texted me, and we fed those babies every 2 or 3 hours arround the clock for the first few weeks. We had Kai and Adah do it during the day and Trevor and I traded off at night. It was a great 4H ty/>e of homeschool />roject. Their care com/>letely took over our lives for the first month and a half. They are now 8 weeks old, eating solid food, slee/>ing through the night and really fun to />lay with. (They have also destroyed my Chacos, chewed through the washingmachine hose and />oo/>ed ungodly ammounts of />u/>/>y />oo/> on the lawn.) ....but truly, you will have to see some />ictures because they are cuter than cute and the kids just love them.


As for our family, we are really loving Samoa. Its amazing how quickly you can get used to living in a tro/>ical />aradise. We really don't think anything of seeing forrests of banana and coconut trees or giant />igs walking down the road. Little Noah, who is almost 2, is mixing Samoan words into all of his sentences. For exam/>le...."Auntie slee/>ing in da fale" (our friend is slee/>ing at her house) or "Mommy, s/>ider uma" (Mommy, the s/>ider is all gone) he is even />icking u/> the inflections and facial gestures of the little Samoan kids in the neighborhood. All the Samoans just die over that little boy. He waves to everyone like he is going by on a />arade float and he says hello and goodbye to everyone in Samoan. He is a showsto/>/>er everywhere we go.


Kai is still on the list to get into a great />rivate school here. It is so hard to be />atient, but the other schools are not really an o/>tion. I cannot get into it here without turning this />ost into a rant of the Samoan school system, but lets just say that the crazy sanitary conditions and use of cor/>oral />unishment are just not going to fly with this over/>rotective American momma. The good news of all of this is that we have been doing our reading and math lessons every day as well as lots of />laying with a bunch of fun friends and for the moment we are quite content with our daily routine.


Adah is also on the list to go to the />rivate school. The Samoan school year goes from February to November so she will be old enough to start Kindergarden here next year. She and I are doing homeschooling as well mostly because she begs me for reading and writing />rojects all day long! I will not turn this into a total bragfest about my genius children, but just to say that at 4 1/2 years old, miss Adah can read incredibly (rediculously) well. We only have so many books here, so after she had read and reread all of her beginning reader books, she moved onto Kai's Junie B. Jones cha/>ter books. She doesn't know every single word, but she knows about 75% of them, so we read them together. Quite amazing. Adah has many friends here as well.

Trevor and I are still />addling with the canoe team once a week and running a bunch as well. We are />lanning on doing the />erimeter relay race in Se/>tember which is something like 140K and goes around the entire island. My running buddy is obsessed with breaking the old record this year, but I just want a chance to run with Trevor. Wahoo!


We have had a few really difficult things ha/>/>en this month as well. Our sweet Momma dog had to be />ut to slee/> a few weeks back. We found a travelling vet who could come and "fix" her here at our house, but the vet found a giant cancerous tumor caused by Canine HIV. She />ut the dog down right in the car/>ort with my sweet kiddos inside the house. I was left with the body and no way to bury it. Wonderful Trevor took an hour off of work to find us a shovel and dig us a grave. (And also give some />int sized thera/>y about life and death and dogs in heaven.)

Another winning moment was when I found 2 live lice bugs in Adah's gorgeous long hair. I waged an all out war on the critters....sham/>ooing and combing all family members and washing all clothes and linnens and towels and scrubbing down the furniture and baking it all in the sun for a full day. I was a total lunatic for an entire weekend. I just could not stand the thougth of an infestation. We have seen children here that are just crawling with lice. The funny thing is that we never saw another bug or a single egg. I must have caught those little vermin the second they jum/>ed onto Adah's head. TAKE THAT! Makes my head itch just thinking about it.

Oh yes, Kai turned 8 last weekend. We had a beach fale slee/>over weekend. I think I will write a se/>erate />ost about it so I can show off the fun />ictures we took. It was a reall good time and the first time we have been away A./>. (after />u/>/>ies).

Ok, I think that is it for now. I have to go get some slee/> because we are touring the taro chi/> factory tomorrow with a bunch of other kids and moms. How random is that? Manuia le />o (have a good night).

Samoan Marathon

Here is a />hoto of sweet Trevor A. cruising to the finnish line of his marathon last Saturday (June 4th). He was one of only 5 runners to com/>lete the full 26 miles, although there were many who ran a half and 10K race the same morning. Only one man came in before Trevor and he was from Russia. A woman from New Zealand ran the full marathon, />lus also two Samoan men. It was definitely the most international marathon that we have ever been involved with. They handed us chilled coconuts to drink at the finnish line. How cool is that?

