Kangaroo Point!

Trivia answer: Unfortunately, Rachel, the answer is actually (a), but bonus points for the reasoning out! (Mmm, flecks of coal...) Manchester refers to the section of a department store (or Target, or whatever) that sells linen and towels and things. I learned this the hard way when I tried to buy a new shower curtain for the house and ended up giving the saleslady the look of blankness ;)

New trivia: What is the capital of Australia? (Bonus points if you can name which state/territory it's in!)

Sunday the book group had a barbecue. We were there for probably three hours and talked about the book for maybe 15 minutes, but it was all good fun. Meg and I walked there and then back to her house together, so she could lend me a blanket. March 1 marks the official beginning of fall here, and the weather has changed a bit. It's still hot during the day (well, as hot as it was this summer, which is to say, not so much - it was an extremely unusually cold and rainy summer, so they tell me) but really cool at night. So cool that with my windows closed and winter pajamas on, my sheet was not enough to keep me warm. So Meg lent me a heavy wool blanket and I have been sleeping like a champ!

The barbecue was at Kangaroo Point, which is one of the peninsulas formed naturally by the Brisbane River's winds and twists. I think it's almost directly across the river from the part of downtown where I work. There is also a fairly substantial cliff face (not exactly sure what from) in the park that is very popular with the rock climbers. I took a few photos down there, they're on the "Photos on Picasa" link to the right.

We've also had a couple of people interested in the room, and one came by last night. She's already friends with a few of Alex's friends (that's how she learned about the room - she just dropped in) so I have high hopes. After she finally left, I rounded up the kids and we took off for Ray's mom's restaurant where we had a full-on feast as a little going-away party for me. It was a good time. Here's a photo of us housemates (and Mark, who also happened by last night and got swept up in the group):

L-r: Mark, Mia, Alex, me, Ray, Dan.

Lost in Australia

Actual conversation overheard between Alex and his friend Martek:

M: "I finally saw the Lost episodes."

A: "Oh yeah? How'd you find it?"

(Since I only caught that bit, I didn't realize they were talking about the tv show Lost and thought Alex was just being sassy ;))

Alex had "The Lost Kids" over for dinner and the season premiere last night. He had warned me on Wednesday that he was "booking" the kitchen from 8:30-9:30, and the lounge room (living room) from 9:30-10:30. When I got home, he was cooking up a storm, with sous-chef Mia chopping madly to keep up. Upon approving my request to be admitted to the party for dinner, he promptly sent me out to the store in search of more vegetables to be added to the cold rolls (Korean - think Chinese vegetarian spring rolls, only not fried), kangaroo fried rice, and soup. I forget what the soup was called but it was some sort of Asian cuisine where you put a bunch of stuff in your bowl (rice, potato, lettuce, cabbage, carrot, etc) and then pour just enough soup over it to get everything soaked and mushy. Delicious.

Good company too - I got to meet the famous Kate, sister of Jen (you may recall I met Jen and Kate's parents who drove all over Australia (and Europe) in a van - see "Mealtime and Roadway Fun," Tues Dec 4, 2007 - on the righthand side under "blog archive"). At one point Kate and I were talking about her childhood, and she said that for about three years (she was 11-14, her sister was 13-16), they moved around from Adelaide up to Darwin. I must have looked completely unfazed by this, because she said, "Wow, you really did meet my parents! Most people don't believe me!" Also present were Matt, Alex, Mia, Dan, me, and Jordan and Jill. Instead of crowding the eight of us around the kitchen table, we took everything out back (next to the turkey pile) and had a little picnic on what Mr. Turkey had left us of the patio furniture that was out there!

I am currently reading Bill Bryson's Australia book, called "Down Under" (the US title is "In A Sunburned Country"). Anyone who hasn't read any of his stuff, I highly recommend it. Start with "A Walk in the Woods," his account of hiking part of the Appalachian Trail. Absolutely hilarious. Anyway, I started this book, lent to me by a coworker here, a while back and it was so upsettingly dry and unfunny that I actually abandoned it for a while. I must've either lowered my expectations or picked up again just as it got funny, but now it's back (almost) to the Bill Bryson I've come to appreciate. I think I pulled a muscle laughing the other night!

Today's high: 28 C (about 82 F). Tomorrow's high: 36 C (about 97 F)! (For more temperature conversion fun, see the link on the righthand side!)

To do this weekend:

1. Go to pool.

2. Go to beach.

3. Try not to die of over-sweating/sticking-to-couch-itis.

Looking forward to the heat for a change - it's been cool and rainy here!

