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| Toby in his lavalava |
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| Zak snorkelling at Lalomanu |
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| Izak dancing with his classmates during Samoan week. |
My good intentions to regularly blog are gathering dust along with my list of potential topics….the food, the culture, the language, the history. There are so many interesting elements to this little island nation which we are out trying to experience, leaving little time to write about them. That, school holidays and the steady stream of visitors has limited blogging action, but given us more time to work through our list of places to see and things to do.
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| Mick on one of the Pappasea sliding rocks |
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| Steep steps down to the sliding rocks |
Over the past few weeks we have visited “Return to Paradise” beach (the beautiful location of the 1953 movie), the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum located in his stately home Vailima (where he lived in the 1890s) and the Pappasea sliding rocks (lava tubes with a series of waterfalls). We have also experienced Samoan week at the kids school, where they learnt traditional cooking, songs and dancing and the Aggie Grey's fiafia night (twice, at the new resort and the original location in Apia, the latter far more enjoyable and for some reason much more affordable). Return visits to the To sua ocean trench (third time round, no key mishaps this time- our second trip involved a "missing" car key and an offer to search for it for money, with the key quickly turning up when we refused to pay) and Lalomanu have rounded out our time.
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| Lunch at Sails. Note the size of the ocean liner in the background, which dwarfed the harbour during it's visit. |
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| Paul floating in front of fales (far-lay) at Lalomanu |
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| A village church on White sunday |
White Sunday, an annual event where children are given pride of place and celebrated through church and family activities also occurred a week ago, coinciding with a visit by a huge ocean liner. The little city of Apia was overrun on the day before with White Sunday shoppers and American tourists (all 2600 of them), increasing the usual Saturday market mayhem ten fold. It was a crazy weekend. Everywhere children attended church with their families, dressed in their best white clothing.
We also attended our first palagi charity event where Pamela Stephenson Connolly donated 40 Mena dresses (a top designer here) to be auctioned. Ms Stephenson Connolly has apparently spent much time here in Samoa making documentaries. People whispered of some associated scandal relating to the “friend” she made while here. We did our bit by donating back a prize (2 litre bottle of Jim Beam) to be auctioned off, raising almost 200 tala. It felt very odd to be in an environment that consisted of mostly white expats from Australia and New Zealand.
With only seven weeks to go until we return home to Queensland, we are editing and revising the remaining items on our list of things to see and do: The Baha’i temple, Fagaloa Bay, Manono Island (small and very traditional island), the hike out to Lake Lanoto’o (a lake in a volcano crater with wild goldfish placed there by the Germans who colonised Samoa in the late 1800s/early 1900s) and perhaps another trip to Savai’I remain.
With this deadline of sorts looming, I am also finding my mind turning to home.
Returning to work (after acting in positions other than my own for five years, I am curious to see what impact this six month hiatus has on the role I am placed in- hopefully none!), finding a rental property (as we wisely rented ours out for 12 months on a whim thinking it will break our housing inertia and get us thinking about buying another house- not quite sure how sensible this was!), catching up with family and friends, Christmas and settling the children back into our lives at home are occupying our thinking more and more. Suggested strategies for responding to this from facebook friends include banishing these thoughts from my mind, and straight out denial. Useful, as I feel very conflicted.
This experience does not feel as though it is “done” yet. We have met so many lovely people who we now regard as friends, including people from Samoa and abroad. Our way of life here is active but slow, inclusive yet family focussed, organised yet the best times have been impromptu. For me personally, I have gained confidence in just getting out there and doing what I need to, regardless of being on my own, language barriers or how I felt about the many mistakes I have made in trying to work out how to organise what our family has needed in a foreign country.
Living in a society where you are the minority has challenged us to look, listen and try to understand the way of life here. It is easy enough to visit the many beautiful locations, but anther thing altogether to take in the history and traditions. This place is so much more than a fiafia night (welcome dances and often including fire dancing held at many resorts) or a gorgeous beach. Five months has only really allowed us to skim the surface. Reality (a euphemism for finances) dictate that we will return home, but Paul and I both feel as though we will be back.
Such a reflective blog today!! I will try to get more up this week.........
