Slow down! This ain't the Mainland!

This is a bumper sticker that you will see all over the island. My neighbor has it and I was going to take a picture of it, but she was gone when I went out to do it. Maybe I will add it later.

I had kind of an interesting talk today at, of all places, play group. This woman that I really hadn't had a chance to talk to yet just started chatting with me. She pretty much skipped over all the usual chit chat and went straight for the jugular. (Just something I felt like saying. LOL)

She started talking about the story in the BOM about the olive branch and the grafting and all that business. She was saying that the people of the islands of the pacific were a branch that needed to be grafted back in and it was our responsibility to do so. Funny how it wasn't offensive or bizarre to me, but actually she came across very lovingly, but serious. Why me? What do you want from me?

The she started telling me about the first time she came to the islands. She is white - I actually can't tell what race she is, because she is on the big side like a Tongan woman with a big flat nose, but her skin is white and she has prettier features. Anyway, she married a Tongan man and he wanted to move back to Hawaii. She was from Idaho so it was all new to her.

Same as me she almost had a melt down when she saw the sizes of houses people lived in, no yards, etc. She got used to it pretty quickly. She said that the Tongan people as a whole don't think a lot about the future. They are just content with day to day things and they don't worry if they are going to buy a house in 3 years or a new car in a year or plan the rest of their lives out (like I try to do sometimes) or things like that. They just do things day by day and just take what life gives them. They just accept what comes their way.

Well for me this is amazing. My life is a bit out of control, but I always like to plan and project what will happen. She said if she knew how her life was going to turn out 10 years ago she would have just laughed and not believed it. I felt exactly the same. If you told me when I first got married that this is where I would be with 2 kids and the whole bit, there is no way that I would have believed it. I would love to just let things go and not worry about things so much.

So my brother just called and then as soon as I got off the phone with him then my mom called. I sort of lost my train of thought and now I am not in the mood. Maybe I will continue this later.