Back to the Real World

Today was my first real day back in the swing of things. Yesterday John's mom was still here and she helped out a lot.

I had a fun morning helping make pumpkin pies in kindergarten. They're having a Thanksgiving feast tomorrow, so they made little individual pies. They even made the crust from scratch! I was at the pie filling table. There was another mom helping at my table, and she did the dry ingredients, while I did the eggs, milk and pumpkin. Then we had the kids each take a turn stirring with a spoon, then they each had a turn stirring with a whisk. By the time they each had a turn like that, it was just right.

Note to anyone cooking with kids: If you have them keep the spoon/whisk touching the bottom of the bowl, it greatly diminishes the slopping out of the bowl.

There was a lot of licking of the batter going on, so I really hope no one gets salmonella poisoning.

Trip Wrap-up/Random Notes

We're at the airport now, waiting to go home. Thanks to John's Red Carpet Club membership, we're luxuriating in the Club while we wait. They have snacks and drinks in here. While we've had a great visit here, it's time to go home. We miss the kids, they miss us, Bobby misses us, PapaJohn misses Bobby, and it's time for everyone to go home.

Anyway, I had some random things here and there that I forgot to put in a post or didn't have a place to fit into a post.

First off, at the Marriott resort at Ko Olina, they have what is probably the coolest plasticware we've ever seen. Everything, cups, straws, forks, spoons, knives, plates, is not only recyclable, but biodegradable! The "plastic" cups are made of cornstarch, and we were told that they hold up very well to cold things, but if you put something hot in them, they'll just disintegrate. They look just like regular clear plastic cups and straws.

We had noticed a lot of people walking around the whole island with badges on, and I assumed they were just part of the same touring company. But, as it turns out, there was a Jehovah's Witnesses convention in town this week! Once we found out what it was, we noticed them everywhere. We saw a bunch at the PCC, but that was before we found out what group they were with.

Oahu has awesome public transportation. The buses run very frequently into Honolulu and you can get all around the island by bus. If we had wanted to, we could have foregone the rental car, but we're still glad we had it. Next time we're in town, we'll probably wait longer to get a car and not have one at all in Waikiki. There's just no need and it's a little difficult to get around Waikiki by car. Too many small one-way streets with lots of people walking around.

All the signs around here are in English and Japanese. It's a change from California, where all the signs are in English and Spanish. At least in CA, you can learn some new words, but if you can't read Japanese characters, you're just out of luck here. I'd say that more than half of the tourists around Waikiki, and more than half of the people working here are Japanese or part Japanese. Every store and restaurant has at least one Japanese-speaking employee. Some stores even have signs saying they accept Yen!

If you were lucky enough to get a post card, please take a look at the post card stamps that are available. It's a weird choice for post cards from Hawaii (if you weren't on the post card list, don't be hurt, we sent out 25 just to family, and you can probably go to the postal service's website and see what the post card stamps are.)

As far as rain goes, we saw very little, and what rain we did see was sprinkles. We heard about giant storms on the other side of the island, but we didn't see any big rain. Probably the longest rain we saw was when we were in Honolulu, and even that was just sprinkling. This is probably due to our staying on the leeward side of the island, where it's pretty dry. Kind of looked like home in the summer.

Hawaii is just as beautiful and friendly as everyone says it is. The Hawaiians really have this hospitality thing down. Even the busiest people working at the busiest counters in the busiest places aren't grumpy or surly. People are just friendly and all the staff at all the hotels or stores we went into were just as friendly as the last place. Even in Costco!

Speaking of people working in stores, even the uniforms are Hawaiian. At Target, they all had red Hawaiian shirts with little Target symbols amongst the flowers to wear with their khaki pants. It was the same in all the other chain stores we were in (Costco, Safeway, Outback Steakhouse, etc.) they all had Hawaiian shirts with some sort of detail relating to the store/restaurant. The Outback Steakhouse shirts were funny, since it's supposed to be an Australian-themed restaurant.

On Friday, when we were trying to find John a new pair of swim trunks because he dropped his somewhere (they never did show up in the lost and found and we're not sure what someone would want with John's old beat up trunks, and no, Daddy, he didn't drop them while he was wearing them), they had about three or four Target employees just inside the entrance playing Hawaiian music on steel guitar and ukuleles. They were playing and singing, "Come Sail Away" by Styx. They stopped right before they got to the spaceship part. John though that was because that part isn't very Hawaiian. He predicted they'd stop before that. He was right. He's very smart.

