sunrise

Aunu'u is awesome

Aunu'u is a tiny island off the tip of our tiny island.  A group of us headed over because sometimes you just need to get off your usual tiny island and visit another (even smaller) one.  Aunu'u is about 1/2 of a square mile and pretty easy to hike around in a day.  It's also ridiculously beautiful.

Although I think the most important thing to remember about Aunu'u is that when you come to the quicksand lake, you need to step in it.  You should remember to have your children step in it too.  It's the responsible adult thing to do.

Everett cut his foot gallivanting around in the quicksand lake so Keala carried him for a bit.  Simon realized that being carried was a legitimate option so he got in on that too.  Poor Keala had a kid on his shoulders for most of the day.

Again, ridiculously beautiful:

perhaps I need to get out more

Because, yes, I'm blogging about the arrival of an airplane.  I know it's absurd.  But I remembered to take pictures!  And I don't know what to do with them.  A blog post seems like the best answer.

So the biggest airplane in the world came to American Samoa to deliver generators.  There was a lot of airplane talk around ASPA just before its arrival.  Everywhere I went I seemed to hear "I heard it was built to carry a space shuttle!" or "Did you know that it burns X lbs of rubber every time it lands?!"

Naturally, I was curious to see something so big land on our tiny runway.  So I hung out at the end of the runway in order to be directly underneath the beast when it landed.  It was pretty incredible.

tsunami pictures: 2 days after

So the day after the day after the tsunami, people were burning all the piles of trash that had accumulated.  It was a cloudy day anyway, but the smoke coming from the harbor area definitely added a gloomy feel to it all.

This is Josie and her office. The ceiling kind of slid down the wall, which is why it looks like it's about 5 feet high in there.  Her windows were all blown out and most of the furniture that used to be in her office was swept outside or into the main office area.

Most of my files ended up like this: wrapped around trees and bushes outside.  So much for confidentiality.

The front desk was swept outside too, complete with telephone and computer in a tangled mess underneath it.  I just love that David decided to make the most of its new location.

  

About 6 cars, a couple portable generators, and our security guard shack were all pushed behind the building by the force of the wave.  Several of these cars had people in them at the time.  Luckily everyone was fine.

tsunami pictures: the day after

I know, finally!  These were taken the day after the tsunami.  I was on my way to salvage what I could from my office, which means that all of these were taken from a moving vehicle.

And this is what my office looked like:

I, obviously, enjoyed digging documents out of the muck. 

But a long day of cleaning actually made a difference!

piracy on a tuesday