Like a Drowned Rat

The most incredible thing just happened as I was leaving work. Being on the 29th floor of the office building, we can see pretty far. At happy hour, we can see to the south and west, also known as the direction of home. It was a beautiful day until about 6pm, and then I suddenly noticed a huge black cloud out over the sunset. "I don't like the looks of that cloud," I said to my coworkers, and grabbed my bag and fleece. It was getting a bit chilly and as I left the bridge and stood on the street corner, the first fat drops hit my face. By the time the light changed, I was huddled gratefully under another girl's umbrella. By the time we made it to the other side and the shelter of an overpass, my pants were soaked and the street had turned into a river. Rain was coming down in sheets and at an angle so the fifteen of us who were stranded were huddled together in the middle. Eventually it let up just a little and I decided that I just wanted to get home so I just kept walking through it. It had stopped raining by the time I got to my house and I could even see stars. I peeled my clothes off and hopped straight into my pjs!

Moving on... last night we were watching tv and happened across "Out of the Question," a tv show very similar to NPR's radio show "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" - a panel of comedians answers questions about the day's or week's news. The tv show made me a little homesick for Wait Wait which my sister and I used to listen to while lazing around on Saturday mornings, so I logged on to npr.org to see what I could see, and was able to listen to about half of last week's broadcast online (before bedtime). It was absolutely hilarious, just as good as I remember. Alex, meanwhile, had moved on to Lost and I was sitting on the other end of the couch, just shaking with silent laughter as Paula Poundstone and Peter Sagal buzzed through my earphones. I'm going to have to make those kids listen to Wait Wait with me some day!

I was getting a ribbing in vocabulary from our receptionist the other day - she likes to tease me about American things such as sweaters, jelly, sloppy joes, and other nonsense (jumpers, jam, and, uh, nonexistent, respectively). It absolutely floors me that even though we speak the same language, we sometimes don't even have a word for a concept that the other culture has. I have come across this in Spanish, of course, but that is usually explained away by the language barrier - though it has nothing to do with the language at all, really, it's all cultural! Amazing.

And We're Back!

Trivia Answer

I asked this question because I had a bet going with the housemates about how many people thought the national anthem was "Waltzing Matilda," which the Aussies thought was just preposterous. M wins the prize, the correct answer is "Advance Australia Fair," which makes the restaurant sign below very clever (Tukka is "tucker," the Aussie word for food, spoken with an Aussie accent).

However, I am liking this trivia idea, so here is another one: What region of Australia does the didgeridoo come from?

Mudford

The folk festival was excellent. I never thought I would have so much fun camping. For a week. In the rain. But it was great! It would have been even better if I had actually moved my camp up to where everyone I knew was camping, but oh well. I got a lot of exercise going between the two hills (where the camps were) that were on opposite sides of the "festival village". It really was amazing how this little town sprang up in the middle of nowhere, just for a week. With all the rain, everything was quite muddy. All of the venues were tents and dirt (mud, lake) floors. Eventually you just had to stop caring. I took a few photos and some videos, which I will try to get online soon. I had to restrain myself when it came to buying CDs because they are crazy expensive here, but I did get three that I am very excited about :)

Fantastic Little People

In order to attend for free, I worked in the Operations Center which is the hub of the festival. Anything the venues (stages where artists were performing or bars connected to the stages) needed, they contacted us. Half the time it was for more gravel to fill in their swamps, or other weather-related incidents (like towing out of the mud). We also handled all emergency calls, keeping the caller on the line while dialing "Triple 0" (911) and relaying information between the two. It was exciting to say the least. One of the supervisors described her five-year-old twins as "such fantastic little people" one night as we were trying to fill the rare void left by silent phones. It struck me as such a funny and interesting way to describe one's children that it's still ringing in my head. All the supervisors were great, and my team had a good time. It consisted of Peter who handled the foot traffic and two-way radio requests, and then Georgie and me on the phones in back. Georgie is hilarious - her kids are about my age and she looks like this really sweet lady and then she breaks in with something sassy that someone my age might say. She constantly kept me on my toes and was a lot of fun to work with.

Rainraingoa Way
One of the many clever street names created for the festival - and the most appropriate. The camping areas were better organized than they probably seemed to most campers, but there were little dirt roads with street signs. It was especially crucial for emergencies, to get a tow truck or ambulance to exactly the right spot. At the office we had an ellidex of all the street names and some of them are quite clever. My favorites included Longandwinding Road, Helovesmeinhisblokey Way, Ilovea Parade, etc.

