Devon and I’s Birthday

We had two weeks break after term two and it was perfect timing. Not only were we all running low on energy and patience we had two big birthdays to celebrate. My actual birthday was during the last week of school so I couldn’t really celebrate but on the day I opened a present Devon brought back for me from his recent trip to the states (a super cute clutch, all natural perfume, so replacement red stunna shades, and so beautiful handmade silver earrings. He did good!!!). I also got a bunch of calls and texts. The next day Chris and Rivka invited me to dinner and cooked me a delicious pizza and incredible brownies… such a treat. The next week we were all in town for a training session, so Devon, whose birthday is on the 10^th of Sept., and I did a big group dinner at our favorite restaurant. My birthday didn’t end there, I got three amazing packages! Thank you, Mama, Emily, Sabrina, and Adam. The weekend after training me and Devon went to stay at the Tanu beach fales on Savaii. It was incredible picturesque, an open beach hut right on the turquoise water. We could have been on the travel channel. On Devon’s actual birthday we went scuba-diving. We did two dives, one over a beautiful reef drop off were we saw some incredible corral formation, some of the biggest I have ever seen and some sea turtles. I have been dying to see some turtles since they are the unofficial animal of Samoa but this was my first sighting, and man was it an incredible one. We can up over this ledge and one turtle was laying perched on the coral getting her shell cleaned only maybe four feet from me. I could have reached out and touched her. She turned away seemingly embarrassed to be caught in such an intimate moment, she swam slowly away looking back reproachfully at our interruption. She played in our dive instructor’s bubbles, then after one last look back she was off in to the distance. It was incredible. Our second dive was a missionary ship that had been sunk in 1880. It was almost completely covered in coral and had been thrown around a bit by tsunamis and cyclones but it was still very impressive. We saw an electric giant clam and a sea cucumber that was bigger than a five year old. We the treated ourselves to the only pizza place, and one of like five restaurants total on the island, to Sekia pizza which is just a hut with a pizza oven. It was delicious and perfectly rounded out a delicious day. We had a great rest of the break relaxing, visiting with friends, and enjoying each other.