Hangin’ Out (Written 8/12/07)

Today was a nice day of relaxation and not having to get up at an extremely early time in order to do something – my first time doing that in about 6 days! Anyway, I went to church today and found out some great news….the name of the Phillips new baby. They dedicated the baby during the Samoan service this morning (Peace Chapel has two services, one is Samoan at 8:30am and the other is English at 10:30am) and his name is now Nathaniel Phillips. So of course everyone will promptly call him Nathan or Nate but it's good to finally have a name to call him instead of 'The Nameless One'.

After the service, it was time to go around and mingle with some of my fellow group members I have not seen in a while. So I biked over to Candice, who just recently returned from the states (with stuff for me – officially my last package while I'm here in Samoa) and we caught up on the past two weeks of things happening in the states and things going on in Samoa. It was definitely nice to be able to shoot the breeze with her and just hang out for a bit. Once I was done at Candice's, I biked over to St. Joseph to see Holly/Ryan/Charles. Charles will be leaving us on Monday night so I definitely wanted to see him before he left – his going away party took place yesterday (Saturday) but I was at the Rhema graduation (and they told me there wasn't a lot of drinking, but showing up at a party at 10:30pm when it started at 7pm might be a little to late). So I got to say my goodbyes to him and wish him well on the next leg of his journey. But of course I had to point out to him that had he waited ONE week (until next Monday) we could have been one of those rare groups that goes into their COS (Close of Service) conference with double digit numbers (with Charles leaving, we are down to 9 people). So I hung out a St. Joseph for the majority of the day and then Ryan/Charles/Brother Steven and I went to the movies to see 'Next'. It's a movie starring Nicolas Cage and it's the first new movie we've had here in two weeks – the last movie to come out here was Harry Potter and it came out the same day as everywhere else in the world. 

I was willing to give the movie a chance even though I had heard some not great reviews about it and the movie was going well until the last 5 minutes when things just got screwy. It was the most anti-climatic film I had ever seen – I left the movie feeling they had robbed me of an actual movie ending. Perhaps there was more after the credits rolled, but the pain was just too much. It has probably come and gone in the states, but it definitely didn't feel like a movie worthy of even my 6 tala.

Overall though, the movie notwithstanding, it was a great day of just renewing those bonds with folks I haven't seen in a couple of weeks. I wanted to do it this week while we all had one on one time together, because next weekend we all get packed into a van and head to Sinalei resort for our COS conference – which officially marks the last 3 months of our service in Samoa. In October 2005, it felt like our COS conference was years away and now – it's only 5 days away. Crazy really, but good times await us at the end of the week. We start the week with a holiday (Monday there is no school) and end the week at a beach resort…tough week folks, tough week! L8r.