Pu'u O Mahuka Heiau

Aloha!

Last week a friend and I went to visit Pu'u O Mahuka heiau.

While we walked around the little trails we had a beautiful view of Waimea Beach and I saw some humpbacks breaching!  I zoomed my camera to maximum capacity.

And then I took her to the beach that starts with an L... I can never remember it's name!  But sea turtles frequently come to this beach and bask in the sun.  We saw a few coming out of the water to find their spots.

AND then I went to a friend's wedding and it was really nice.

It's a great time to be in Hawaii!

Oops! Once upon a time there was a surfing competition...

I meant to blog this back in November, but I never did!  I was going through my files and found this.

Anyways, back in November Angela and I went to the the first part of the Vans Triple Crown Surfing Competition!

I don't know names of surfers, but I do know Kelly Slater.  Imagine my surprise when the announcer announced his name.  Yep, I watched him surf.  I may have texted my brother-in-law to make him jealous.  Just maybe.

We had a great time and here's some of my favorite photos (in no order):

And then we went to town to do some shopping and we ended up at another beach.

A quick note...

Last night we were having a wee bit of a jam at our apartment and one of the guys pulls out his phone to look up ukulele cords and the app is voice activated.  The conversation went as follows:

Guy 1 "uk'lele (the local way of saying ukulele) cords" nothing happens
Guy 2 "It's haole bra, you have to say ukUleleeee"
Guy 1 "ukUleleeee cords.... It came up!"
and we all had a good laugh.

Awesome I tell you.

I've been on cloud nine today - I got an 89% on my stats test!  Normally math comes easy to me but I've been struggling in stats.  I will feel like I'm understanding but I don't do well on the homework.  I'm finally starting to feel like it's clicking.

Tonight Angie and I went to the Ha Breath of Life night show at the PCC.  If you're ever visiting the PCC catch the night show - it's awesome.  Especially at the end with the fire dancers.

And.... I read this cool article about how to become like Sherlock Holmes.  I want to be like Sherlock Holmes.

I hope everyone is having a great night and may I add that I'm jealous to all those that went to the Breaking Dawn Midnight showing.  I'll see it.... eventually! :-)

Time for a recap

Time is going by so fast and I'm just too busy to blog, so I thought I'll do recap posts here and there when I have time.  School is going well and we just finished up our midterms.  I can't believe I've been here for 2 months already... so fast.

Laura and Steve came for a week to camp on the North Shore.  I was able to spend some time with them.  It was a blast seeing them.  I camped with them for one of the nights, so now I can say I camped on the North Shore. :-)

We did the Makapu'u Point Hike where we overlooked a beautiful area, the lighthouse and walked amongst some WWII pillboxes that are left over and remnants of some not so left over.

We also did the Haunted Lagoon at the Polynesian Culture Center.

Next, I have already had my first tsunami warning & evacuation.

Angela and I are both transfer students and we're home alone working. Our roomie (who has been here for a couple semesters already) sent us a text that a tsunami warning has been issued. We live right across from Hukilau Beach so we know we're in the danger zone, but at the same time the alert had said the tsunami was expected in 3 hours. So we're like "when do we evacuate?" We text our roomie and she basically tells us NOW.

A few weeks prior to this we had a 72 hour preparedness lesson, do you think I created a 72 hour kit? Nope, of course I put that off. So I grab things that I think I'll need and as we're packing the sirens go off. That made everything a little more urgent for me.

We then rode our bikes inland to high ground which is a hill behind the temple. While we were there we saw several families with tents and tarps and we don't even have a blanket. We learned that neither one of us are very prepared.  On another note one of our neighbors told us that Chevron was packed and now I completely understand why my sister doesn't let her car go below 1/2 a tank.

Luckily it was a nice night and not raining, so we watched Captain America on Angela's laptop. The movie got over at 1:30 and we noticed a lot of people were leaving. I heard a guy say that it's ok to go back now, which was good cause we really wanted to go home. We then received official word that the all clear wasn't given, but it was safe to return to our homes but to stay off the beaches.

I have since gone to Walmart and purchased a few items and have started my 72 hour kit.

Next up is Halloween.  How many people dressed up this year?  I almost didn't.  Like I said earlier that time is flying by, I didn't go get a costume.  So I grabbed things I had and created a gypsy costume.  I know, I know.  It's a culture and not a costume.  And then I went with Angela to trick-or-treat with her classmate's kiddos.  We were more like extra an extra set of eyes.

Alyssa and Abby on the other hand, may have done some trick-or-treating.  Hey, you're never too old to go trick-or-treating as long as you're in costume.  Well, that's my philosophy at least.  One of the houses had BBQ hotdogs and made chili for the adults that were taking kids out.  You bet we took a hot dog.

On Saturday we went down to Kapolei to do the Color Run!  We had so much fun!!!

Here we are at the beginning - all nice and clean.

A quick shot after the 3rd K marker.

We're coming along the finish line...

Now, we're in the midst of the after party, which consisted of dancing and every 15 mins throwing color

The final throw... basically a "use all the color there is because there won't be another throw" throw

And by the time it's over we're not so clean anymore

So that's a quick recap and I've left a lot out but these are basically the biggest things.  I'll try and blog again..... eventually.

