Grocery shopping in Samoa

Sam requested info about where we buy our food.

We have shopped at three stores so far: Lyn’s, Farmer Joes, and Lucky Foodtown. They all have good and bad options.  Lyn’s has the best price for water, Farmer Joes has better selections of Easiyo yogurt packs, and Lucky has the best chicken and bread.  Of the three we prefer Lucky.  We usually take the bus to town and then walk to the store from there.  If we don’t have a lot to buy we can take the bus back.  Usually we take the taxi home.

Here is Lucky Foodtown.

We have to put our backpacks into cubbies while we shop.  Here is a view (blurry) of one aisle.  There are only three aisles in the store.

Some of the products down the aisles.

Lots of different kinds of snacks here!

And they also have a bakery so Marc is happy!

Freshly made wholemeal bread and rolls!

Most of the products are from New Zealand or Australia, although we did find some Western Family pinto beans!!  Since we only have one pot we have been doing camping meals a lot.

We truly are spoiled in the states!

Life in Samoa

We arrived on a Thursday afternoon, got new sim cards, a key for the rental house, ane the bare minimum of food.  Friday morning we walked down to the National University of Samoa campus (about 10 mins) and met with a few people about what Marc will be doing.  Following that we headed to the institute building which is just across the street and down a bit from NUS.  We were asked to teach institute and they were so excited to have us come.  Monday we returned there after finding out what Marc's schedule would be and the class they wanted us to teach fit perfectly in his schedule.  We are teaching a brand new institute class called cornerstone classes.  The one we are teaching is called Teachings and Doctrine of the Book of Mormon.  You can find it on the church website under "serve and teach" and then "institute".  It is taught by topics or themes and not in sequential order.  We teach Tues/Thurs at 9 am.  We really like the course so far and method for teaching the priciples of the gospel.  Tuesday morning we had five students and Thursday we had about 7-8.  The students are so incredible.  Many have graduated from the Church high school (called college) and are at the university now. 

Here is a picture of the institute building.

The director was so happy to have us there that they gave us our own office.  It belongs to the senior couple assigned to the institute, but they have not had a couple assigned to them for about a year.

We don't have any internet at our house and so we are so grateful to be able to have this office to prepare our lessons.  There is internet, but it is very very slow!!!  On Thursday after teaching we were in the office prepping for next week's lesson and surfing the web, when a student came in and asked if we wanted some Samoan gravy.  We asked her what that was and she explained that it was gravy with herring in it and served with rice.  We were excited to try Samoan food for the first time!  She came back a little later with two plates like this.

It smelled so good!  We started eating and this is what it looked like partly eaten. 

The gravy part was probably made with onions, broth, some garlic, and a thickener.  The herring was really yummy!  I think even Kirsten might like it as it didn't taste fishy at all.  We couldn't eat all of it.  Marc ate most of his, but I had at least half of my rice left.

Monday night we went to a FHE presentation for the senior missionaries about the route Lehi and his family would have taken when they left Jerusalem.  It was really interesting!  Prior to that we took some pictures of the temple.  The Church has a huge area next to the temple which has the senior couples housing, the church middle school and college (high school), mission home and offices, service center, distribution center, and some housing for the school staff.  It is awesome!

Here is one of our favorite pics of the temple!  People from many islands of the South Pacific come here to go to this temple.

We are so blessed to be able to live here!

Maria's Wedding Processional

Last Friday we walked around downtown Apia.  We live about a 15 minute bus ride from the city.  The buses will be another post.  We saw this cathedral and decided to go in it today. 

It is called the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception-Mulivai.  So beautiful on the outside!

We went in and were amazed!!  The ceiling was like a traditional fale, but carved so intricately.  This is the view from the back of the cathedral.  I could picture Maria getting married in a cathedral like this!

Along each side were long hallways with arches.  Wooden carvings were along the arches and the hallways.  The windows were all open and a wonderful breeze was blowing through.

Towards the front of the cathedral was a dome which was painted with murals of the Savior and his life.

The front third of the cathedral looked like this.  It was taken below the dome.

Along the sides of the cathedral above the arches were round stained glass windows depicting the life of the Savior.  These pictures do not do it justice.

