Tonga!

Friday, April 11th

This was a LONG DAY!! We took the Van Den Akkers shopping. We went to just about every store downtown and we walked miles!! They were so grateful for our patience and we were happy to do it for them. The Beans took us when we first got here and we were grateful too. After almost 5 hours of shopping, we met the rest of the people from our office at Café Escape for lunch. Alan and I are so done with that Café, but it is the only air conditioned one in town so that is where we always go.

While we were eating lunch we had an interesting experience. Two black cars with tinted windows drove up outside, preceded by the police and followed by a white van. Men in dark suits got out of the van and escorted a Navy Admiral and some other officers into the café. They had walky-talkies and they stood guard as the officers checked out the rest room and then the Admiral went in. We talked to one of them and he told us that they are here in Tonga working on a partnership with the military here. He was very nice to us and as soon as the Admiral came out, they all went back outside and got in their cars and drove away. No one bought any food or drinks, it seemed to be just a bathroom break. I didn’t know that Admirals traveled with body guards, but this one did. It was kind of fun to see it all happen and then we watched the coverage of their meeting with the Prime Minister and the head of the King’s Army on the news tonight. Very interesting!!

After having such a big lunch we weren’t hungry tonight. I just had a bowl of cereal but Alan wanted some soup. I told him to go ahead and fix it, which he did. Seriously, fixing one can of tomato soup, mixed with milk in one pan can’t really be that hard. But somehow it must be. When he was done, there was soup all over the stove, down inside of two burners, down the side of the stove and on the floor. Really!! How did that happen??? Alan has got to learn to cook. If I die first, he is going to be in a real mess --- literally!

We were able to go for a nice walk tonight and then we sat down and picked out the pictures of Ukraine that we want to use when we do FHE on Monday night.