There was a potential hike to take place Monday morning with some of my friends from Zumba, but I had not heard anything official from any of them. Shot one of them a message Sunday afternoon and heard back after evening church that they wouldn't be able to come. No worries. Now I had found myself with a whole open Monday up until 4pm. What to do... what to do... Idea strook me. Let's see if any of our Samoan family would be interested in meeting up for brunch. This was something Auntie Tai had sort of mentioned one day as she was giving us a ride to school. I sent her a message and she said that sounded good, and I asked her to see who else would like to come.
9:30am Monday morning after sleeping in a bit and relaxing, Hannah and I walked the 10 minutes to catch a bus to The Deluxe Cafe. Arrived about 9:55am, as we had agreed upon 10am. Some times these guys are pretty punctual, and other times we just have no idea. Pretty standard for Samoans to be late, though. haha Tai called me about 10:15am saying she was on her way, picking up Nina, and that Segi was on her way. Yay, a whole bunch of them were joining. Surprised to also see Isa and Tasi pull in first. She said she just found out like 10 minutes ago that we were doing this. Apparently Tai waited to call everyone until 10am Monday morning. haha Maybe she thought I was going to contact more of them. Oh well, it worked out fabulously!
Tasi and Isa, Tai and her daughter Angel (we had not met her yet), Segi, Nina, Hannah, and me. This is the Samoan family we joined for Christmas. I call them my Samoan family. We sat at a large table, ordered some food, and enjoyed one another's company.
My cute little coffee cup. Good stuff. Black coffee.
From left to right you can see Hannah, Ninia, and Angel here. Deluxe Cafe is a nice spot.
Here are Isa and Tai.
My beautiful side of fruit :-)
My short stack of pancakes with the side of fruit in the back. Tasi thought it was a bit odd that I ate my pancakes without butter or syrup. haha Yeah, I know I know...
Here's the whole group. We spent about an hour and half sitting there, enjoying our brunch, and chatting it up. I'm really glad this worked out. There are some plans to spend more time with them later this week. Perhaps another lunch, some of them want to join me out to the National Park Saturday morning. They had seen my photos with my students swimming in the tide pool and jumping in out there, and they really want to go. They figure once Hannah and I are gone they will never actually go there themselves. We also have plans to join them for lunch at Tasi and Isa's house Sunday after baccalaureate. So glad we did this on Monday though, and sure glad I tossed that line out there and ended up with a catch. :-) Segi even paid for our brunch, which was unexpected. Then, again not really. She is one kind lady. That's how we ended up becoming part of this family. Segi picked up Hannah and I one day hitching on the road, invited us over, and then right away told us I could tell my parents I had a Samoan family now.
Tai gave us a ride home, and as we were heading she asked if we wanted to stop at the store or anything. Didn't really need anything, then I did have one thought. I had thought about doing my laundry on Monday, but I was not sure if it would be open or not. Really didn't want to walk with my laundry to find it closed, so I asked Tai if she would mind swinging by quick so I could check. Of course, she said. We found it to be open, and then she so kindly let me grab my laundry and then dropped me off over there. She is so sweet and has gone out of her way for us numerous times. Ran my laundry through the wash, and walked about halfway home when somebody offered to drop me off. Boy, I sure was being showered by kindness on Monday. Smile for Samoan hospitality.
So, I mentioned that I had something happening at 4. What, you may wonder. I had a photo shoot scheduled with the Daku family. Katie (Pastor Scot's wife) was finally taking me up on my offer to take some nice photos of the kids. I had mentioned this the one day I had babysat for the boys and took those cute ones of baby Andrew. She had said she would love that, and we were finally making it happen. They had posted some of the photos I had taken on Facebook and made a little collage they sent to their family including photos I had taken over at their house while babysitting and a few I took on Family Sunday.
I was a bit excited to try this out, too. I had been thinking about how I could get the kids to naturally smile. I know when you tell them to smile and look nice, you usually don't get what you want. It was quite the experience and a whole lot of fun trying to bring out those natural smiles and their personalities. I was working with a 4 year old, a 1 year old, and a 3.5 month old. An hour or so, patience, some creativity, and snapping a couple hundred photos.
I would talk to them, make them think we were playing games, and went with the flow. Really cool for me. I've never done an official sibling photo shoot with little ones like this. Katie and I went through them on my computer afterward. We went through and any she liked I copied into a folder for her. Ended up copying over about 50. She has lots to choose from, and she had such a big smile on her face. It was fun to see her light up and hear her say "ahhh" and "I love that" so many times. This was a fun gift I could give to their family after all they have done for me this year. Pastor was not around Monday, as he went over to Independent Samoa to help with a few things. I may go back later this week to take a few more photos of the whole family. I will share some of my favorites from the day below. Too many to choose from. Man, I good work. hahahaha
Scot Jeffrey with a nice Samoa horizon.
The three munchkins sitting in their red wagon. Jeffrey likes to goof around, Jenna was quite stubborn for a while, and Andrew was just hanging out :-)
She did agree to kiss her baby brother on the head for me a few times.
Jenna Faith did not want to get out of the baby swing, but I finally convinced her to try the big girl swing after I put her little doll in the baby swing. Here she is climbing in, and it's just a fun one.
There's that beautiful and lively smile I knew she had.
Took a few minutes before the two of them timed their kisses right, but it turned out mighty cute if I do say so myself.
Let them just play around a bit up on the porch.
I really wanted one of these two holding hands, and Jenna wanted nothing to do with holding her brother's hand each time I would try. Then, Auntie Jessica decided to make it a game and we were going to walk holding hands all the way to the tree, and we couldn't let go. Got it!
A cute thing I enjoy about this one is how you can see they are just enjoying themselves, and you can see mom out of focus in the background watching them go.
Here's Andrew Paul actually looking right at the camera. He was confused by the flash. haha
I put a monkey in front of him to give him something to focus on, and I found this one to be pretty cute.
Once again I had fun doing this, and hope the photos bring their family lots of joy.
Came home and enjoyed myself another fruit and veggie salad. Katie had sent home some fresh papaya with me. I enjoyed every bite of my cucumber, tomato, banana, papaya, corn, and nut salad. Felt like a little something more. There wasn't any bread that I was hoping for at the store, and I decided to treat myself to a little Magnum bar. Splurge, but hey lunch was free, and I ate mighty healthily all day. I tried the Magnum white bar, today. White chocoalte surrounding smooth ice cream. Yum. Delightful, and this really is a treat. Will only enjoy something like this on very few occasions.
Her'es me being the dork that I am. :-)
I feel like I have so much going on this week, but that's sort of to be expected I guess as this is my last week on the island. Lots of people I want to try to see at least one more time, a few more classes, finish cleaning up my room, school functions, etc. etc. Should be a busy week but a great week! Monday sure was off to a good start :-) Have a good week everyone. If I have enough energy, I have a feeling I might post a bit more frequently this week, as I may be up to lots of things. Tofa soifua ma manuia le po. (Good bye and good night.)
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