The Tsunami that Wasn't

I eagerly logged on this afternoon to check all the emails of concern I thought would be flooding in (ha ha) from you all. Where's the concern, people? Weren't you worried we may be lying under metres of water?

It was a dramatic start to the day. Jane rang about 8.15 to ask if I'd been listening to the radio. No, I'd only just emerged (Taine had been up for hours) and was just about to eat breakfast. There's a tsunami warning out, it's going to strike at 8.23, we'll pick you up in 5 minutes. (Jane, Jason, Noah and Tahlia)

OK, 5 minutes to throw together a survival pack, including togs (I thought we may end up in a pool), water (good one), passports (just how far was this wave going to take us?). Sure enough, 5 minutes later, we're heading for the hills, literally. We went up, and up, and up and ended up on top of one of the mountains, where you could actually see Samoa out the other side of the island. Beautiful view - all you visitors will be taken up there.

On the way, we passed school buses offloading kids and lots of people standing around, and cars of palagi driving really fast upwards. At this stage, I called Matt and he was very unimpressed by the whole palaver. I'm sure you can all imagine his underwhelmedness. He thought his building would be safe if a tsunami hits. Not sure why.

Anyway, we sat enjoying the view for half an hour, watching more and more cars/vans/rubbish trucks speed up the hill. One car pulled up in front of us, and we could see their cat peering back at us very suspiciously from the dashboard. There were two ships out to see which were going round in circles, so they obviously didn't want to come into the harbour just in case. All this time, the radio was going between tsunami warnings, the upcoming Cash Cube draw, requests, birthday calls, which schools were closing ... The highlight was listening to the 9 oclock news and they didnt' mention it!

So an hour after we left, we decided to go back and get a coffee. There were still masses of cars on the road (good for an evacuation plan - we know which roads will be blocked) and we did feel a bit silly heading in the opposite direction from everyone else again. Luckily McDs was still open so we had breakfast and coffee finally. I did have visions of climbing the playland in a hurry when the wave came, and I could see the irony of being caught with a coffee in my hand. Matt rang to say the warning had been called off.

To recover, we all went for a swim for an hour or so, the kids played on the computer, Taine got a blood nose and all is well again! The lessons learnt have been have a survival kit ready at all times, listen to the radio, and don't worry about what everyone else is doing. There are times when Island Time is negotiable!

apart from that, spring break is going. I've been sick all week, just generally feeling grotty, which has made for some long days. Mah Jong by the pool on Monday was great, Taine had a swimming assessment on Tuesday and will start classes as soon as there's a vacancy, breakfast yesterday and MJ again tomorrow.

Our stuff is still sitting in a container at Pago Pago. There were some issues over payment (nothing to do with else, Melbourne's problem) and the contact for releasing the paperwork has been mysteriously out of the office everytime I call.

We have a weevil problem with some dry goods. Did you know boiling them doesn't kill them? You should have seem them come crawling out of the lasagne sheets. I went looking for some rice to replace the contaminated bag, and did you think I could find a bag that was under 10lb? I will keep looking. Poor Matt came home to no dinner on Tuesday because I was feeling so crappy, then no dinner last night because of the rice situation so I'm feeling bad that I only have one job to do each day and I can't even get that right! Obviously stirfry to use up the bok choy wasn't meant to be. never mind, I think we will be eating a lot of boy choy over the next 3 years.

Enjoy the weekend everyone.
S