Sunday afternoon in the Marshall Islands

Our three kids on the balcony of our hotel room, overlooking the lagoon! Boston with his first of several dum dum lollipops Saturday afternoon in our room.

the four of us arriving at the airport in Majuro, Marshall Islands Saturday morning 5/30/09:

Hi everyone – It is Sunday afternoon here and we have all been awake since 3am local time! Hopefully each day we’ll adjust to the local time a bit more! The kids are both napping right now and so this is my chance to update the blog. So much has happened since we left Hawaii! I am sitting in the hotel restaurant where I found they have free wireless internet. It took awhile to get to this point with technology and language barriers!!

We landed here in the rain yesterday morning about 10:30am. As we were coming in for the landing, I told Hannah “this is where you were born!” She said “oh, it’s that little?!” When we got to the immigration/border official for entry to the country – he said to Jacob: “welcome back buddy!” Jacob loved being recognized as Marshallese right away.

After immigration we were greeted by masked health care workers who had us fill out forms about Swine Flu exposure. Then we all had our temps taken in our ears, and when they were normal, we were off to collect our luggage next. The returning RMI residents were all getting some type of shot in this same line. Then we went to customs, where the official asked if we were moving to the island – that was his comment on all our luggage! Four people and four bags didn’t seem like so much to me – we brought more than this on our last trip here!! We tried to take some pictures at the airport – but the humidity fogged up the lens almost every time. The best one is posted above.

The hotel van driver was the same gentleman who had helped us when we were here in Sept. 2003, and we have met some other people from our past trip too. We recognized some places on the ride from the airport – but many new things have been built. We checked in and then walked to the grocery store to get water and some other supplies. The grocery store is named PAYLESS, but could certainly be called pay MORE (compared to home!) Peter was interested to see how many specialty food items the store carried, like ones that his company represents. Inside the grocery store it was hotter than it was outside.

Then - for the highlight of Day #2 of this adventure - yesterday afternoon our facilitator Maddy brought Boston and his birth mother to our room. Boston was very shy and afraid of us…but we just watched him and kept a distance. We visited with his birth mother through Maddy’s translating. He burst into tears at the flash of the first picture I took of him. After awhile, he did enjoy the dum dum suckers I offered him, plus some little cars to play with. Besides playing with the cars up and down the floor, he lined up all 5 cars in a row – which was very fun to see. He also tapped his suckers together like drumsticks and I thought how surprised he’ll be when he sees and hears Jacob’s drums played at home! He is a beautiful little boy and we are anxious to get to know him more!

Maddy brought two of her daughters too – and the 4 bigger kids were having a great time together. Boston was watching them and sometimes saying some words. Boston also really liked being outside on our balcony overlooking the lagoon, with the breeze in his face. By the time our visit was winding up – I was sitting near Boston and his birth mom was back inside the room. It was a great first visit and we learned a lot about his birth family. He has three sisters, and we are looking forward to meeting them today. We taking the family to dinner today.

We are also supposed to meet with the lawyer today and maybe rent a car and maybe see about moving to a suite. Something mysterious is up with the suites – no one can even talk about them it seems – today when I asked if anyone would be checking out of a suite in the next few days – I was told I’d have to make an appointment to speak to the boss. These must be some kind of nice rooms! All we want is a little more room for 5 of us to sleep starting Monday night! A rollaway bed or 2 or even cots would be perfect - but no luck with that yet.

We went to church this morning - small English service. We are going swimming later – which the kids can not wait to do – in the hotel pool. It is school graduation time here – so there is a lot of activity around the hotel with parties and balloons and cakes we saw last night. We have eaten some good things already – I had macadamia nut crusted mahi mahi for dinner last night – and Peter had banana pancakes with coconut syrup for breakfast this morning.

In just the time of breakfast today at the hotel - we met one of Jacob’s birth aunts, and someone else who knows Hannah’s birth family. We are really thankful for these connections already and look forward to spending some time with the families during our stay here.

Seeing the island through the kids eyes is amazing. Jacob is more excited than I have ever seen him. Both kids enjoyed playing with Boston yesterday too.

So – goodbye for now from the islands….”one of the most unique places in the world – made up of 29 coral atolls and 5 single islands spread out over an exclusive economic zone of nearly 1 million square miles!” There’s your dose of RMI history for today from our guidebook! The guidebook is interesting, even if not the most accurate! We arrived at church today when it was more than 1/2 over, since the guidebook had the wrong time. We are enjoying the taxi rides too - $1 or $2 gets us all to church or back to the hotel with bags of supplies and water jugs too heavy to carry. With gasoline here being $5+ a gallon - the taxi system is great. With love from across the Pacific Ocean! Lois