The After-Party

Some friends from the festival who were flying back to Sydney from Brisbane were going to go camping for one more night at a different site, but by the end they decided they had had enough with the camping in the rain. Before they could book a hostel, I checked with my housemates and invited them to stay at our house. I got home on New Year's Day at about 11:30pm, slept for ten hours like a rock in my big-soft-comfy-warm-dry bed, and then woke up to get laundry going and greet the guests. So that day we had a party - those three friends, then Alex's brother, brother's girlfriend and their friend. We got fish and chips and beer and took hot showers and sat around talking and laughing. It was a zoo and so much fun. While I was at work yesterday, the guests all trickled off and I came home to a quiet house and had a lovely relaxed evening.

The Coldest Summer Ever

It is still raining here in Brissie. It apparently rained here the entire time I was gone, and hasn't stopped yet. It is also about 50 degrees which feels COLD. Last night I slept in my winter pajama pants, quilt on the bed, window closed, and was quite cozy. It should be cold and rainy for another week or so, then next weekend sunny. Fingers crossed!

Lost in Translation

No, not about words, but about weather. Specifically, cold weather. It's one thing to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius, it's quite another to explain what 10F feels like to a city of people who do not know temperatures below 40F (-12C and 5C, roughly). They get the general idea - that it's COLD - but don't have anything to attach that to, or any experience with it. (Speaking of cold, my office is FREEZING. This is not new - I'm always cold - and at least I'm not sitting under a cold vent in the middle of winter like I was at one place... but still! Brr. Sort of feels like it's actually winter!)

What's weird about the date is not actually that day and month are switched (so December 5 becomes 5/12/07), but that when they read it out loud, they say "the fifth of the twelfth" as in the twelfth month, instead of "fifth of December."

Book fun

Last night I went to the first meeting of the book group I joined! It sounded like a perfect way to meet new people, and this is a good group. I enjoyed our conversation - which flowed from the book to various tangents, and back again, and was just the right amount of intellectualism and socializing. The only problem was the choice of location. We met at a pretty swanky bar in the city, where even in my nice work clothes I did not feel sleek enough to be there, and where I way way overpaid for a small bowl of veggie curry. It was also pretty loud and I had trouble hearing everyone, even though I was in the middle of the table! But that aside, it was a very nice evening. We read The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, which I had read this summer and which was perfect because I didn't have my library card yet when it was decided! At the end we decided on the next book and somehow got to talking about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I said I loved it and someone said we should make it our next book, but really I would rather read new books, not ones I've read dozens of times! Anyway, the next book turns out to be A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which I've also had my eye on for quite a while, so I'm happy as a nerdy little clam :)

"Do Australians Dream of a White Christmas?"

asked my cousin Erin. Turns out, they do! Most Australians I've talked to so far have a completely romanticized view of snow (spoken like a true jaded Midwestern girl), and have all the idea that it would be so wonderful to have a whole winter of it, or at least Christmas. They know (and sing) the song. They also sing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Jingle Bells. They do have their own Christmas songs, too, but Christmas is so commercialized, and culture in general so American-bent, that they know all of our traditional songs. A very Australian thing to do on Christmas is to go to the beach and have cold foods (like pasta salads) and/or a barbecue. And they've never heard of "It's a Wonderful Life" (which took some explaining as I only saw it myself for the first time two years ago!).

The tree is up in the Brisbane Square; a huge fake furry thing reminiscent of my aunt and uncle's fake tree, only nowhere near as pretty as they make it with the gold bows. I watched them putting the branches in the other day on my way to work. I think there are lights on it, which probably get turned on at night. The lighting happens tomorrow night but I'm not sure if they'll light it regularly since they just turned off the weather lights for wasting too much electricity. (The weather lights were these lights on top of a building downtown that flashed different colors and patters - basically red or white, flashing or steady - to indicate different types of weather. The only useful-sounding one to me was "rain coming" since it's often cloudy for a long time before it actually rains - all the rest seemed like, if you could see outside to see the lights, you could probably tell if it was actually raining or sunny or cloudy, which are basically the only changes in weather... But I digress.) Anyway, thinking about going to the lighting makes me feel like I'll be standing there sipping hot chocolate and wearing mittens, which I know won't be the case!

Pizza, pie....

“Looking for fellow ex-pats to share a turkey sandwich with on Thursday,” my posting on gumtree.com.au said. Kay from Nebraska took the bait and we met up in her neighborhood of Bulimba, not for a turkey sandwich after all, but for pizza. It was delightful to share our memories and talk of our families’ traditions surrounding this most American, and least commercial, of holidays. Then we headed back to her house where her roommate Kendra, also from Nebraska, was making pumpkin pie – from a pumpkin! They don’t sell canned pumpkin here, so Kendra actually roasted a pumpkin, which no one here thinks much of because they eat it as a vegetable like that all the time! Who knew? Anyway, it was delicious and tasted exactly the same, so kudos to Kendra and her mad baking skills. It’s just not Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie. I did buy some potatoes today to make mashed potatoes though, which I have been craving for a few days now ;) I hope you all had wonderful Thanksgivings!

