So the day began with breakfast at Paul and Vivienne's. Today was the last day that mom was going to be staying with them – so we had some good conversations about strange NZ breakfast foods (of which there are many!). Once the kids were off to the beach and to church, we headed back to my place to pack for the drive out to Lalomanu (and mom's first stay at a beach fale). BTW, today mom wore her pink pulatasi to church and got a lot of compliments about it – it should look quite impressive/unique to the folks back home!
At about 10:30am we went to Peace Chapel for the English service. It was a good service and I got to introduce mom to the entire church congregation which was a nice end to the week (throughout this week she had been introduced to bits of pieces of my church family). This was also my first church service (with Peace Chapel) where I came dressed up for the service – and everyone noticed! Usually I bike to church on Sundays (no buses run on Sundays and it would be a $14WST/week taxi ride) which means I have to wear clothing I don't mind getting sweaty. Anyway, after church we went to Pastor Samoa and Alesi's house (the head pastor and his wife) home for to'ona'I (Sunday brunch). Janita and Sara (Group 75) joined us for brunch – apparently they come over to the pastor's house every Sunday for to'ona'i. The spread was quite impressive – lobster, chicken, seaweed, taro, palusami, etc – it was definitely a feast. Pastor Samoa, Alesi and mom hit it off right away so that was a pleasant surprise and no embarrassing stories were told which is always a plus!
The brunch plus conversation lasted about 2 hours and then we had to be off in order to make it to Lalomanu before dark. Oh yeah, before I forget – at pastor's house mom tried oka (raw fish in coconut cream) for the first time and liked it. So now we only have to get her to like sashimi and we'll be good to go – her conversion to being a Samoan will be complete (minus the language). As I was saying, once we were done with brunch we headed back to my place to pick up our stuff and then we were off to Lalomanu. As we were leaving for Lalomanu, a massive rain cloud decided to settle over Upolu – so the drive to the beach fales was very wet and foggy. There are 2 ways to get to Lalomanu – a sign directed way and a short way; we took the sign. So as we were driving along we came to a ford (a man made dip in the road) which was impassable because the water flowing over the ford was moving too fast and it led directly into the Pacific Ocean, so we had to turn around and back track to the split and took the shorter way to Lalomanu. It definitely felt shorter and we made it safely to the beach fales at Taufua (on the Lalomanu beach).
Thankfully we made it there before dinner and were able to chill for a bit before the next course of food for today (even at 5pm, I was still full from brunch). Once we moved into our fales, we had dinner which was not a traditional Samoan meal but more of a seafood based meal. At dinner we met a guy from Finland who was trying to visit every country in the world (he's 29 years old and is up to 60 countries, with there being at least 200 countries in the world), so you meet all sorts of interesting folks at these fales.
So tonight mom will have her first experience of sleeping outside and under the stars. Should be interesting to find out if she likes it or not. Stay tuned!
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