Aloha!

Well, we arrived unscathed! It was a pretty long flight, but we passed the time watching stuff on Will's Ipod and everything went off without a hitch (aside from some serious turbulence about an hour away from Hawaii which had us scrambling for Will's motion sickness pills). We landed, got leied, had some sushi, settled into Caitlin's sister Maeve's condo, had some awesome fish for dinner (mine was pink snapper, have you ever heard of such a thing?) then crashed. I was proud, we were awake for 24 hours all told. We managed to sleep until 6:30 AM this morning too, so we're all but acclimated to the time change already (we're 6 hours behind the east coast). Today we spent driving a huge loop around the island, stopping at fruit stands, shrimp farms, overlooks, beaches etc. Oahu has a very dry scrubby side, and then a very lush and jungle-y side. They definitely have the market cornered on foliage variety. Everything I've ever seen growing on any island in the Caribbean is here, plus some new things, and it's amazing how HUGE the mimosa trees get here. I think everything has a chance to get bigger since there are no hurricanes and not even that many big storms out here. It's also not humid at all. It is incredibly strange though to see a city with highrises and a 6 lane freeway and then also be seeing volcanic mountains and jungles and turquoise water. Usually you find the latter in more under-developed areas. That's America for you, I guess. We'll develop anywhere that it's profitable to do so.

We're making dinner for Caitlin and Maeve tonight as a sort of a thank you. We picked up local shark steaks at the commissary (where Maeve took us shopping since otherwise groceries tend to be outrageous) for amazingly cheap and we're also having corn that we picked up at a roadside stand that was alarming because it had brown silk instead of the blonde we're used to. For dessert I think we'll try to attack the pommelo we got that is larger than a bowling ball.

-Sara