Conversations from the road

Road trips.  Yeah, that other great American past-time.  Hitting the road with the whole family and the dog.  In our case, it’s the whole family minus the dog.  Sorry animal lovers, I do like animals as long as they don’t come near me and as long as they live in someone else’s house.
Road trips are often an exercise [...]

How Do I Love Thee

I heard a woman the other day talk about her experiences in China.  This woman (we’ll call her Ann so I don’t have to keep referring to her as this woman) and her husband spent a year teaching English in China.  They had just returned home and were invited to share their experiences.
I thought they [...]

Rights for Illegals?

Recently our local news featured a story about a certain legislation that has come under scrutiny again.  As with anything to do with immigration, it came under fire from different sectors of the community.
The bill in question is aimed at ensuring that illegals who are attending state owned universities continue to pay in state tuition [...]

Confessions of a 40-something Samoan woman

I was getting my daily dose of political news today on cnn.com when I saw a  link to this article,  Confessions of a 40-something woman.  Being a 40-something woman myself, it immediately caught my attention and of course I just had to read it.   Boy am I glad I did.  I loved it.  Kudos to Lisa [...]

Excuse Me, but Your Ignorance Is Showing

So my usually easy-going son comes home in a huff today from his last class at the university.  Gives me a peck on the cheek and then pulls out a textbook and says, “Mom, what do you think of this?”
He begins to read it to me (I’m including the article here so you too can [...]

Samoan-American

Undoubtedly, many of our kids who are born and raised outside of Samoa face a real dilemma. 
On the one hand, they have it easy.  Real easy in a lot of ways. After all, Samoan kids growing up in America (like mine for example) enjoy the kind of life that those who are growing up in Samoa can only [...]

Home-schooling

I really should tell you why I haven’t been writing on this blog so much.  After Christmas we decided to pull our boys out of the school they were attending and homeschool them.  We’ve been talking about it for a few months, and we finally decided now was the right time for it.  
Homeschooling was really not [...]

Pride and Acceptance

Yes, the whole question of white vs. black (and all other shades in between) is still alive and well. Do I experience it? Absolutely! Maybe not every day but enough so that it’s something that you need to deal with. Its enough of a concern so that when we found out where we were moving [...]

Notable Samoan Women

I came across a speech by Winnie Laban recently that really impressed me. I hadn’t heard of her before but she is definitely an important woman in New Zealand politics. And she is Samoan. Obviously, she is intelligent and articulate. What an awesome role model for our young Samoan daughters. I’m including the [...]

Teach our Children

I don’t know about you but once in awhile I do a search online for any noteworthy mention of Samoa and/or Samoans.   I like to read about how well Samoans are doing in their field, whatever that may be.  I feel a surge of pride in our Samoan people when I read about any Samoan who [...]