Oh, there’s so much to share! I had an eventful past couple of days. Let’s see… Kendra gave me a ride home Thursday night, which was a bizarre experience. I kept thinking cars were going to come right at us! I also sat in the front seat, left side, and it was weird not to have a steering wheel in front of me. Ernie, the American at work, said that you get used to driving on the wrong side of the road, but the weirdest thing is biking in the road because it seems like you never know where the cars are going to come from.

Speaking of transportation, I took a ferry for the first time yesterday. Let me back up for a minute. On Thursday, I was contacted by someone from a company with a connection to the law firm I’m working at, because my boss had suggested maybe I could pinch hit over there while one of their employees took a month-long holiday. So we made a plan for me to head over there Friday morning. As it’s based at the University of Queensland, which is across the Brisbane river to the west of me, I took a bus to the ferry and then it was just a quick 5-minute ferry ride down to UQ. On the way back, I just took the ferry right into “downtown,” which they call the CBD here (Central Business District, also known as “the city,” all other neighborhoods are called the suburbs). That second ride was half an hour and did not sit so well with me, but I can handle the ferry for five minutes. It was actually rather pleasant and peaceful. The river is not very wide, maybe half a mile. So I’ll be working at that company for about three weeks, starting Thursday. Both the company and the law firm are closed over the week from Christmas to New Year’s, so I’ll have to find some way of entertaining myself.

Speaking of holidays, yesterday, and entertaining myself… I went to a synagogue last night. It was definitely a very Orthodox service and I probably won’t be going back there, even though it’s right in the CBD and very convenient from work (well, for now). There is another synagogue in Coorparoo and a third one in Camp Hill, which are other “suburbs” nearby, so I’ll try those out.

It is raining right now. It rains really hard and with virtually no warning, for about half an hour and then stops completely. There is no wind so my windows have been wide open all this time and nothing has gotten wet. One of my housemates did have laundry outside that got soaked, though. You take your chances, I guess. The summer here is the rainy season, which is not what I expected. I expected warm, even hot, and sunny all the time and really it’s mostly hot, humid and overcast if not actually raining. But apparently March and April are good times to travel, so that’s good.

For Tom, who asked about the supermarket – I went again and paid a bit more attention, but yeah, it’s basically similar to a US supermarket. The one by my house is not as big as your average Safeway or Meijer, but it gets the job done. They don’t have weird things, at least not that I was paying attention to (I didn’t go looking for kangaroo meat, for example, though it might be there), but there are fewer things in general, just less of a selection. Fewer fruits and veggies – oh and apples are awful and mealy here, fyi. Mangoes are excellent, though, to make up for it. If I have an occasion to get to a supermarket elsewhere in the city I will let you know how it compares. The one by my house is a Coles, which is a chain, and they sell their own reusable bags for just $1, so I got two for lugging my groceries and probably one will follow me back home, which is fun because it says “Australia” on it.

Oh, and just to clarify, I called my 50-person office “small” because I was comparing it to the last place I worked, which had 200+ people. The new place has about 70 people.

One more thing about the water-saving: there are two buttons to push on the toilet, one for a half-flush, usually designated by a half-filled circle, and the other for a full flush. Use at your discretion. What a great way to save water!

Master's in Australian Culture

(Re: photos - apparently there is a max per month and I have hit it. More photos in a couple weeks.)

After moving in on Saturday morning, I started right away on my goal of learning about Australian culture. There is an election coming up so a lot of talk has been focused on that. Alex and I got into a whole conversation on the differences between American and Australian elections and federal government. There are lots of ads for the election on tv, and we've watched a lot of tv. We watched a show called Rove, which is kind of like the Daily Show only about 2-3 hours long, with many guests. We watched some cricket on tv and I got a crash course in the rules before Alex deemed it too boring and changed the channel. We watched Kath & Kim, which is an awful show about a mother and daughter who are both pretty crazy and detrimental to the other and sort of white trashy. We also played some Euchre, because somehow Alex knows Euchre, and we will teach our other housemates one day (we played a two-player version).

