A big goodbye at airport and a funny greeting at Orange

All the ‘Ahopanilolo staff came to the airport to say farewell (along with Kotoni’s ‘girlfriends’ from the convent).

A lovely trip home via a night in Sydney where our thoughtful friend Mary met us for dinner. She had jumpers waiting with Tim tam choccy biscuits and vegemite as well. We were able to hand over a 20kg bag to her as the little plane to Orange wouldn’t have got off the ground with all our Tongan gifts.

Back in Orange we were greeted at the front door by a lovely welcome home constructed by Melissa… it was weird to be home but so many friends dropping in to say hello over the weekend made it feel OK…

At work two days later my lovely DPI colleagues had my new desk all set up and had even presented me with flowers and downloaded a Tongan photo screen saver… so very thoughtful and much appreciated….

Thank you Orange you have softened the blow of leaving out beloved island home.

Some blog stats: As at today (21 April 2014) we had 25,682 views of the blog over the year and 887 comments. Tracey Taylor my beautiful friend from Hobart gets the prize for the most comments – 160!