Getting comfortable

Jake and I at "Blunt's Point" an old WWII
site where you can see the old guns.

It appears we are getting pretty comfortable here.  We've been on several hikes, had a birthday party, met some kids and are even regulars at the library now.  Why are we still here?  We're waiting on some packages.  One of the benefits of American Samoa is that it has a US Post Office here.  I was lazy when I went home and mailed a few heavy items instead of carrying them in my suitcase.  I opted not to send them priority because not only was I being lazy, I was being cheap (to be fair, I saved $150).  Because of all of this, we've been waiting for 2 weeks for our packages.  At 3:00 am this morning I couldn't sleep so I checked the status of the packages and they said they were still in San Bernadino.  So I emailed my dad and asked him if he could go to the post office and see if he could find anything out for me.  I don't know if he did it but suddenly at 1:00 today, it says they were delivered to Pago Pago on September 2.... hmmm.  So Andy has gone to the post office to see if they're there.  We're crossing our fingers.

In the meantime, we've all met some new friends.  There's a boat here from Alaska, s/v Solara, with two kids (Dharma - 8, Rhett - 12) and Jake has been spending a lot of time playing with them.  Much like Jake, they haven't had a lot of kids to play with as they went from Seattle to Hawaii to Fanning Island to here.  Andy and I enjoy their parents as well so it's been a nice match.  The kids are adorable and so much fun to be around.  Robin and I took them all hiking to a waterfall the other day.  It ended up being a long bus ride and a hike up a road through some mean dogs only to find it's on private property in someone's backyard.  But here's where the Samoan hospitality comes in.  A guy came out of the house after hearing the dogs growling and told us he would take us up there.  So he did.  And he hung out with us the whole time, presumably to keep the mean dogs from coming up after us (some of them were his).  Who does that?  No one where we're from...invite a few strangers to your backyard, cancel your plans, show them around.  But that seems to be typical around here.  We didn't stay long as even though it was really nice, you still feel like you should probably hurry as you're interrupting their day and to be really honest, the dress here is somewhat conservative and I just didn't feel comfortable swimming around in any bathing suit, much less the bikini I had on.  So Robin and I watched while the kids swam until they got too cold and then we left.

Our "host"

Dharma, enjoying a brownie

Yesterday we had Jake's 6th birthday at Tisa's Barefoot Bar and Restaurant.  I tried to pick a place that would appeal to both kids and adults as there are more adults than kids here and I was pretty sure that's how the party would be as well.  Jake makes lots of friends no matter the age.  Luckily, the tide wasn't too high and the surf was pretty calm yesterday so the kids got to play on the beach the whole time.  Since Tisa's doesn't serve food unless you make a reservation, they allowed me to bring our own snacks as long as we bought drinks (never a problem for a bunch of cruisers).  So I made some brownies, brought some fruit for the kids and some snickity snacks for the adults.  We had about 15 adults and 6 kids there and everyone seemed to have a good time.  I know Jake did.  This was his first birthday in 3 years where there was actually more than two people present and they were under 40.

I didn't get any good pictures of the boys, but I did
catch Dharma and Mya having a good time.

Andy just pulled up and we have our packages, so we may be heading out early next week.  We need to fix some things at the top of the mast (hence waiting on the package with the parts), provision and get a few last minute things but other than that, we're ready to go.  I keep reading other blogs about Western Samoa and getting excited, so we're getting antsy to check it out ourselves.