Day 1: Saturday, 5/21

We've arrived in Majuro, RMI! It's been quite a travel journey so far and, I must admit, I'm not feeling the greatest. I'm sure it has to do with not sleeping the night before we left. I figured we'd have a long time to sleep on the way here but it wasn't a good “lay down in a bed and sleep at the appropriate time” kind of sleep. In other words, it kinda sucked.

I'll give you a run down of our trip here and then on to our first day in the Marshalls – sorry if any of this is a repeat:

• Thursday morning – called the cab for a 3:30 am pickup and made it to MSP well in advance of our departure. I wasn't allowed to print my boarding passes online the previous day but the nice lady at the desk processed everything and handed over all 4 boarding passes telling us we wouldn't see our checked bags until we arrived at our destination. Score! Or, so I thought (more on that later). BTW – airline breakfast needs some work – even if first class.
• Thursday mid-morning – arrived in Houston and hunkered down for our 2-hour layover. Jumped on the next plane just before lunch and made our way to LA. By the time we made it there I was dragging. I really, really needed to sleep so we headed to our next gate, found a fairly deserted and isolated space, and prepared to wait out the 5 hour layover. While Jeff tapped out stuff on his Mac, I found a cozy place to lay down and nap (by “cozy” I mean a concrete slab covered by office carpet). About 3 hours later I woke up to discover that the entire area was filled with passengers heading to Maui – I didn't care. We got up to go grab some food as we still had about 2 hours to wait.
• Thursday evening – Finally got on the plane to Honolulu for the “long” part of the trip. Yeah, it was already feeling pretty long but while the first part took about 14 hours, the next two legs and layover would take a total of 21!
• Thursday evening... still – with the time changes, we arrived in Honolulu around 9 pm. Convinced we needed to spend a night in a hotel and catch a handful of hours of sleep, we started calling around. We weren't sure if we'd end up needing a room before so we didn't make any reservations... the Ohana (recommended by friends) was full. The Best Western (recommended by the Ohana) was also full. Finally, the Pacific Marina had a room and we jumped on the shuttle. I expected something like a Motel 6 but it was more like a Motel 3 ½. Regardless, here's where the checked luggage would have been nice to have – we had no tooth brushes, toothpaste, hair dryer, product or combs/brushes, and not even a barrette. I was pretty the next day, let me tell you!
• Friday early-morning – got up, got myself pretty (I did happen to find a bandana in my carry on), and got on a plane headed for the RMI. Slept some and watched 2 movies. The service in flight was probably the best we'd had the entire way here. Kudos to the flight crew!
• Saturday morning – more time zone changes and crossing the international date line jumped us a full day ahead. And that's where we are now...

Arriving in Majuro, RMI is very similar to other island locations we've visited. Belize, Fiji and now RMI - all have very small airports where you deplane down a stairway onto a the tarmac and make your way into the airport. Customs is customs – there's a big plaque in the RMI customs area that credits the passport scanning and computer system to the United States of America and thanks us for our generosity. I nearly laughed out loud when I read that... while it might be nice to provide the equipment and we are responsible for the defense of the Marshall Islands, you have to know that our government is more worried about our own boarders than a small island nation. The risk is that some bad guys will come through there to us... not that the Marshalls will be the target of some sort of attack. Anyway, we made our way through and waited at baggage claim for our luggage... which was brought over by pickup truck and pushed over the top edge of a slanted cement platform (replicating the automated system you'd see in the baggage claim area at MSP). We grabbed our bags and ventured out in the open area of the airport not really sure who we were going to meet or where... or even when.

After not too long, Claudia (Director of the Central Adoption Authority) found us just as one of the employees at the Marshall Islands Resort (MIR) approached us to see if I was “Stacy”. Turns out there's another couple who arrived on the same plane from Journey's of the Heart! They're adopting a baby boy who's about 4 months old so we expect we'll be getting to know them a lot better. Claudia then gave me a loaner cell phone – not sure if our friends who recently visited purchased it and donated it to the CAA for LSS families, or if LSS purchased it for use by their clients – regardless, what a wonderful thing to do! Having a cell phone (again – remember mine is in some airline cesspool after the flight to Houston) in my hands again made me feel a little bit more whole... but much more importantly, we didn't have to worry about going to buy one and collecting everyone's numbers. After exchanging introductions and chatting a bit about what the schedule would be, we jumped into the shuttle and made our way to the MIR.

