Saturday, May 28

Today was a pretty slow day. It's the weekend here, 'though I did do a quick check-in at the office 'cause it's only Friday there. We had plans to go to the movies with our birthmother and her other daughters later, but nothing else for the day.

One of the things Claire wanted to do was visit the tourist information place. It's marked on our map as not too far from the NTA, but we know that the NTA is not as near as the map shows, so we just hoped they were at least in the right order on the map. We decided to walk, as we're mostly hardy, and could use some exercise in general.

I'd planned to try to use my time away from keys to try to jumpstart some running again, like I forced myself to do a year or so ago. It's terribly hot and humid, though, and now my time away from keys is occupied by one who can't yet sit by herself. I know, “excuses.”

Walking's a good compromise, or at least is better than just sitting during conveyance. Plus I did it with a ten pound weight in my hands for most of the trek. For some of the trek Claire tried using the Snugli baby harness, but I think Grace is a little small for it.

It started raining part way through the walk. It rains at least some most days. On a lot of days it rains hard. Either way it only rains for a while at a time. No all day rainstorms, although the spotty rain can last most of the day. This was a little spitting rain, which seemed to be not enough to get a person wet, as the heat would wick it away almost as fast as it landed. It was almost refreshing enough to not be annoying.

Along the way we stopped at a handful of stores, both before and after hitting the tourism place, so that broke up the walk. The Ministry of Visitor Affairs, as we found it actually named, is only open weekdays, during what seem to be kind of normal government hours. We vowed to return on Monday. It was here that Claire put Grace in the Snugli for a while.

Far enough from the hotel, we decided to press on to the “orange BBQ place” we were told about by previous adopting visitors. We've driven past it a few times. There's an orange store, with a big orange cage outside of it, atop which is a banner proclaiming it to be the Marshall Island's best BBQ. We made it there before getting too tired to think of enjoying it.

The orange building is Mother's Kitchen, which is another general store. There we saw a number of interesting handicrafts and Guams, a traditional and colorful dress. All manner of patterns, mind you, like a mu-mu. They had a couple styles of postcards, but none that we thought captured the islands or tropics; some smiling people that we didn't know (and certainly the recipients wouldn't), but we've got lots of pictures of people others don't know...

In the “best BBQ” cage, we asked the guy if lunch was ready yet. He said the ribs and chicken were done, but they didn't have any plates. We said we'd wait, so we took a seat on one of the cement benches against the building and fed Grace a little lunch. She'd been asleep (which in Marshallese is kiki) since we left the hotel, but was now interested in looking around.

After what seemed like too long, but was probably just right when using “island time” the guy in the BBQ came back with a handful of styrofoam containers. They were packed up and quickly doled out to the few fellas waiting right at the cage. I went back up and asked a different guy manning the cage, and he said they were out of plates, but the boss would be right back with more. We wandered into the store and got some cold beverages to kill time while we waited more.

Outside again we perched on a closer bench and waited. Just as I think we were about to agree to give up, the boss (the first guy we talked to) came back to the cage with a giant tub with the styrofoam boxes within. They weren't just styrofoam boxes, but styrofoam boxes filled with rice and a spicy coleslaw and the ubiquitous potato and macaroni dish. They put a few pieces of meat in each box and then closed and stacked them. There wasn't a queue so much as a bunch of guys lingering near the hole in the cage, so I stepped in to take two of them.

I gotta say, some of the yummiest eight bucks I've spent! We didn't know that until we returned to the hotel though. We started walking back, thinking to snag a taxi if one came by. They're a little harder to find empty in that part of the “between areas” area. A lot of them drove past, but all of them were two full for two adults and a baby.

After a little while, a nice guy stopped in a big SUV and asked if we wanted a ride out of the rain, for the baby. He seemed nice enough, so we hopped in. Probably wouldn't have thought twice about declining and walking the couple miles back in the rain, if we were back home. He asked where we were from, we told him. We asked where he was from, he said Guam, but he lived here with his wife. I joked that guys are always living where their wives want; he joked his wife wouldn't worry about that, but would wonder what took him so long. I had to think that helping us wasn't what was making him late, as that was about all the conversation we had time for as we pulled up to the hotel. We thanked him fervently and got out.

That's when we got to try the tasty BBQ. It would have been worth the walk, I think. Perhaps it was a little amplified because of the wait and walk and effort and time out in the heat, but the flavor of the BBQ was spot-on. I had a pork spare rib and couple pieces of chicken (which bits was unidentifiable to me, because of the unfamiliar carving), while Claire had two ribs and a chicken leg. The ribs had small, tight scraps of meat attached to them, making me think they were truly “spare,” but the flavor was enough that I literally gnawed on the bone to get more. The time spent in travel helped spread the flavor into the rice, which compelled me to eat all of it, even though it was about four servings in the tray.

Well worth the effort.

We rested in the hotel room, bellies full, until Grace woke from her nap. Claire gave her a quick bath, and we settled in to a little hanging out in the room. Today was one of those spotty rains almost all day days. We watched some stuff on the Discovery channel, and Claire uploaded some pictures to her blog, and we took turns playing with Grace.

