Above: A typical night for my baby.... so many people to love, so little time.
Ellie's cousins Lingesi and Talisha relax with a ukelele in a hammock.
Another of Ellie's cousins... Olivia.
After two great weeks in the village, we got back on a truck for the trip to Auki. Eliana spent most of the time sleeping on my lap (as pictured above). The most exciting part of our journey was that we had a flat tire about 15 minutes after we left the village. It couldn't have been a better place for a flat tire!
Ellie got to sit on the beach and enjoy the view of the waves. It was sooooooooooo beautiful!
The flat tire also happened to occur right next to the house of one of our friends who died while we were away, so we were able to visit his grave and talk with his family which was very special.
Our little party made our way down our hill and then down the road about 1/2 mile to the beach.
Once at the ocean, we made sure we were protected from the sun... notice Ellie's long sleeve swimsuit! While showing Ellie the waves, I had my first "Oh-my-gosh-I'm-a-mommy" moment... I was showing Ellie the waves and I don't know if it was because I have seen pictures of other mom's introducing their kids to the ocean or if it was just explaining something brand new to Ellie, but I was like I am really a mom. I guess it's good I finally realized that, huh? :)
Then Daddy had a turn taking Ellie into the water. She liked to touch and taste the water... every time a wave came, her eyes got really big.
Alright, I am going to try this again... believe it or not we have tried to post this 3 or 4 different times on different days! Grrr... so I am going to forget my creativity and just see if this works. Above is a pic of Eliana's first time in a hammock. She was so funny, she tried to roll over and Franklin had to inform her that people don't lay in hammocks on their bellies.
Franklin also worked on some electrical stuff in his mom's house in the village. Here is a picture of everyone watching Walk the Line (the movie about Johnny Cash.... which was nice because as kids, Franklin and his siblings used to all listen to their dad's Johnny Cash record) on our computer, thanks to Franklin's electrical work!
Other activities include "cooking" (trying to help, anyways) and learning To'abaita for me, absorbing tons of love for Ellie, and recording the man who tells the tribal stories and genealogies and catching shrimp in the river for Franklin.
Our trip to Franklin's village began with Eliana's first ship ride... she did extremely well on the ride. She was very content to just sit with her koko'o (Grandma) or sleep. Our three and a half hour ship ride was followed by a ride from the port town of Auki up to Franklin's village near Malu'u. The trip is only 85 km, but it has usually taken us between 8-10 hours to make the journey because the road is so bad. We had heard rumors of improvements, but were waiting to see how it would go ourselves. I am pleased to report that our journey only took 4 hours, and that includes all the times our truck had to stop to pick up or drop people off. Yay!
The road we travel on basically goes along the edge of the island. Most of the time the road looks like the picture above (sometimes with hills and sometimes with potholes... occasionally you go through a village). Toward the end of our journey, we ended up driving on a beach of sorts... the high tides have now washed the old road away... Franklin says that coming back one thing he has noticed is that the sea level has risen.
When we were 3km from home our truck stopped. The driver said we couldn't go any further because of the high tides blocking the road. He thought we'd have to wait 3 hours before continuing. Fortunately, Franklin saw a HiLux (pickup) across the water and we were able to transfer our items into that truck (because we could walk across the little bridge, but a big 3 ton truck couldn't cross it) and get home. There was quite a crowd waiting for us when we arrived. This is the little rest hut next to the road filled with just a few of our family members. :)
Next post: Village activities. :) It takes so long to upload pics, though, I don't know when that will happen.