I have so much love and respect and stoke for the ocean and those that call it home —
Shot these a couple weeks ago during an outreach boat trip on assignment with National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa (where I work as a communications and outreach coordinator), and I was really hoping to see humpback whales, but we were met by this playful pod of dolphins instead, so I was a very a happy gal.
Who doesn’t get giddy when they see dolphins playing in the wild?! Nobody!! These charismatic marine mammals are always so fun to watch. They look like they’re dancing, so free in mother nature. They inspire me to live the same way.
These are spinner dolphins, and they approached our charter boat while we were filming at Fagatele Bay. I couldn’t quite get them jumping fully out of the water because they’re so fast.
But also, how striking are these landscapes/seascapes of Fagatele, Fagalua/Fogma’a, and the far side of Aunu’u?!
This is Fogama’a cove, as seen from the ocean.
And this is the back side of Aunu’u, where you can see the crater mouth of this volcanic island. This specific area is associated with the local Legend of Sina and Tigilau.
You can really see the effects of climate change on the island of Aunu’u in the photo below, where the road on the west coast has completely eroded, and you can see tree roots exposed to waves from rising sea levels and subsidence.
It makes me sad to recall hiking along that path just a few years ago and now it’s basically gone and the shrubbery is just hanging on by their roots.
While I’m very happy to see dolphins, I really hope I can see the whales soon! It’s their season for migrating from Antarctica and as they pass through, they usually mate or give birth in these tropical waters. A colleague shared that the ocean temperature has risen a couple degrees (!!) and that’s not a good sign for whales. So keeping my fingers crossed and my eyes peeled on the ocean for whale sightings! I’ve already asked my husband if we could spend some time on the cliffs out west to watch for whales. Maybe we’ll make a picnic date out of it… I’ll report back if I get to see them!
Sending lots of love and warmth and sunshine to wherever you are.
I shared this round up reel on instagram which pretty much highlights my entire month of July in half second snippets… and shared in the caption how I’d been feeling.
And with that… here are a few updates of my life lately that I thought would be worth posting on here to look back on… please don’t mind my rambling… I feel like I haven’t written for myself in a long time so I just want to write without thinking too much.
My hard drive went kaput
My primary external hard drive stopped working suddenly last month, and I’m devastated because it contains the last three years of my life in photos, videos, and other random computerized parts of my life. It’s been a few weeks since, and I’m hoping that my new hard drive comes in so the Pago Tech guy can clone all the contents of my drive into this new one, but he’s indicated he’s not sure if it’ll work because the partition that my files are on are encrypted and who knows if it’ll clone over properly or come out as jumbled nonsense. Pray for me ya’ll!
Work was nonstop last month
I am finally getting used to not working anytime I’m in front of my computer, because I was constantly uploading, editing, emailing, and researching for work, for all odd hours of the day so much so that my eyes were starting to go cross eyed. So I’ve been avoiding my screens and resetting my computer habits. On the plus side, it wasn’t actually too bad because I enjoyed the type of work — filming a video for our annual Get Into Your Sanctuary summer program. You can find the completed video here if you want to watch it!
A few home projects
The hubba and I upcycled our sun-beaten leaf dining table and DIY’d a tile mosaic with epoxy resin to seal it up. It looks pretty cool, if I do say so myself! We’ve also just added curtains to our south/west facing living room windows because the sun comes in directly for a few hours in the late afternoon and it makes our house so hot and has affected our furniture (clearly, I mean if you’d seen our sun-beaten dining table, you’d know). I have always been a bit anti-curtains for some reason, but after way too many an uncomfortable sun-drenched late arvo in the house, I caved and we bought white curtain panels and wood rod dowels, and I sewed up some canvas to make loops to hold the rod dowels. I can’t tell if I like it or hate it, but I certainly don’t love the curtains, it’s really just there for function. The nice thing is we can always stow it away too.
My island fever is acting up
I feel like I always complain about this on here, but the last few weeks have been like salt on the wound, because we missed my husband’s family reunion that was postponed to this year from last year, and I’m also missing one of my besties’ weddings in a couple of weeks, and I’m one of her bridesmaids so I just feel crap for not being there to help and to celebrate with her. Of course, I also miss my brother and sister, and her little family. I don’t get to video chat with them enough as it is but every time I do, they seem to grow an inch or suddenly know division and have the most hilarious chats.
Online shop update
I have temporarily shut down my sticker shop on my website so that I can work on a photo prints shop. It’s been one of the biggest goals on my list for this year, so I am going to do my best to make it a reality! I’ve been wanting to sell prints of my photos for absolute years now, and I’ve gotten a few requests from people too, which has been super encouraging. I don’t know exactly how just yet, but I’ll figure it out, and I would love any advice or tips if you have any ideas to share with me!
Back to blogging
I really want to get back to my blog, because especially after losing the contents of my hard drive, which is essentially my life’s work, from the last few years, I want to still hold on to the highlights and little bits of memories that mean the most to me. I still am a pretty private person (for a person who overshares on the Internet), so those parts I tend to keep vague but they’re still there. I am learning to just have fun with it, and even if I misspell something, or make grammatical mistakes — I’ve made plentyyyy — that’s okay. This is truly my safe space on the Internet, a place to call my own.
