part 3

after a day relaxing at home we went to waikiki for tuesday and wednesday. we stayed at the hale koa, a gorgeous hotel for the military right next to the hilton, on the beach.

its great, lots of green and gardens. a luau place and a big pool. we ate at a restaurant there a couple times. i had coconut syrup on waffles! the best thing ever. the point of staying in a hotel a couple hours from where we were was so we could go to the beach longer and it was easier to walk downtown than parking. traffic is terrible. i never thought i would get to practice hearing some Korean in hawaii but it turns out a lot of the people who live here and visit are asian. they have a couple japanese radio stations and at least one korean one =) oh and korean soap operas on cable. but everyone gets annoyed at me when i try to watch.

we saw a lot of street performers on instruments and those weird mime people who paint themselves and stand there. there was a gold guy, a silver guy, and a 'copper cowboy'.

this is for you Mae, i know how much you love cowboys =) there was also a guy painted in newspaper sitting on a bench covered in newspaper and reading a newspaper. they make funny noises too. like this giant panda person in a panda suit. it squeaked every time it moved!

part 2

by the way, i've been here about a little more than a week. its very nice to have family live here. we dont have to live out of a hotel and look completely like tourists (only a little) because they have an apartment and know their way around by now. the day after we arrived we drove around the east coast to ft bellows and beach cabins there. we stayed within view of the water. it was neat to hear the waves all night long. we swam, laid on the beach, rented a kayak and boogie boarded. the waves weren't huge on that side of the island but it was still fun.

the beach at bellows

view from the cabin

i'll post some pictures but you can go to tara's blog to see some of the same. we headed back to mililani on sunday. it took us a couple hours to drive around the coast, north, and we saw the huge waves that normally people surf. the waves have been 20+ feet high lately, so no one is in the water much there. we've had some good coconuts from stands by the road. yum, i love em fresh. there's also a dole plantation close to the apt, so we'll see that eventually.

I'm in Hawaii

woo hoo. its been awhile since i blogged. before i could say it was because i had nothing to say that you'd want to read (Korean grammar anyone?) but i should say something about hawaii =)

i got to leave dallas 2 days early, so i missed the last two days of class. that was great. it turns out i didnt miss much in the way of tests and projects. we got them turned in on time. and i was plenty sick of classes by that time. i spent a few hours wednesday packing up my room because i procrastinated. the dorm makes us move completely out of the rooms over christmas break even if we are coming back in january. bleh.

so my friends dropped me off at the airport early in the morning on thursday. that was cool of them, i miss them already. especially watching home movies without them. my flight was delayed an hour because of ice on the east coast. if it was delayed any more i might not have made my connecting flight. my weird (but abnormally cheap) flight took me from dallas to atlanta to LA to honolulu. it was good though, i met Tara and Dave in atlanta and we were able to sit next to each other on the looong flight to hawaii. hey i just realized that i was really near both Ashley and Jeremy. aww, sorry guys.

we had so much food on the flights from atlanta on. i thought they would never stop feeding us snacks and drinks. its been a long time since ive had that kind of service on a flight, way to go Delta! the stinky part was the choice of movies. there was sky high, not once, but twice! they decided to show it on both legs of the trip. luckily our entire row of 3 seats had non-functioning headset hookups, just static. it was fun, though, flying with family instead of by myself.

when we got to honolulu it was late late my time (four hour time difference). but my parents and leah were waiting for us with pretty flower leis made from real flowers. my first impression of hawaii was that it smells really good.