Three weeks and two days in Hawaii

Amy and I spent a good deal of time in Hawaii before coming out to New Zealand.  I wish I had blogged or written about it while I was there, but it’s better late than never.

It was great to see my parents again – I miss them a lot when I’m away.  The last time I saw them was Christmas, so it had been a good 8-9 months without seeing them.  Courtney had seen them when they were in Montreal, but I didn’t have the vacation time so I didn’t get to go.  I didn’t do the math, but I believe that the 8-9 months was the longest period of time I’ve ever been away from my parents.  My dad had finished remodelling their kitchen right before we arrived and let me tell you it looks GREAT.  It took them 6 or 8 weeks to do it completely because in Hawaii nothing is done the same twice.  Apparently they had a lot of issues with things not being done to code and what not that made it a huge challenge to complete.  The kitchen needed remodelling too – it was falling apart and some of the cabinets were not even usable before.  It’s a small kitchen (everything in Hawaii is small), so having parts of the space being unusable wasn’t practical.  When I got there my dad enlisted my help in replacing the screen door.  The condo association had passed something a year or so ago saying that all the screen doors had to be replaced with security doors (all metal screen doors).  Since we don’t have a truck and renting one on less than a week or so notice is impossible the plan was to drive to Hawaii Hardware (~1 mile away), buy a door, and walk home with it.  Yuck.  Well we ended up driving home with the door about ¾ of the way out of the car.  Of course I was forced to sit in back with the door holding on for dear life.  The install of the door took us about 3-4 hours.  We ran into a few snags along the way with the trim and removing the old door, but in the end we got it done and it looks pretty darn good.

My dad, Amy and I visited the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC) to learn about the various peoples of Polynesia.  The PCC has seven different “islands” that you get to visit to learn about a specific culture – Hawaii, Samoa, Aotearoa, Fiji, ETC ETC.  The one I really wanted to see was Aotearoa, as that’s the Maori word for what we call “New Zealand”.  According to the pamphlet we got, the PCC is considered one of the best cultural theme parks in the world.  We learned a lot about the various cultures from the islands, and contributed towards the employees getting an education.  The way the PCC works is they employ students from the neighboring university (they’re both owned / managed by the same church) and their work goes towards their tuition.  It also allows them to share their culture with people who don’t know much about it – which is worth something on its own.

We did a few hikes with the family during the time in Hawaii, which is always one of my favourite things about visiting.  The last hike we did was hiking above two valleys.  According to the book we were using as a guide (horrible guide!), the hike was 5 miles round trip.  We’re pretty sure it was more like 8 or 9.  When we started getting high up in the mountains (2 hours in) it started pouring.  It was cold, hard rain, and it was EVERYWHERE.  We ended up putting our cell phones in a beef-jerky bag so they wouldn’t get wet, which was a good idea because when we made it back to the bottom there wasn’t a single spot of dryness on any of us.

We only went to the beach three times, and one of those was just a walk around the neighbourhood.  The second time we were at the beach was the day before we left.  Apparently 9 days after a full-moon the jellyfish hit the shores of Hawaii.  Well, the day we were there was day 7 post-full-moon, and there were 50 or so jellyfish on the beach – mostly dead.  There weren’t very big – no bigger than an inch or two around, but the stingers were pretty long (2-3 feet).

Courtney arrived a few days before we left.  She was in Hawaii for two reasons – to say goodbye to Amy and me, and to search for a spot for her wedding.  She had a lot of trouble getting out to Hawaii, as her plane in Denver was delayed and then she missed the connecting flight in Los Angeles.  In the end she made it though, which was good.

The other thing we did worthy of mentioning was go to the Bodies Exhibit.  The Bodies Exhibit is where they have a bunch of human bodies that have been dried out and then filled with silicon or something so they look alive, so you can see how all the bones and muscles and such work together.  It created a huge stir because the bodies are all from the Chinese penal system and people were concerned about some of them being torture victims or executed prisoners.  It was very cool to see, and I would recommend it to others when it reaches a city near you (if it does).

We left Hawaii yesterday, and I had to say good-bye to my parents and sister once again.  I love and miss them all a lot, and wish that we had more time together.  I also miss all of my friends from Madison.  Amy and I found a nice bar in Kailua that you all would have loved.