A little after 5PM, we had our expected knock on the door. It was Emi and her two girls, Bertha (bear-ta) and Destiny. They were here for some hang-out time, and to see the Marshallese movie being played in the hotel: Lañinbwil's Gift. It's evidently the third fully-Marshallese movie ever made. Also, evidently Emi had never been to a movie before. I think she's seen them, based on discussion while Claudia was here with her yesterday, and how they thought it'd be OK for the kids to see.

She held and cooed with Grace a while. Bertha hid behind her the whole time. Destiny, however, followed Claire around as she puttered around the rooms as she made Grace's bottle, and did a little clean-up. We offered the kids a snack bar, which they took shyly after mom gave permission.

After a bit we made our way to the movie. It is playing here, in a room at the hotel. We didn't know exactly where, nor did we know if Emi knew, or if we could work out that she knew, so Claire darted into the hotel's office as we walked by to ask them. On the street level, near the other end of the hotel from our room, would be some people queued to buy tickets, then we'd follow others up the stairs and into the room where they were showing the film. We bought tickets, and were warned by the girls doing that about a particular scary part, where we might want to prepare or distract or shield the kids. They also told Emi in Marshallese, but she visibly shrugged them off.

The movie hall is in the hotel's conference room or ballroom, or whatever they call it. Or at least one of the rooms for that purpose. They had a pull-down projector screen, and an LCD projector hooked to a DVD player for the purpose. About twenty rows of chairs spanned wall-to-wall, with a couple aisles splitting the room into three sections. In the corer opposite the entry was a makeshift concession stand, with soda and popcorn and other snacks.

Emi moved to a seat on the left side, not too far from the back. My first instinct, as a veteran moviegoer, was to suggest moving closer to the middle, but I thought better of it as we had three small children. The room filled up pretty well, for an early showing, and the audience was peppered with small children. I did notice there were not too many dating couples or mixed-gender groups. It seemed, in fact, that I was with about the only such group. Smaller kids notwithstanding, the room seemed mostly divided to fellas in front of us, and gals behind us, too.

Before the movie started, Claire, shadowed by Destiny, visited the concessions for a few cans of soda, a bottle of water, and a bag of peanut M&Ms. She'd figured the older kids would split the water, and the adults would divvy up the soda, but instead, each kid got a can of soda, from which Emi occasionally took swigs, and Claire and I shared the water.

It wasn't about the water or other division of flavors, but I guess we're a little out of the loop with the sodas going to little kids. Destiny, the older, is like four, and Bertha is like two. I guess we would have held off on giving the kids the sugar or caffeine, but that seemed to be the way as many of the smaller kids around us likewise had sodas. Also, Emi didn't crack the soda can seal, but instead pulled the tab off in such a way that the kids (and she) could still suck some of the soda out, but, I guess, prevent spillage as the opening wouldn't glug soda out if a kid dropped a can. I thought that was clever.

A guy in front of the crowd got everyone's attention and said the film would be starting. He said to turn off cell phones, and demonstrated by turning of a cell phone he held over his head for all to see, like a flight attendant with a seat belt. It must have worked, because I didn't hear a phone go off during the movie.

It turned out the seats we had were right under a speaker, and the movie was unnecessarily loud, at least from our seats. Kicking an easy 90-100dB, we had to cover the kids' ears from time-to-time as the soundtrack was really loud. After the first scene, Claire took Grace, and was still shadowed by Destiny, into the row in front of us, and over against the wall, where it was much quieter. Even later, she took Grace, and was still shadowed, and stood at the back of the theater as she started fussing. It was way too loud for her to be settled though, so whether she liked it or not, Grace was awake for the whole film. Still, she didn't make a noisy fuss, just a fidgety one.

The movie itself deserves a review of its own, so I'll make that separate from the day's recounting.

After the movie, we milled about. Emi and the girls were going to go out one door, and we thought to go out the other, back the way we came. We said our good-byes, and turned to leave, but the kind usherette directed us the other way. Apparently someone had clued Emi in, but we missed it. We all had a laugh about that and wound our way down the back steps to the hallway back past the ticket sellers. There we worked out some final good-byes, and Emi and girls took off into the parking lot toward home, while we went down the hall toward our room.

In the room we changed Grace's really full diaper, and gave her part of a bottle. We then recalled we hadn't eaten, so we went down to the restaurant for a bit of soup and salad. We both had the soup of the day, potato and bacon. Claire had a Cobb salad, with tuna, and I had the same spicy Caesar, but this time also with the seared tuna. I didn't so much care for the tuna, so I piled it onto Claire's salad. There wasn't anything wrong with it, as far as I could tell, but it wasn't quite what I wanted to eat. It was a little warm, but still red and mushy. I did eat the rest of the salad, and Claire finished hers.

Grace was dozing off when we got to the restaurant, and a little bit more bottle did her in. We wrapped her and propped her on a chair at the table. She twitched a little now and again, but didn't stir.

I decided to try a treat, and had their fried banana sundae. It was rather yummy, too. The bananas were cooked in a flaky crust, and served with a giant blob of ice cream, under some fluffy whipped cream, drizzled with chocolate sauce, and topped with cherries. The cherries were spiked, and tasted mightily of rum or something similar. It was a bit much, but we managed to finish that, too.

We returned to the room, with Grace already out from movie overload, went right to bed. I checked my e-mail and saw the Twins lost again, and also turned in.