John read a book. He can't remember the last time he read a book for fun. He's almost finished with Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, the DaVinci Code guy. We watched the move on pay-per-view last night. The book is better. I finished The Lost Symbol, by the same author, which I liked. On our trip home I'm reading a book by a neuroscientist who had a stroke, and actually knew what was happening to her and after a long recovery wrote a book about it from a scientist/patient perspective. It's really interesting. I also have Carter Beats the Devil, recommended by Becah. It fits into the Victorian/Rennaissance Science/Magic phase I'm into now (turns out, Becah is also in a Victorian Magic reading phase so I recommended she read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.) I'll probably finish the stroke book before we get home.

Anyhoo, it was a fabulous trip, we had a great time, we definitely want to come back and bring the kids and hope it won't be too long before we get to do that. And a special thank you to John for working so hard to make this trip possible. Mahalo John!

Right Back Where We Started

Well, we're back in Waikiki. This time, however, we're right on the beach. We have a fabulous room with a fabulous view. Here's a picture I took from our balcony last night when we got in:

And this is what it looks like in the morning.

Today was not a beach day, though, today was our Hawaiian History Day. First, we returned out rental car (we tried to do it last night, but the place was closed when we got there, so we had to do it this morning and pay to park the car, and parking in Waikiki is NOT cheap!)

We got some information and some breakfast, and took the bus into downtown Honolulu to the 'Iolani Palace. The 'Iolani Palace is the last residence of the Hawaiian royal family. We learned a lot about the Hawaiian monarchy, and how Hawaii ended up as a part of the U.S.

This is the royal coat of arms on the front gate.

Here's John in front of the palace.

After our self-guided audio tour, we went across the street to the King Kamehameha statue in front of the State Supreme Courthouse. That's us. It was raining, I was glad I had my hat.

We had planned on visiting the Maritime Museum, but when we got there, it was closed. So we took a picture of the Aloha Tower, which was built to greet visitors arriving on cruise ships in Honolulu Harbor. This is how it greets visitors arriving from the closed Maritime Museum.

We took the bus back to Waikiki and walked around and bought junk for the kids that they do not need and then headed back to our room to enjoy the sunset. We got some really great pictures of us on the balcony during the sunset. Here's one of them. You should have seen my "tripod"--two books, on top of an upturned trash can, on top of a patio side table, on top of a lounge chair. Hey, it worked.

Well, that's pretty much the end of our trip to Hawaii. Tomorrow we're leaving in the morning for the airport and we'll get home sometime in the middle of the night and we'll get to see the kids in the morning on Monday.

Mahalo to you for reading my blog, I hope you enjoyed it, we sure enjoyed our time here.

Aloha to you all!!!

Ko Olina Cat Trip

Well, the first thing I have to say for this post, is that Dramamine is my new best friend. I heartily apologize to anyone who may have filled that position previously, but you've been replaced.

See, the thing is, that I'm rather prone to motion sickness (see the post on surfing) and we had this boat trip scheduled, and I did not want to spend the whole trip being sick. So we bought a little vial of Dramamine pills and I took one before we left.

And I was not sick the entire trip. It was awesome.

Anyway, before all that, we got up Friday morning, and as it was John's birthday, I sent him out to snorkel in the lagoon while I packed up our stuff. Sadly, it was check out day. BUT, the Marriott Ko Olina Beach

Club has a "linger longer" policy, where your key card still works for everything but your room for the whole day after you check out. You can get in the parking garage, use the pools, the locker rooms, and even charge things to your account! It's just like getting to stay an extra day. We took advantage of this. We put the big suitcases in the car and put our computers in the hotel safe deposit box and they stored the other bags for us. We stored some clothes in the lockers (wicked nice locker room, with private showers, sauna and steam room) so we could change after we were done swimming. Then we hopped on the shuttle to the marina and got on the boat.

This is the catamaran boat.

This is what it looks like from the front. Right below those windows is a little platform where you can sit, and you can sit down the sides along the rails, and inbetween the rails running in front of the platform, there is a net that you can sit on and get splashed on while the boat is moving.

First, we motored out to see dolphins, and dolphins we did see! Here are a some swimming next to the boat. The two on the right are a mommy and baby pair. Someone on the crew said that the babies swim with their moms for three years.

