Friday, November 22

Yesterday was a full day for me.  Before school started and the sun got hot, we started hauling dirt to fill the broken canoe (functioning as a raised bed) so I could transplant my tomatoes. Then my friend Sylvester and I went out to try and find my garden.  We didn’t really get “lost”, but we did have to backtrack so we could look for the path because so much has changed in the 2 ½ years that we’ve been gone. The bush knives came in handy. My garden is badly overgrown.  Like trees, not just bushes.  And my poor pineapples. Their long thin leaves are reaching for the nonexistent sunlight, and the plants aren’t bearing any fruit. I think I'm going to try and hire the Sunday School again before Advent starts (which is in ten days - yikes!) and no work can be done.

When I got home, I started prepping lunch, but a married-in came by and needed to talk for a while.  After she left, I had just enough time to grab a bite to eat (yay for Team Choate who finished lunch prep) and gather everything for a class on how to make a birthday cake (which must be chocolate), as well as a motu of umalau and greens.  AND some people had been working to fill a huge ice chest with fish, so I bought two beautiful fish to motu, as well.  Aaron got high praise for his rumit (think coconut cream with little to no water). It was a lovely afternoon of cooking and deep conversations about things like authenticity and marriage. Plus answering lots of questions and showing pictures from our time in America.  They were particularly interested in pictures of my brother’s wedding last year and every picture of Benjamin and Sarah I could find.