The scenery on the route was amazing....skirting along the ocean for many miles. Because there was heavy traffic on the narrow roads, Trevor had a />ersonnal escourt the entire way. Most of the other marathoners had a />oliceman on a scooter following them, but somehow, Trevor ended u/> being trailed by an American veteran who, it turned out,was the first man to ever com/>lete a marathon in Samoa. (The race was actually hosted by the American Veterans Association.) This terrific old guy tailgated Trevor for over 3 hours and tossed out water bottles when he looked thirsty. Trevor says that at one />oint, the man sent his hel/>er to go fill u/> an em/>ty bottle in a waterfall and then jog over and />our it over sweaty Trevor's head. Talk about service! Even though the race began at 5:00AM, the sun was u/> by 7:00 and the heat and hummidity were crazy.

I ran the 10K that morning with my Samoan running buddy. We were finnished by 7:30, so we took a drive to find out where Trevor was on the course. When we found him jogging through one of the villages, I gave him my victory coconut to drink (mmmmm) and jogged a little bit with him. My friend took this />icture of us, only unfortunately, I had already crossed the street to get back in the car.

It was so cool to run in that beautiful />lace with my favorite boy. After a few minutes, I went to wait for him at the finnish line. All of the boys from his work were there running the 10K or volunteering at the aid stations (I beat a bunch of them in the race...heh heh) so when Trevor came around the corner, there were lots of folks excited to cheer him on. He made the news and the news/>a/>ers again (What a fun little island eh?) and got his own victory coconut....as well as a Samoan Veterans Tshirt and 250 Tala cash />rize.

Sho/>s

You sim/>ly cannot imagine how many sho/>s there are in Samoa. Anyone and everyone who has a s/>are room can and will turn it into a sho/>. Each sho/> will have an assortment of food and necessary items. Almost anywhere you go you will find biscuits (cookies), tinned fish, some variety of ramen noodle />ackets, mosquito coils, soa/>......these things are so easy to find. Then, each store will also have a random sam/>ling of other things that the owner has come by. Items may be quite unex/>ectable- like an archery set, a wig, a cheerleader outfit, a tricycle....you name it and you can />robably find it in some sho/>, somewhere in Samoa. The />roblem is....how does a />erson go about acquiring a certain item without searching the whole darn island. I am frequently asking my friends where to find stuff and they can only tell me where they have found those things in the />ast. That is the other />roblem with sho/>s: When the goods are sold, no-one can really say when you might see them again. Sometimes its when the next giant boat comes in and sometimes you were looking at a one time deal.

The consequence of this set u/> is that folks like myself (and my dear American girlfriends) tend to hoard the good stuff whenever we find it. I s/>ent months looking for real vanilla . I am a tad obsessed with real vanilla and we made our waffles without it for 3 months before I unex/>ectedly found some in a weird corner sho/>. I hit u/>on some raw almonds (in />ackets of about 15 at a time) and bought out the entire stock for a fortune (which gave me something like a who/>/>ing 60 nuts). And just the other day my friend called to tell me that she found REAL chocolate chi/>s at a sho/> that is known to have great American stuff. I actually dro/>/>ed everything and went straight there and was rewarded with 2 />ackages still on the shelf. I made the most amazing batch of chewy oatmeal chocolate chi/> cookies. I swear its not just the de/>rivation....they really were the best ever! (Trevor said that he might fall down and worshi/> me because they were so very good. )

There are of course a few stores that are big enough that you can reliably find certain s/>ecialty items. There is a sho/> that we always go to for our bread, one that has bulk fruit, a sho/> that carries mozarella cheese, a different one that has yogurt and />e/>/>eroni, one that carries frozen />eas....you get the />icture. I s/>end my days going from sho/> to sho/> trying to kee/> our />antry stocked with familiar foods that my kids will eat. It is quite exhausting, but when I />ull off something like foccacia bread with />esto or hummus and flatbread with honey mustard or even just bean and cheese burritos....well, we all go a bit bizzerk we are so excited. I can already />redict that I am going to have a great sobbing meltdown when I make it back to the states and go sho/>/>ing at Su/>erTarget or something. The shock of availability will be too much for me. Until then, I will continue my nation-wide-search for board shorts, toe nail cli/>/>ers and a cookie sheet.