If you’ve read all the way through to here… wow thank you for joining me in my headspace. I hope you have a beautiful day or evening, wherever you are!
We went out to Flying Fox on Saturday night, and did some karaoke at our neighbors house after, and we drank maybe like 4 drinks each, but that was enough to wipe us out all of Sunday. Like, we were sooo tired and felt like crap! I think our immune systems were also just weak after such a long and stressful last few weeks, but here we are on Sunday afternoon, after napping the entire day… just lazed out in the treehouse for a couple of hours until the sunset.
As I’m getting older, I’ve realized that I need more and more lazy days.
The neighborhood dogs are howling into the night, echoing each other without a pause, as I walk over the freshly cut grass of the lawn, past the paved road, and climb up the wooden steps to the treehouse. My husband and several of our friends are sitting on the pier, listening to island jams, sipping on beers, and nibbling on chips being passed around to share. I set my camera up on my mini tripod, attaching it to my massive Sigma 105mm f/1.4 fixed lens. I look down at my watch and it’s a little past 9pm. The moon would be rising soon. I rest the tripod on the thick teak wood rail of the treehouse and fiddle with the camera’s manual mode when I see a razor thin orange outline in the horizon. The moon slowly peeked out from the imaginary line in the sky and I snap away silently while the muffled conversation dims. Everyone gazed at this wondrous muted yellow orange orb grow bright and high in the sky, interrupted by the occasional cloud rolling through. The cool ocean breeze gives me goosebumps and I wrap my linen button-up a little tighter for warmth.
Living next to a beach is pretty freaking awesome. I can get in the water as often as I want, whenever I want… well, except on Sundays unfortunately, as is the current rule in my village peninsula. So on this particular Sunday, I needed some saltwater therapy after a long week and a longer week to come, and I ventured to Gataivai beach some 20 minutes away for an arvo snorkel with my Fish Man.
I love snorkeling at Gataivai. The beach is easy to access, right off the main road, it goes from shallow sand and reefs to deep vast nothingness in a matter of a few hundred yards, meaning it scares and excites me, and I just love that there’s a variety of fish and coral, and lots of it too! Only cons are really that it’s right by the Pago Harbor, where I’ve heard of and seen (photos of, only) bull sharks coming for a visit, which terrifies me out of my wits; also that there’s a sewage treatment plant literally across the road, and sometimes it’s stinky above water, and makes me feel icky sometimes when I’m in the water too, especially after a big rain.
This photo journal is neither here nor there though… this one is about the what we saw underwater. When we got in the water, we immediately came across a casual sea turtle. There were several others in the distance, but this one we came across was munching away at algae on the reef, ignoring us mostly, and showing off a little too. We hung out with this sea turtle for probably a good 20 minutes.
Just a mini highlight of some of what we saw… We saw several juvenile humphead wrasses, tons of butterflyfish, parrotfish (small), blue damselfish, pennant bannerfish, triggerfish, and even a scorpionfish! We initially thought it was a stonefish, but after a little checking, we now think it’s a scorpionfish. It was all around a lovely snorkel.
Reliving these seemingly insignificant vignettes from moments of my life at home through photos… I am reminded that there is beauty everywhere in everything… and that time spent on doing things that bring you joy is time well spent.
Sending warmth and love to wherever you are seeing this from!
On Sunday morning, I felt so fatigued from the DIY project my husband and I started the day before; but we ran out of materials to complete the project and couldn’t drive back to Ace to get more because it was, after all, a mandatory day of rest. So I slept in… and then I took a morning nap… yup, a morning nap okay?! I am tired and I am aging!!! Our house was filthy from leaving all our project stuff out, and I actually got up out of bed in the morning and told Ian we would skip church to clean the house. But as it turns out, I did not do a thing. And bless my husband’s beautiful soul, a gift from God himself… My mister cleaned up the whole house while I really just slept all morning until the afternoon on the living room couch. I’d wake up in between my naps, stirred for only moments for a catch up call with my in-laws, read another chapter of my book, make buttered toast to scarf down… and then I’d fall back asleep to the sound of the fan whirring in my direction or the robovac humming away in and out of the nether regions of the couch. My sleepiness was relentless.
It felt so good to be so tired, and to have time to rest. Thank you to whoever in history decided weekends would be a thing… however, just two days though? Coulda been at least 3 out of 7! Hmm… I think I cat napped until about 2pm…
And then suddenly, I wanted to get outside and move my body… or preferably jump in the ocean. I found my husband sitting on the papasan chair in the studio/office reading a book, and asked meekly if he wanted to go snorkeling in Gataivai with me. The merman that he is, of course he said yes!
I grabbed my swimmers and my camera and we got on the road to Gataivai where I snapped these pics… and I’ll have many more underwater photos that I’ll post soon!
Also, before I allow myself to go to bed again… but this time because I’m writing this on a Monday night at 11:30 PM, I just want to reiterate that my husband is the absolute freakin’ best every dang day. Not just because he cleaned the house while I gently snored (probably) on the couch yesterday… he does so much that makes me smile, laugh, or pause in awe… I think I married a unicorn.
