Surf Lesson

I (Patrick) took a two hour surf lesson on Saturday and had a blast. I have never surfed before, but have always wanted to try it. When we first got here I was a little intimidated by the size and force of the waves, but the waves have diminished some since we have been here. I finally felt comfortable to give it a try.

It was a group lesson with 4 other students and three instructors. We spent about 10-15 minutes on land learning about the steps it takes to stand up and then headed straight out to the surf.The instructors hold on to your 11 foot surf board and keep an eye out for a surfable wave, suddenly they push you away screaming, "PADDLE, PADDLE!" All of the sudden you are cruising along on a wave. Now getting to your feet is another story.

Surfing is pretty simple in concept, but is really difficult. It's really all about balance. You want to keep your weight on the back of the board so the nose doesn't go into the water. This is accomplished by arching your back like cobra in yoga. Then your bring your knees forward, while keeping your hands on the board, similar to a table top. Then you bring your best foot forward and pivot your back foot. Now you are standing with your arms out trying to keep your balance. All of those steps need happen within a few quick seconds to actually catch the wave.

Arch your back

Go to your knees

Now stand up... Doh!

Let's try that again...

Mail Call

We will attempt to answer some questions Sarah's mom has left in the comments of previous posts. These are ALL questions that Sarah's mom has posted.

Q: did you love the library? A: The library was small and quaint, but limited selection. However, we could request books from any other of the 51 libraries in the state.

Q: did you eat the pineapple dessert as seen in the pix? A: Yes

Q: are you reading as much as it seems you are? A: We aren't reading a ton considering we have a 3 year old and a one month old, but we both have been reading more than we have in the past.

Q: miss your house??? A: We havn't really talked about our house back in JAX.

Q: is there a childrens time at the library that Piper can attend? A: It is once a month, and we did not make it during our visit.

Q: do they celebrate thanksgiving there? A: Yes, however, we aren't sure how we will celebrate it. Most likely just a small dinner, possibly no turkey.

Q: you said you have windows open all day. are your floor damp and sticky? A: Maybe a little, but not unbearable.

Q: next to st. john is hawaii one your best places you all wanna go back to list? A: Yes, we have been having a great time and would love to come back.

Q: do you feel far away? A: Yes and no. The time difference has been difficult when trying to reach people on the east coast. However, Hawaii offers everyone one needs to feel comfortable ( i.e. costco).

University of Hawaii & Chinatown

We toured around the University of Hawaii and Chinatown. The University has a beautiful Japanese Tea Garden, which was gifted to UH from Japan to show examples of the Japanese culture. Each tree in the garden had been planted by various prince and princesses of Japan over the last 30 years.
The UH campus was decently pretty. The architecture was all mid-60s, but the landscaping was incredible and the location of the campus was right in the middle of the downtown Honolulu. From what we saw, they have a pretty diverse student body - we expected it to be all local's , but there was a really good mix of all sorts of students.  *Side note: We walked through at least 3 plumes of marijuana smoke during the hour we were on campus. Each time we looked around to see where the students were that were smoking, but we never saw anyone.*
The campus has pretty much every popular major and a medical school.



We forgot to bring our camera, so these are the only two iphone shots we took.

After UH we drove about 5 minutes through downtown to Chinatown. Of course, this was Sarah's idea and she had big plans to eat lunch there. It was basically exactly what you would have expected - dirty, crowded, homeless/half dead old people sleeping on the sidewalks, TONS of vendors selling cheap stuff from China, noodle bars on every corner and vegetable and fish markets on every inch of the sidewalk. We did a Yelp search for the best place to eat and ended up at a highly rated dim sum restaurant. We walked in and out twice thinking we had somehow walked in the back of the restaurant and were accidentally in the kitchen before one of the employees smiled and waved us in. There was actually no restaurant at all, you placed your order in the middle of their kitchen right next to the cooks and the boiling water and stuff. Sarah placed the order and basically nodded her head to everything the employee suggested and then walked out with a box full of stuff (everything for $8). We walked across the street to a park and ate lunch while Piper played on the playground. There were huge skyscraper condos all around us, people speaking Chinese and Japanese everywhere, gorgeous tropical plants, the smell of ginger and lemongrass cooking and we both agreed that if we had to guess we would have sworn we were back in Bangkok. 

We wandered all around Chinatown and found some nice sections with cool Asian architecture and sculptures. In the center of the area was a big koi pond/tea garden surrounded by GIANT tiger statues that I think are there to signify the entrance to Chinatown. Chinatown leads directly into downtown and it was pretty interesting how Chinatown was seedy and dirty and pretty authentic and you literally cross the street and you are in the clean, bustling, busy business district of downtown with gorgeous, fancy high rise condos and big business skyscrapers.

Basically, Chinatown was interesting and very authentic and I could have stayed there all day to try all the different noodle bars...but dirty and probably not the best place to take a newborn as everyone looked like they had a host of diseases and germs that they wanted to breathe on Margot. (I used up almost an entire travel size bottle of hand sanitizer that day.)

