Patti's Perspective: November 2013

What a great time of year to remember my blessings and be thankful. Thanks dear friends and family for your love and support. I love hearing from you by post or email. I'm still in the same apartment, 1319 8th St. NE, N-1, Auburn, WA 98002.
I seemed to have failed for most things to remember to take pictures, but I can share some of the happenings...just not pictorially.. We've done a lot of "seeking" but not always finding. I am a real believer in keeping good records of names and addresses, but people here seem to move a lot and often. A lot of the people are related, so one week they may be with family and the next they'll be with an "auntie".

Another thing I find interesting is the number of last names you find in the family. It comes from one or both of the parents or partners being previously with someone else and having lots of children. Another thing they do is "give" children to other relatives. One sister felt sorry for a family that had about 9 boys but no girls, so she "gave" one of her children to them a little girl...no adoption, mind you, so not very legal...just very confusing trying to sort out and get a handle on who belongs to whom, and so forth.

I attended my first ever party hosted by Marshallese. They are really big on celebrating children’s first birthdays, so this was a party planned by the grandmother and her family for the first birthday of one of her granddaughters.They held it at some church hall (not LDS) in Pacific. They have lots of food and they serve it in take-out containers. There is always lots of rice and I was glad I could tell them to put in just a little or none at all, especially when it came to the fish heads and fish. There were lots of people there (I really don’t think they knew everybody because if there is a party all the Marshallese come) and we all sat around big round tables enjoying the musical entertainment and just visiting. Then the birthday music starts…a version of happy birthday sung over and over and over and over. They sing as long as there is a line of people waiting to greet the “honored” guest. I really think she probably would have preferred to go to bed…but then maybe she is a party one-year old. At any rate, you get in a line and when you get up to the mother and dad and the one year old, there is a container of sorts and you drop in dollars and in exchange they give you gifts. I think I received a box of chocolate covered macadamia nuts and later on a nightgown (sort of a mumu). We didn’t stay too long, about 2 hours…but I know they did some singing and some dancing and just had a really good time. It was fun to see how they do things.