Here's a nice picture with a whole bunch. These are Hawaiian Spinner Dolphins, which are about half the size of Bottlenose Dolphins. They were rolling over and slapping their tails, and every once in a while one would jump up out of the water.

We were very fortunate that the whale migration season is just starting, and we got to see some Alaskan Humpback Whales! At first they were kind of far away and hard to see, but they drove the boat out a little closer, and one popped up right next to the boat! This is the tip of his dorsal fin, and this picture is not zoomed in. It really was that close to the boat! The crew said we were very lucky to see both dolphins and whales on the same trip. We didn't see any turtles.

This particular company has a guaranteed dolphin or whale sighting policy. If you don't see dolphins or whales on your trip, they give you a ticket to come back for free and try again. There was a couple on our trip who were on a "try again" trip and had saved their tickets for two years. Here's a view of the resort from the ocean. Ours is the one on the right. You can barely see the electrical plant on the left, it's the one with the tall smokestack. That's where we went for snorkeling. The plant uses sea water to cool the machines, and dumps the warm water into the ocean, which encourages algae growth, which attracts lots of fish. There's a reef right in front of the plant that's teeming with beautiful fish.

This is me snorkeling. They gave everyone brand new snorkels and they clean and re-use their masks and flippers. We forgot our own equipment, so we had to use theirs. They also have these vests that everyone has to wear, but you don't have to blow them up if you want to dive down. I blew mine up about half way. Just a little added security. I'm a bit timid in deep water. Please note that this time snorkeling, I'm wearing a rash guard shirt with SPF 50 in the fabric and shorts over my suit, plus I have three layers of SPF 30 sunscreen on. There was no sunburning happening this day! (that's John's knee in the corner, sporting his brand new swim trunks after he lost his somewhere)

Here are three Angelfish and a Convict Tang. Those Convict Tangs were all over the place. I'd say I've seen more of them than any other fish on this trip. The Tang is below the others and kind of under the rock a little.

Here's John with his deflated vest.

I took this picture of a guy fishing out in the water as we were heading back to the marina. Almost immediately after I put the camera down, a huge giant wave came in and knocked that guy right over. He was okay. But he was sure wet.

And, because it was John's birthday, he got a perfect ending to his perfect day and a nice way to end our stay at Ko Olina. A perfect sunset. We sat on the beach at the lagoon and watched the sun set, then we left and headed back to Waikiki.

Hau`oli la hanau to John!

Today was John's birthday. It's past midnight here, so this will probably post as the next day. Anyway, it's very late and I'm tired, so I'm not going to write much. We're back in Waikiki, after a fantastic week at the Marriott Ko Olina Beach Club.

For John's birthday, we went on the Ko Olina Cat Trip, for some dolphin and whale watching and snorkeling. We had a great time. Here's a picture of me on the boat with some dolphins. I'll post more tomorrow and some great pictures.

Surfin' U.S.A.

Lots of fun and excitement on Oahu's famed North Shore! John and I had surfing lessons today! We went surfing in Puaena Point, which is located in Haleiwa. To get there, we had to drive past the Dole Pineapple plantation. And we saw fields of pineapple plants! As far as the eye could see. It was like corn is in Iowa, except it was hilly. But vast fields full of pineapple plants. A pineapple plant basically looks like a big green spiny sea urchin with a pineapple growing out of the top of it.

The corner of the cove we were in was pretty quiet with some gentle waves. Just across the cove from where we were surfing, there was a big surfing competition going on with bigger waves, though they weren't as big as the surfers would have liked. Apparently, when they have surfing competitions, they have a 10 day window to wait for good waves, but if you get to the end of the waiting period, you have to start whether the waves are there or not. Here's a picture of us paddling out for the first time. That's John in the red swim shorts, and I'm in black shorts and our instructor is in the white shirt. That black thing is a log. This is the only picture we have because we were out surfing, not taking pictures. Our instructor's girlfriend stuck around long enough to take this picture for us.