I have confidence

Woke up refreshed and didn't have much jet lag.  We had the rest of the soup--cold from the fridge and crackers with juice.  Lots of protein!  We had not heard of daal soup before.  We walked to the National University of Samoa and tried to find out what Marc was going to be doing there.  Finally he found out he will be a teacher's assistant for a section of a large math class for elementary school teachers.  Perfect for him as he won't have to do much prep!  We walked acoss the street to the institute building to see where the english speaking wards met and was introduced to the director who had us come into his office and asked us to teach institute class.  We have to find out what times Marc has for math before an institute class assignment, but we're excited!  He then drove us to the church compound to meet his wife who is a faculty member at the church middle school.  They are so nice!  After dropping us off at the university, we took our first bus ride into Apia.  So awesome!!  Music blasting, open window frames, different kinds of seats, colors, etc on every bus.  We needed to buy some more groceries (matches!) and headed to the open air market and shared a lunch of fried chicken leg, four pieces of fish, and fries.  They had some tomato sauce that was as close as you can get to ketchup. 

After eating we headed to Farmer Joe's where we found a much larger selection of food than the market the night before.  We walked back through the market and bought a bunch of bananas (about 80 cents in U.S. dollars) and caught the next bus back home.  The picture of the bus below was the one to Apia.  The one home was all pink inside!

Here is a small tour of our house

We have a better feeling about this time here.  We have confidence that we will make it the best experience ever!

Let's start at the very beginning—a very good place to start

We got all our stuff packed into two rolling duffels and our backpack suitcase and headed to the airport.  Because we arrived there so early, we decided to walk as we had long flights ahead of us.  We got to our gate and Dad made a restroom stop.  I thought I heard our names paged.  As soon as he came out he headed to the gate agents who told him there was a problem.  We had a copy of a letter from immigration granting us entry into Samoa, and stating we would receive our visa upon arrival.  The gate agents said that wasn't good enough and the three of them made several calls to various people trying to get us on the flight to Los Angeles.  They finally printed out new boarding passes (which didn't work and we got the red lights at the gate) so we couldn't get on board.  We were so frustrated!!!  It had been two months since we had sent Immigration our info (more than once) and now this!!  Finally one of the agents was able to bypass something and was able to scan our passports and print out the third set of boarding passes which allowed us to get on that flight.

When we arrived at LAX we were a little unsure if New Zealand Air would give us the same problems.  We went to the ticket counter and we got an agent who seemed a bit grumpy.  All we could think of was maybe we'd have to rent a car and drive to see Kris and Jenn in Oceanside if they wouldn't let us on board the flight.  She actually was wonderful and got our seats changed to an aisle and middle seat instead of the two seats in the middle of four.  And she didn't even question our visa at all!  We truly have been blessed!!  While we were waiting for our flight a young lady sat down next to me and starting talking.  Turns out she was a missionary heading home from the Portland mission.  She was going home to Tonga.  We hung out together until we got on the plane and then again after arriving in Auckland.  Our flight wasn't too bad (12.5 hrs) and we actually dozed quite a bit during the night.  Kind of restless dozing, but way better than any previous flights.  We arrived in Auckland, helped the cute sister missionary get through security and headed up to our gate for our last leg which was 3.5 hrs.  At the gate we met up with two senior missionary couples heading to Apia for the start of their mission.  Such a small world!  Here is our first view of Samoa!  And another just prior to landing.

We made it through Immigration and customs with no problem at all!!!
We were picked up by someone from the university who took us to the Digicell store so we could get sim cards for our phones.  Then we called Karoline (landlady) so we could get the key to our rental
home.  She didn't answer for about an hour. So our driver took us to the home thinking maybe she was there.  Finally she drove up and we got the key and she dropped us off at a tiny market so we could pick up a few items of food and bottles of water.  We got a taxi to take us back home and tried to unlock the door but it wouldn't work.  We called Karoline several times and finally she came an hour later and said she'd given us the wrong key.  Here are a couple of pics of our grocery bags in front of the house while we waited and one of the front yard.

We got ready to light the propane stove with the matches we bought at the market and realized they were lost or the cashier didn't give them to us.  So we ate cold soup from the cans, breakfast crackers and water.  We went to bed thinking we were going to find a different place to live in the morning.