Dim sum. Can't tell you what everything was, but Sarah liked it all. Patrick and Piper took a few bites and then asked where the closest McDonald's was.

Hawaii Theater, VERY pretty.

Chinatown

Chinatown markets

Adorable baby turtles they were selling in the market. Piper and I wanted one!

Sunset

We've been driving past a gated community that each evening has a long line of cars parked outside with locals sneaking in an unlocked pedestrian gate. We tried it out tonight to see what was so great and we found a gorgeous, quiet beach with the water full of surfers and a nice little spot in the water to swim. It's actually been sorta hard to find beach spots to swim because the waves are so freaking huge and powerful that even when they come ashore they can still knock you down (just ask Patrick).



Margot is three weeks old today!





What do these people do to be able to live on the beach here? We want to know so we can do the same thing.



Rainbow Update

The offical count is at 13. Two of the 13 were at the same time in the form of a double rainbow.

Dole Plantation Tour

As you drive from Honolulu towards the North Shore you pass acres of pineapple fields that belong to the Dole Pineapple Plantation. It is a minor tourist trap, but nonetheless we felt like we needed to go and check it out. I (Sarah) LOVE pineapple and have been known to eat an entire pineapple in one sitting.
We are all waking up with the sunrise around 6:15am each day since our apartment is open air and has no curtains, so we were up and out of the house early.
I have to say, for a bit of a tourist trap, the Dole Plantation was super cute and very fun. They had a huge gift shop that sold every pineapple item known to man - pineapple flavored Hawaiian coffee, chocolate covered pineapples, pineapple flavored caramel popcorn, pineapple calendars, any type of hat/shirt/shorts/sweatshirt with a Dole pineapple logo on it, jewelry with silver and gold pineapple silhouettes, etc.
We bought tickets for their train tour and it was so cute. We boarded a tiny, toy-like train that played good, non-cheesy Hawaiian music and took us through the pineapple fields while giving us EVERY single piece of information you would ever want to know about pineapples. Their growth cycle, how Jim Dole moved to Hawaii in 1850 after graduating with a horticulture degree from Harvard with $1500 and bought 12 acres on the North Shore to grow pineapples, Hawaii has the absolute perfect growing conditions for pineapples and at one point the Dole plantation on the North Shore provided 75% of the worlds pineapples. They also grew a bunch of other cool fruits like rambutan, cacao, breadfruit, star fruit and lychee.
Very fun morning! Any pineapple questions, I guarantee we can answer them now!


We have a family rule to never pass by photo booths without taking a picture.

 

Fish pond with a freakish amount of koi fish. There were literally millions of koi in this pond and they looked like they were gonna sprout legs and get up and run after us if we didn't feed them.

Acres and acres of pineapple fields.

Piper looks scared here, but she really wasn't.

This was the neatest tree. Check out the multi-colored bark.

We got a Dole Whip, some "world famous" dessert at the plantation.

It was so good, but guess who didn't like it...

Yes, Piper.

Cost of Living, part 2

We went back to Foodland for groceries today. We had a chance to price a few additional items:

40 pack size 1 Huggies - $13.49
72 Pampers Soft wipes - $3.99
12 pack Dr. Pepper - $4.89
2L Coke - $1.99
JIF Peanut Butter 28oz - $4.69

Haven't been able to price organic products, as the selection is limited at Foodland.

Photos

We went to 'Ehukai Beach Park yesterday, which is where the Bonzai Pipeline breaks. We went about an hour before sunset and had a great time. We played in the sand and stretched our legs one last time before dinner. There were a bunch of people enjoying the beach and the pending sunset too. We think we found a good evening routine for the family; exploring a new beach, enjoying a beautiful sunset and having fun.

library

Obviously Honolulu is a big city and there are plenty of bookstores there, and on the south side of the island. But up here on the North Shore (a solid hour drive to Honolulu) we can not for the life of us find a freaking book store. I've asked around and everyone shrugs their shoulders and tells us they have no idea where a bookstore is. I even went searching, with no luck, through the resort near us for one of those "book swap" shelves that so many resorts in the Caribbean have. You know, the one where you leave the book you just finished and then pick up a new book that someone else left.

So I went on the Hawaii State Library system website and saw that for $10 you can get a temporary resident library card. We went to the Kahuku Public Library this morning, which works double time as the Kahuku High School Library (how cute!), and got our temporary card and checked out a bunch of books.

The library was absolutely adorable and there was a children's section (keiki section) and a new releases section that had books that were just released like a year or more ago. ha. At one point a school bell rang and a class full of 10th graders spilled into the library. I noticed that none of them were wearing shoes and as we were leaving I saw a sign that everyone has to take their shoes off before entering the library. The Gallaghers would have loved it there!

BTW, Patrick is reading Under the Banner of Heaven, the Jon Krakauer book about Mormonism and I got Ka'a'awa by O.A. Bushnell who wrote Molokai (such a good book!). Oh, and Piper got about 800 princess books.