When we first met up with our instructor, J.D., he pulled into the parking lot with three surfboards tied onto and old beat up four door Nissan with a dog in the back seat and a blonde surfer girl in the front. He had shaggy blonde hair and wasn't wearing any shoes. Just about every stereotype of a "surfer dude" you could think of. J.D. is from San Diego, and he came to Hawaii to go to school at the University of Hawaii, and then just stayed. As we were unloading the surfboards, we found out he had forgotten the rash guard shirts, and with my serious sunburn (it's still bad and painful) I asked if we could please get them, so we waited while his girlfriend went back to get them. While we were waiting, we hauled the surfboards down to the beach and he gave us the basics on getting on, getting out, and getting up. We watched other surfers getting up and saw a whole bunch of sea turtle heads popping up out of the water. That's right, we were surfing with the sea turtles today! Neither of us saw a turtle after we got out in the water, but then we were pretty busy and I wasn't spending much time looking.

We paddled out and took turns with J.D. helping us catch the waves, then we would paddle around in a wide circle to avoid the other surfers and went back out again. John and I both got up a number of times, and I managed to run aground on some rocks at one point, and managed to get off without getting killed (it's hard when you don't really know how to steer the thing).

Unfortunately, I also got seasick after a while. It got to a point that I was scared I would start throwing up, so I had one more run and then "limped" back to the beach and just sat there trying not to be too disappointed. I did see a little transparent crab. That was pretty cool. he stuck around long enough to let me take his picture.

John and J.D. stayed out a while longer, and then the waves died down and there just wasn't anything to surf on so they came in. Here we are with J.D. afterwards.

We had fun, but surfing is harder than it looks. There is a lot of paddling, a lot of sitting and waiting, but it's really exciting when you get up on the board and the wave is pushing you, and it's almost like flying. And then you fall off. Or, if you're lucky, you can sit back down, which I managed to do a time or two.

After we hauled the boards back up to the parking lot, John and I rinsed off in the beach showers and changed clothes and headed back over the top of the island to go back to the Polynesian Cultural Center. We didn't get to see everything we wanted to, so we had to go back!

We saw the presentations in the villages we had missed last time, which were the Fiji, Tahiti and Hawaii villages. We really enjoyed all of them. In Fiji, I was pulled up to dance with the performers, which was so much fun. Here's a picture of me with some of the performers after the presentation.

Here's John with another of the performers.

In Hawaii, we took ukulele lessons and hula lessons and attended the cultural presentation, which was put on by the same guy who was the M.C. at the luau we attended. His daughter was the only native Hawaiian on the gold-medal-winning US Women's soccer team in the 2008 Olympics. He talked about her and he's very proud of her (who wouldn't be?) Anyway, he's a very talented musician. Cousin Benny. He's been at the PCC for something like 30 years. Here's John in the ukulele lesson.

And here he is in his hula lesson! The lady in the dress is the instructor, and the guy in the blue shirt is the tour guide/translator for the Japanese tour group there. There are a LOT of Japanese tour groups in Hawaii. The Japanese people sure do like to travel.

After this we went to Tahiti, and I took a Tahitian dance lesson. Tahitian dancing is the fast hip-shaking dancing--not hula dancing, which is slower and more story driven. John took a video, but no still pictures (you know how cameras are--either one or the other but not both at the same time). We also attended the cultural presentation on Tahiti. After the end of that, we rushed over to get Maori tribal tattoos before they closed up their village. We caught the flag lowering ceremonies for both Tahiti and Aotearoa (Maori). It always throws me off when all the villagers have polynesian accents when they speak, but the Maori village is full of New Zealand accents! 'Cause, you know, they're from New Zealand.

We learned a little about the Christian missionaries who came to the islands, and then headed over to the IMAX theater to watch the show on Fiji's dying coral reefs. So sad. But a really interesting show.

Well, our time here is ending, and we'll be leaving the resort tomorrow afternoon. We can use the resort facilities all day on the day of check out. They have a locker room with showers and they'll store your luggage for you, so you can hang around and have fun even though you have to check out of your room. We still have lots of fun things left to do before we go home, so stay tuned!

Swimming With the Fishes

Unfortunately, I don't have ay pictures today.

Today we went to Hanauma Bay (it's pronounced HAN-ah-ma, Ha-NOW-ma, or Hana-Uma, depending on who you talk to, but the Hawaiian guy in the orientation video used the last pronunciation.) The original plan was to go to Hanauma Bay in the morning and then the Dole Plantation in the afternoon. Well, the plan changed and we hit some horrible traffic, and what should have been a little over an hour trip turned into a more than two hour drive in stop-and-go traffic. Since we got in late last night, we got up a little late this morning, then the traffic issue, and by the time we got there, the Dole Plantation wasn't happening. I was kind of bummed, because I just learned this week that pineapples do not grow on trees!