The Sunburn Girl

There have been some developments since my last post. You know, how I mentioned I got fried? Well that was a wee bit of an understatement. It's probably best to say I got burnt to a crisp. My back and upper arms had a second degree sunburn.

Right after returning home from the day I did cold compresses for at least 30 minutes, cold shower and my roommate helped me by putting aloe vera on my back throughout the weekend. I was in constant pain and we couldn't get the burn to stop. Sunday night my roomie noticed a few blisters forming on the back of my upper arm and I knew I was in trouble if I was getting blisters, but honestly I didn't expect to go through what I did.

To briefly explain this a couple of the blisters were the size of a .50 cent piece and at least 1/2 an inch thick. I heard the nurse tell the doctor that these were the biggest sun blisters she's ever seen. I was taking ibuprofen for the pain and the doctor gave me some tylenol to take, but neither of these pills ever took the pain away. It just made it bearable to get through the day.  Every step I would take would just cause pain to go throughout my body.  You don't realize how connected the body is until something like this happens, everything you do affects your back.

My roomie was great in changing my bandages and putting aloe on me. Thursday night as she was changing the bandages we were talking about the blessing I had and how she was hoping for a miraculous recovery the next day. I told her "I had hoped for one too." But I also saw the Lord helping me through this week. There was no way I could have made it through without His help. And there were days I couldn't walk anymore and then all of a sudden a breeze would start up and literally push me on. I know some will say that that's a coincidence because I live next to a beach and there's usually breezes. But not to me. The time I needed it the most it appeared, that's help.

There was a lot of prayers for strength each day and just be able to make it to the end of the day. All I could do was take it a day at a time. Did I mention that I also started work through this? So it's not like I could go home after classes and rest for the remainder of the day. (Oh yeah, I may have gone a whole week without a bra... it hurt ok, I don't judge you! I got creative with an elastic belt, bra paddings, shawls, and shrugs to disguise the fact that there was no bra.)

Funny story - On Thursday I accidently popped several blisters so I went to the health center to see if they could just wrap them real quick. It was a different nurse than I had the first time and she was like, "Oh, you're the sunburn girl." I don't know how I feel about having that title. :-)

Honestly things weren't getting worse but they just seemed to be staying the same.  I didn't see an end in sight.  I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror Friday right before I headed home and I saw something pitiful. My eyes were dead, I looked haggard and exhausted. There was a big difference between the 1st week of school and the 2nd week. LOL

My roomie removed my bandages Friday after school and my blisters were all gone!   Saturday morning came and I felt like myself again.  I was happy and not in pain. I didn't cry when I took my cold showers (my sunburn was still hot all week so we kept doing the cold showers, cold compresses, and of course the aloe vera).  It was great!  I wanted to go outside again - the week before I didn't want to do anything, I tried to keep a smile on my face but I was miserable. I made myself stay in doors for the weekend with a t-shirt that I cut up the middle and wore it so nothing was on my back.

My back is still really red (but no longer hot) and itches like crazy but it's doing just fine and I'm making sure it's covered at all times I'm out in the sun - even if I have to wear a light jacket because my shirt doesn't cover up every inch that was burned.

So now onto the good stuff. I really like my job.  I'm working on campus at Print Services - it's a lot of fun and the people are really cool.

I have a bike now so I'm one of the cool kids getting around town and campus on my cruiser. Practically everyone has a bike here, it's pretty fun.

I went to the temple on Thursday and decided to make Thursday evenings my temple nights because I'm not even a 2 minute bike ride away from the temple, so I can go weekly.

Last night I caught the most beautiful sunset as I left the library.  Of course the pictures don't do it justice but the pictures are still pretty.

Last night we went to Kahuku Grill and watched a little concert.  They both were very good and it was a lot of fun.  I forgot my camera (because I was getting the sunset pictures off of it when our lift arrived and I quickly went out leaving my camera behind) so here's a reenactment:

I was too lazy to get my stylus and drawing tablet out, so you get a lovely drawing with the finger (haha!! a different finger) and the touch mouse.  The red x's are where me and my friends sat.

I saw turtles!!!

So... I may be fried.  Possibly, but I'm not confirming it.

We went to Shark's Cove on the North Shore today to do some snorkeling.  I'm sure I've mentioned on here before how I have a love / hate relationship with the ocean.  Well anyways, if I haven't I'm filling you in now - the ocean kind of scares me.  (Ok, no 'kind of' it just does).  But I have gone snorkeling before so I thought nothing of it.

Well..... I may have hyperventilated and couldn't get myself to breathe normally.  It may have taken all of my strength to get myself to some rocks to sit on while I got myself under control.  Again, I'm not confirming anything :-) A very nice lady who lived across the street was getting out and loaned me her body board / boogie board so I could continue snorkeling since she has hyperventilated out there before too.  So nice!

Once I was on the board I was able to have my face in the water without hyperventilating once! Oh... I may have just confirmed the above situation - Oh well.

We then stopped off at Waimea Beach for Angela and Whitney to jump off the rock.  They asked if I wanted to do it (combine my fear of heights and the ocean in one?)  I told them, "I just hyperventilated snorkeling, there's no way I can do this."  So I'm thinking, I'm here for a few years so I might end up being a better swimmer, right?  Well if that happens I might be able to the jump.... we'll see.

Before heading home we stopped off at a beach where turtles come to kick it and bask in the sunlight.

Aren't they cute?!