STILL CELEBRATING!!

What a week it has been. Much celebrating and partying. Lots of wonderful food.
Much hugging and kissing...on both cheeks. The Tahitians say we Westerners are lazy for only doing it on one cheek!

And music...wherever we went! Those Polynesian rhythms will be pulsing through me for a long while. I seem to hear them wherever I am, even in the dead of night. Our Tahitian friends just love to strum, sing and dance! What a joyful attitude to life.

Mile, Sylvia and Moana went home on Sunday...but not before they had the whole airport terminal singing "In the Sweet Bye and Bye" and "Now is the Hour" at the top of their voices.
Tomorrow, sadly, we will farewell Gladys, Little Gladys, Amelia and Amelie. Everything will seem so quiet after that.

My schoolgirl French, not practised for many decades, has improved enormously in this past fortnight, I could not believe how words and phrases were starting to come back! But fortunately, some of the Tahitians had enough English to enable most of us to communicate. Not that it mattered. The music and laughter bonded us.Many of us plan to go to Tahiti in October 2008 to celebrate the 220th anniversary of the Bounty sailing into Matavi Bay. The links that have been established with these distant cousins are strong and precious.