Thanksgiving Weekend

Thanksgiving was quite a challenge this year. The morning started with a pretty strong bought of homesickness for both of us. Thankfully we didn’t have to spend the day alone. Rich and Elizabeth invited us over for a late Thanksgiving lunch! We pulled some recipes to fix, we were supposed to prepare sauteed apples, honey glazed carrots, sweet potatoes, pureed squash and a chocolate and pumpkin pie. We got off easy seeing as Rich and Elizabeth wanted to tackle the turkey and stuffing and a few other sides. As usual (for me) what started out as well planned cooking turned into one big mess! John took on the sweet potatoes (his favorite) and he cut and prepared the apples and carrots.

I worked on the pies from scratch.

The pumpkin pie turned out tasting great but as John so graciously put it, it looked like I literally butchered the pie. I kept having to check if it was finished inside so I kept poking it and by the time it was finally done there were knife marks all over it! For some reason it ended up taking almost an hour longer to bake than the recipe said… So onto the chocolate pie.. Who knows what went wrong there! It just never set. So after all of that I didn’t have time to let the squash bake for an hour at 400. Luckily all of John’s dishes turned out great! So we left without the squash or the chocolate pie :( Turned out fine because we had so much food it was hardly missed. Better luck next year I hope!

The rest of our weekend was spent exploring the island.

We went to the Bishop museum on Saturday morning with Rich and Elizabeth and then to have lunch at a fresh fish market. We learned a lot about the history of Hawaii and the native people. We have been so spoiled with the amazing seafood here!

Later in the afternoon we went on a waterfall hike and found a trail we can’t wait to share with our friends when they come visit!

On Sunday we hiked Koko Head Crater (which reminded me a lot of climbing the Great Wall, the steps were very uneven and it was a very steep climb)

What we actually hiked was up the train tracks for the supply car from WWII. So we were walking on the rails and the cross- ties to get to the top. It was challenging, but well worth it when we reached the top!

We also hiked the crater that surrounds Hanauma bay. That’s the bay on the left side of the picture, we hiked from the middle of it all the way around to where the waves were crashing on the far side.

Koko Head Crater is the tallest peak in this picture.

I’m really looking forward to our next hiking trip. We’ll be getting a new charger for the Nikon in this week, so we’ll finally get to take real pictures of everything.. until then the phone pictures will have to do.

What we've learned so far...

So for our first real-time post I’m going to share a few things I’ve learned in the last 19 days:
1. Double rainbows are really bright and vivid. (They’re beautiful, but they didn’t bring me to tears)
2. Playing music from home makes me kind of sad, which is frustrating, everything is tied to memories of the past 5 years in Oklahoma.
3. Moochi Ice Cream in Hawaii kicks Moochi Cream in Japan’s butt!
4. In Hawaii a yellow light at a traffic signal really does me drive faster.
5. My hope that one of the hardest parts about living in Hawaii would be learning to cope with my gums hurting from all the acidity in the pineapple I’d be eating every day weren’t true. (The best pineapple and other island-grown fruits are sent to the mainland!!!)
6. An air mattress was never meant to be used for a real mattress.
7. You get in shape really quick when you walk literally everywhere. (luckily the car has come in, no more 5 mile walks to look at apartments!)
8. Snorkel masks are not created equal! We bought the nice kind but I have a sneaky suspicion they are not geared towards mainlanders with protruding nose bones! John and I both have bruises from our masks
9. Living in a place where I visited on pacrim brings back all the nostalgic feelings from that trip. Truly a life changing experience.
10. We live directly across the street from the church our group visited while we were here. Such a coincidence! Yes, the island is small but it’s not that small.
11. Learning to live on ‘Hawaiian time’ isn’t so bad.
12. A lot of what people ‘warned us about’ turned out to not be true when we got here. Well with the exception of traffic. that IS bad. But milk isn’t $6 or 7 a gallon, it’s like $4.25. Christmas trees don’t cost $600 and gas is only $3.39. So yes, things are a little more here but not some unbelievable amount.
13. There are definitely times I feel like we moved to another country. We are often the minority when we go out (not that that bothers us) it’s just a very different culture than what we were used to in Oklahoma City. We welcome the adventure and can’t wait to explore the island more!
14. People are the worst on craigslist here!!! They don’t take stuff down once it’s sold, it’s so frustrating!!
15. Just because a collapsed volcanic crater is extremely shallow with beautiful reef and tons of people around doesn’t mean we should feel 100% safe from any ocean threats! Hanauma bay was shut down this weekend because three 9-foot hammerheads were in the bay!!

