Sunday June 28, 2009 - day #31 away from home

Hey Everyone! This will be my last post from the Marshall Islands!

We had a good morning at church (the picture of J & H above is from outside church with the breeze off the water cooling us off), and then enjoyed a Chinese buffet lunch with Gordon and his family, along with two other families from their church. The restaurant gave us the VIP room. It had a beautiful view of the water and palm trees, and it was nice that Boston could run around the room and not get into too much trouble! Peter said he hadn't eaten this much at a meal since probably Christmas! And, this was the sixth restaurant we had eaten at while on RMI - - a change from the three restaurants we ate at in 2003! The picture below of me and Boston is from lunch today!

When I said goodbye to Gordon and family today - I got all choked up. It really surprised me, because being in RMI is hard some days and I have been ready to go home for awhile. But their kindness and hospitality have just made this trip even more enjoyable for us. We anticipate Jacob and Hannah will have some mixed emotions when we leave tomorrow as well.

After lunch, we headed over to Jacob's birth family's home to say goodbye to his birth grandmother. Both Jacob and Boston's birth families have said they might come to the airport tomorrow night, but the grandmother is not up to it physically. I did not bring any goodies to pass out to the kids at this neighborhood - because I knew it was going to be a brief visit and I am out of suckers, tootsie rolls and gum. As we were sitting and the kids were kind of gathering around me - I realized my mistake. So I dug in my purse and passed out every Tic Tac left in the container!!

Then by 3pm we were back to the hotel for the rest of the day. Peter took the kids swimming and I got a lot of packing done. We were going to have a bring-your-own-dinner gathering in the Harvey's hotel room here, but as we were leaving - Boston's birth mother came to our door, along with Denise one of her nieces. We invited them in and cancelled with the Harveys. Denise was helpful in translating for us and we did learn more about Boston's life before we met him. Also, learned another interesting cultural thing. When we host people in our hotel room - we always offer for them to sit on the beds...but they never do - they always sit on the floor. There is one chair in our room and three double beds - so we have plenty of bed-sitting space and not enough floor space for all of us to sit. Denise explained tonight that it is a Marshallese custom to never sit on someone's bed. I told her we don't usually sit on other people's beds at home either - but in the hotel room there isn't much other choice! I love seeing how Boston is grabbing to include Jacob in the picture below with his birth mother Emcilla. Yes, those are suitcases stacked up in the background!

Well, it is time to publish this post and head upstairs to bed. We are in pretty good shape for getting on the hotel shuttle at 5pm tomorrow to head to the airport here. But then we were remembering the day we left the island back in October 2003....it was one surprise after another, visitors, etc. I'm sure tomorrow will be very interesting. Thank you for following our journey here - and our welcoming Boston to the family! I will post again sometime in Hawaii. Our flight leaves for Hawaii at 8pm tomorrow night 6/29. We fly about 5 hours and arrive in Hawaii in the middle of the night there, but during the early morning hours of the same day that we left RMI. We lost a day on the way here, but we will pick it up again when our Monday June 29th is actually two days long!

Below is a picture of Jacob and Boston at book time before bed last night! Jacob is smiling as you can tell by his eyes - and Boston is grabbing his cheek and saying "cheese". Sweet dreams everyone. I know I'm dreaming of sleeping in our own bed in just a few days!! Love, Lois