Pedestrian View

We’ve been here two days. We’ve done the beach. We’ve done Pearl Harbor. We sat around and read on our balcony. Maritha doesn’t seem to be too anxious to get going for the Majuro (we leave early Wednesday). Life is good, but Hotel internet access isn’t cheap, so I’m just keeping it short. Full details and pics later.

Where are they? Go to Hawaii. Keep going. If you get to the Phillipines, you’ve gone too far.

Why are we going? Our adopted daughter, Maritha, lived there with her family until she was 9 years old. She’s now 16. It’s long over due.

How did Maritha get here? We met a doctor who served in the Peace Corps there in the 1980s. During the ’90s, she facilitated close to 100 adoptions in central North Dakota, where she (and we) lived.

Why did she come? Technically, we are Maritha’s legal guardians. The Marshall Islands are a very crowded nation of high unemployment and very bleak futures, especially for girls. Typically, girls Maritha’s current age are pregnant, uneducated, and have health problems. Maritha, for example, arrived with severely damaged hearing from untreated, repeated, parasitical ear infections. Her parents agreed to send her to us to give her an education and better healthcare.

Now you know as much as we do. I just bought a 2 gig memory card for my camera, so there will be more pictures forthcoming.

True story.  My seventeen-year-old daughter couldn’t wait for our pre-ordered copy from Amazon on Saturday.  She bought one just after Midnight early Saturday morning, came home and had it ready by 8:17 a.m.  She was possibly the first to finish in the Central Standard Time Zone.  (This is the girl who, at age eight, read the first HP in 24 hours.  It only took her that long because we made her go to bed for awhile.)

My wife and I had no idea.  We were up drinking our morning coffee when she stumbled out of her room still dressed from the day before.  “It is finished,” she said, her voice strained with emotion.

“Do you need a hug?” I said.

She immediately came for the hug (from her mother) and burst into tears.  After things settled down, she claimed it was good, but the ending was “stupid.”  STUPID is her word for anything that doesn’t quite fit her idea of the way things are supposed to be, so I’m not taking it as a negative endorsement.

Our Amazon copy was in the mail box by noon.  I’m about 150 pages into it.  I’m hooked, but alas, I must grade my Adolescent Lit essays and exams by Tuesday!  Pronto graderamus!

Errr…I need to be back to Hogwarts.