16. This is going to be an amazing time for John and I to have adventures and to grow even closer. The idea that we really only have each other seems pretty basic… hellooo we’re married. But with our families and close friends so far away it’s really pushing us to rely on each other more.

ALOHA

After a few days of making a mad dash after work to Macys or Walmart or Sam’s we officially have a stocked kitchen. After an exciting weekend of exploring the island but foot or mass transit our car arrived today! Such a relief, I actually walked to work today because we forgot to get enough money out of the ATM for both of us to ride to and from work. It’s $2.50 each way each time and they don’t give change. So I just woke up extra early and walked the 2.2 miles to work. It was really a pleasant walk and I took my time and still got there in 40 minutes. 

On Saturday we woke up and walked up punchbowl, it’s the closest “mountain” to our apartment, probably 3/4 a mile away. At the top we expected to find the National cemetery of the Pacific (which we did) what we had not realized was that we’d also be getting such an amazing vantage point of Honolulu. There weren’t many people up there and the walk was really peaceful. There was a somberness to the whole place. There were thousands of graves and tributes to soldiers who’ve died, mostly during WWII. After that we hiked back down and got our things ready to go to Hanauma Bay. It’s a volcanic crater that the wall along the ocean collapsed and it’s now a really shallow bay. We got to swim with these amazing fish and even sea turtles. We’ll definitely be back there many times. John really enjoyed his first time snorkeling!

We had already decided that Sunday we’d go to church just down the street to see how we liked it. So we read on the sign the the english service started at 9am. When we walked up to the doors they handed John a church bulletin and then we both looked down and realized there wasn’t a word on the page we could read… It was all in Korean. They saw the confused look on both our faces, laughed and ushered us towards another small chapel. When we got inside we instantly felt as though we didn’t fit in. Not only were we the only Caucasians (we didn’t mind that part) we were the only people in the room over the age of 15!! They sent us to (what we assume was the only english service at the time) the middle school/ high school worship service. We couldn’t help but chuckle when they began with “We know you have all had long weeks and we know how difficult middle and high school can be, but let’s just put that aside….” Best part was that they gave us a goody bag of candy to thank of us for visiting their service. All that to say that it was a very welcoming church and right up our alley, If only we can find the young adults english class!

So as we start this new week, my second- John’s third week of work we look forward to what’s in store for us! Here’s my setup at the office…

And here’s the view out the windows at my desk.

Life in Transit

Well we've failed on blogging everyday but it's been hard to keep updating the blog while we're on the road with no wireless.

We had an amazing time exploring LA with Jeremiah and the next night sleeping in the middle of the Redwood National Forest wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it might be.

As we traveled into Oregon we both dreamed of ending the trip there and just making Portland our home. But, the trip wasn't over and the adventure had hardly begun.

Everything went as planned until we attempted to drop the car off at the port in Seattle. As we pulled up to the gates and the shipping company and read that they were closed we began to freak out. We had 3 hours until our flight and a car that needed to get on the other side of a 12' fence… Luckily John had some college friends who live in Seattle and who were willing to help us out. So onto the Airport we went.

 I called the shipping company first thing Monday morning and they apologized for not catching the mistake sooner, (we had arranged to drop the vehicle off on that day a month in advance and even had it verified the day before.) So fast forward through our first week here of sightseeing and beginning to get our bearings (and me being really sick! Throwing up and super swollen tonsils..) But we are here!

We spent the weekend camping at Bellows AFB. (Reid Agan got our PACRIM group onto base so we could swim there when I was here back in 2007.)

(this picture is from our attempt at longboarding on Waikiki) [Dec. 2007]

This was our first chance to swim in the ocean. We just kept having those moments of realization- we live here now! I spent a good part of the first week sick and trying to get better while searching for an apartment and preparing for my interview. Thank the Lord, (literally) I got the job and am looking forward to starting work tomorrow! We also find out if we are approved for the apartment that we went to look at last week tomorrow. We'll be better at blogging especially once we get our own place and get wireless. Thank you again to all of our family and friends who supported our big move in every sense of the word. It's going to be tough to be so far from everyone we love but we are so thrilled to be finally getting the adventure we've been longing for!