Arlina in a nutshell

We are with her family today and are preparing them for "the eventuality". On the way home she makes me stop at the store to buy her lottery tickets.

I can't decide whether she is a saint or an angel.

Tahitian Treat

When we got married, I wanted to go camping for our homeymoon. Arlina told this to my mom, and everyone got so upset that they took up a collection and sent us on a cruise to Tahiti instead. I'd like to say my plan worked perfectly, but I really did want to go camping, and a cruise sounded boring.

Tahiti, however, was quite interesting. We visited three of the islands--Bora Bora, Moorea, which was my favorite, and the main island of Tahiti. Moorea is the closest I have ever come to experiencing my vision of paradise. A lush island surrounded by a coral reef and warm, clear ocean. As you drive past the houses, they have little mailboxes out front for daily baguette deliveries. How cool is that? If you want to see what Moorea looks like, rent the Mel Gibson version of The Bounty.

By the time we got to Tahiti, Arlina had made friends with all the filipino crew members on board ship--she never had to pay for a drink the whole time we were on board. They told us of the almost slave labor conditions under which they worked--weeks and weeks on duty, miserable pay, no security. All so I could have a second lobster at dinner, even though I was already full. Anyway, they got a half-day off in Moorea, and we took them out to lunch at a chinese restaurant overlooking a coral reef. This really has nothing to do with this anecdote--I just feel obligated to toss it in whenever I tell about my cruise experience.

Back to the story proper. Our last day in Tahiti was on a Sunday. We were in Papeete, the big "city". We wandered around looking at things, but everything was closed except for a little sidewalk cafe near the waterfront. We sat outside munching on croissants and sipping espresso as we watched the people go by. It was a perfect moment.

This morning, on our way to Arlina's folks, we stopped at a little cafe in one of the strip malls--a place called LaBou. We sat outside and sipped coffee and munched on croissants and watched the people go by. It was warm, but there was a nice breeze, and we were shaded by a couple of big trees. It was surreal. It felt so much like we were back in Tahiti,except that there was not a single bare-breasted Tahitian woman in sight. It brought back some great memories. I'll have to dig out our pictures and write a little more about it. Oh yeah, I forgot that we lost our Tahiti pictures the last time we moved. Dang!