Hanauma Bay is a shallow water bay with a coral reef right next to the beach. It's very easy snorkeling and there are lots of really cool fish around. Lots. Of. Fish. It's really famous for it.

When we got there, we parked and paid the entrance fee and waited for our turn in the orientation video. They have a video reminding you to not step on the coral, not feed the fish, and not leave garbage everywhere. After the video, you can leave your name and zip code and they'll put you in a database and if you come back in the next year, you won't have to watch the video again. We didn't put our names in :(

Anyway, we got right to snorkeling. My last ocean snorkeling adventure was on our honeymoon, wherein I got seasick on the boat ride, then was scared to death in 90 feet of water, and spent most of the time sleeping on the boat. This time, however, I had been practicing at home in the pool to get the hang of how the snorkel works, how to clear water from the mask, and how to dive under the water and clear the snorkel upon surfacing. And even after all that, I still had a mini-panic-ish attack when I first got in the water. I had to just sit there in about a foot and a half of water and just breathe for a couple of minutes. We took it slowly and never did go in water deeper than about 7 feet.

We paddled around for a while, saw a bunch of fish and then sat on the beach and had some lunch. During this time I should have re-applied sunscreen, but I forgot. After lunch we went back in for another snorkel-around. It was really breezy today and I was actually shivering cold and had to get out. I sat on the beach reading for a while, and I noticed that I was looking pink, so I quickly put on some sunscreen. But it was too late.

I'm sunburned. I've been so good this whole trip and so careful. Every day, before I get dressed, I put on sunblock lotion, and then spray-on sunscreen over it for good measure, and then I take the sunscreen with me and reapply, just to be safe. Plus I have an SPF 50 hat and sunglasses. Today, I made two big mistakes: first, I only did the spray-on, which I think may have washed off (lotion stays on better) and second, I didn't reapply during lunch. So, my upper back and shoulders and backs of my arms and the backs of my legs are burnt. And it hurts. We'll see in the morning just how bad it is. Hopefully not too bad, because we have surfing lessons on Oahu's North Shore tomorrow! And you can bet I'll be fully lotioned up AND wearing a long-sleeve rash guard (those are those surfing shirts) AND my surf shorts. The only burned skin that is in danger will be my calves, and I'll make sure they're slathered.

I sat on the beach laying on my back and read a while John snorkeled around some more. It wasn't as crowded as I had expected, and we had a nice little spot on the beach and there weren't any people too close to us. Probably because there were rocks in the water right where we were, and no sand to stand in while you put on your flippers.

Here's a list of the fish we saw. We had an under water camera, but it's a regular film camera and right now the film is at Costco. When we get home, we'll show the pictures to anyone who comes to the house or who lives there (that's right guys, I'm talking to you!!!)

We saw:

Small Octopus (John saw the eyes poking out behind a rock, and a tentacle, but it never came out and I couldn't see it)

Sea Turtle--Honu in Hawaiian*

Snowflake Moray Eel*

Trumpetfish*

Needlefish

Multiple kinds of wrasses

Bullethead parrotfish

Spectacled parrotfish (one of my favorites)

Milletseed Butterflyfish

Ornate Butterflyfish

Bluespine Unicornfish

Whitespotted Surgeonfish

Orangespine Unicornfish (one of my favorites)

Convict Tang

Yellowfin Surgeonfish

Lagoon Triggerfish (humuhumunukunukuapua'a)

Picasso Triggerfish (variation of the humu)--three of these almost ran right over me

Yellowfin goatfish

Gold-ring Surgeonfish

Bluestripe butterflyfish

Raccoon butterflyfish*

Bonefish

Crabs*

Shrimp*

Goby-like fish

Flounder

Spotted pufferfish*

Purple boxfish*

Sea Cucumbers

Sea Urchins

Lots of coral

*seen by John when he was on his own

We're pretty sure there were others we're not thinking of, or didn't recognize (we forgot our laminated fish ID chart, so we had to remember when we got back) but this is a good list. You're welcome to look up any or all of these fish if you want to see what they look like. If I were a thorough blogger, I'd find and post pictures. But I'm sunburned and I just want to go to bed.

Good-night!