Check in went well and we went up to the room to settle in. I was a bit nervous about our room. I'd only made the reservations on Tuesday evening (all of 4 days before arriving) and wasn't really clear what we were going to get. But the price was right so I was determined to make the best of it. We weren't able to get into one of the MIR suites – all three are apparently booked for a long-term stay of many months – but they put us in adjoining rooms instead. It's a little odd but really they did a great job of outfitting it with things that will make our month-long stay more enjoyable. One side is a standard room with queen-size bed, desk, small dresser, TV armoire, a couple nightstands, loveseat, small refrigerator, closet and full bath. The adjoining room is the same size and has many of the same items but they removed the bed and replaced the loveseat with a full, pull-out sleeper couch (it's not comfortable to sit on so I can't imagine trying to sleep on it). In addition, they've added a wooden “pantry” shelving unit, a microwave and a hotplate. Well, the hotplate has gone missing but the supervisor will check on it Monday – the woman at the front desk shyly blamed housekeeping for taking it!

So, by this point it's late morning and part of the arrangement is that Claudia was going to bring the birth moms and babies by to meet us around 2:00. We had some time before 2:00 so we decided to take a walk down the road. We headed over to the Do It Best (same hardware store we have at home) and picked up a 5-gallon jug for water and a pump for the top. The store was crazy – most of the chatter was in Marshallese so I'm not completely sure what was going on but there seemed to be a disagreement about someone's order or invoice. At one point there were more store employees standing behind the counter than customers in front of it! One very nice man helped us get a new jug down from the top shelf and then, very kindly (like we were 5-year-olds) explained how to use the refill station.

We headed back to the hotel to set up our water system and unpack a little. Shortly after, we went down to the lobby where we were expecting to meet with Claudia and her charges. About 15 minutes after the 2:00 meet time, I was starting to get worried that we'd misunderstood and that maybe we were supposed to be in our room to meet them. About that time, the other family arrived and told us that Claudia had called them and we were, in fact, going to meet them in our respective rooms... but still being on island time, they were going to be a little while longer.

After what seemed like 4 hours, but in reality was only about another 30 minutes, Claudia arrived with our birth mom, Emi (pronounced like “Amy”) and Grace in tow. I'm not sure I can describe what it was like to see her for the first time. She was simply beautiful. Claudia stayed the entire time to translate for Emi. Even though the referral said she speaks both Marshallese and English, Claudia explained that she was from a more remote area, Arno Atoll, and was not exposed to much English growing up. We've been told is common for the birth moms to not speak much English at first and even deny knowing it at all. But most of our friends who've traveled tell us that they eventually open up and become more comfortable speaking the language. I'm not sure that will be our experience but we'll see in the coming days. Our visit lasted about an hour before the three of them had to leave but Emi asked, through Claudia, of we'd like her to come back tomorrow for a visit and whether it'd be okay if she left Grace with us for a few hours... Uh, yeah! Of course it would be okay!

The rest of the day was pretty lame compared to the excitement of meeting Emi and Grace. We walked up the road again, past the hardware store and past the Payless store (think SuperTarget but a smaller version and without the Super or the Target), and to the NTA (National Telecomunications Authority) where we purchased additional cell phone minutes and a fist full of cards giving us around 1,000 internet minutes – woop! Of course, those will get used up very fast with my short blog posts and Jeff's work. On our stroll, we actually ran into Claudia, the birth moms and babies twice! Once at the Tourist Trap where they were trying to get the babies' passport photos. Grace was uncooperative being soundly asleep and impossible to wake up (apparently you must be awake in your passport photo – note to self when I renew mine). So Monday will be passport photo day for Grace instead. The next time was leaving Payless on the way back – Emi had some grocery shopping to do as did we. Despite not having a hot plate yet, we thought it'd be good to have some snacks, beverages and breakfast cereal.

We decided to head down to the restaurant for dinner around 6:00 and, while it was very good, couldn't wait to get back to the room and turn in early. Much excitement in the past 48 hours... a good night's sleep is definitely what we need!