Some other things I've learned:

• Foreign language study was not compulsory until recently, but you can study Indonesian
• People expect you to walk on the left side of the sidewalk, like you're in a car
• The $2 and $1 are coins
• The game played at the World Cup is actually called soccer - Football means "Aussie Rules" - which is apparently soccer with its own rules unique to Australia
• Banks are only open 10-4 or so, and not at all on the weekends. Libraries keep odd hours (the one by my house is closed Sun-Tues, open Wed-Sat 10am-5pm and Thursday until 7pm). Lots of things are closed on Sundays. The green grocer is only open in the morning.
• I think the Bill Bryson book "In a Sunburned Country" has the title "Down Under" here. An interesting switch...
• Someone working in a store asking you "Are you all right?" means "Can I help you?"
• Our house is a typical Queenslander - up on posts to avoid flooding from the wet season and catch the breezes when it's hot, has a long hallway running straight through and verandahs front and back, with open areas over the doorways all to faciliate air flow. Guess it gets hot here ;) The toilet and kitchen are on opposite corners of the house and usually not connected to the other rooms (though our kitchen is).

Ok, I know there are more things I'm forgetting, they keep coming to me at inopportune moments but I will try to have paper handy when they do come to me, walking down the street, for next time ;)

L'Auberge Espagnole

For those who asked, I'm feeling much better. It's just a cold, I just don't get colds very often and this one is taking its sweet time. But I'm almost back at 100% :)

Anyway... I had a little "interview" on Thursday, in which B. basically offered me the job, took me around to meet some people, and declared that they could probably keep me busy for close to four months - yippie! So then I set to work on housing. There is a website called gumtree.com.au that is basically like craigslist, and it had some really good-sounding ads on there. I went to see two places Thursday night. The first place was very nice but it took forever to get there during rush hour and is not walkable from work. It is just off a busy road and there is not much around, even in the way of roommates, and no common room. One of my goals for being here is not to sit in a room by myself with a tv, but rather to make friends so that even if I do sit at home (which I do a lot of - I'm kind of a homebody), I am at least learning something. Yes, I realize I would learn things from tv, but still. People trump tv nearly every time.

The second place I saw was much better in terms of my goals. If anyone has seen the movie "L'Auberge Espanole" it was just like that. The movie is about a French guy who moves to another country (I think Spain - I am totally going to butcher this synopsis but you can check imdb.com) for a year and moves in with a mishmash group of people from all over Europe and they have wacky adventures. When he goes to see the place and meet the roommates for the first time, he desperately wants them to pick him and to be their friend, and I felt exactly the same way (especially after the seeing the first apartment!) I really enjoyed everyone who was there and never wanted to leave - they "interviewed" me for about 3 hours, which was mostly just sitting around chatting. There are four roommates, two guys from Australia (one of whom is never around and wears all black and a Batman belt - I have no idea), one from Hungary (he's new too), and one girl from Japan (Eriko, we bonded over the koala cookies ;)). And it's in a really cool part of town, sounds like a lot of fun, and is in walking distance to work. I just moved in about 20 minutes ago and since most people are still asleep, I am taking advantage of the free internet and communal computer :)

The house itself is in hippie central, aka the West End, and reminds me of 318 Catherine, the house my friends and I lived in in college, so it immediately felt homey to me - in a certain dirty, hardwood floor kind of way. I'm not going to sugar-coat it, it's not the Ritz, it's $90 a week with no dryer because apparently "it never rains here," except it's raining today so there go my big laundry plans! Oh well.

Ok, I'm going to work on uploading those photos now. More later!

Monday morning in the big city

Yesterday, I took it easy, partly because I have a sore throat (must've picked it up on the plane - darn it!) and partly because I had to switch hostels mid-morning. I actually really like my new hostel, more on that later. When I did finally venture out, I headed for Darling Harbour, which is basically a big promenade. It was a bit much for me, so then I took a roundabout way of getting to Wentworth Park, which was not terribly exciting, but I did see some of a pickup game of "footy" (soccer). I got a little turned around heading back to pass by Paddy's Market and managed to get there just before their "official" closing time, although people were still buying like crazy when I left at quarter after.

Paddy's Market is the most intense market I've ever been to. Think of a big flea market, but with all Chinese people, all yelling "one dollah one dollah" at you, people everywhere shoving. I'm sure someone was making announcements, probably about the market closing, but you couldn't really hear anything over the din. I had read about Paddy's Market in my guidebook and it said you could buy fresh fruit and veggies there for really cheap. Part of the culture of my new hostel is that there is a huge kitchen and most people buy food at the supermarket to cook there. I managed to get enough veggies for two dinners, plus two apples and a banana, all for about $3 (maybe $3.50 US).

Walking around the city is a little exciting sometimes because it seems like you never know where the cars are going to come from! Seriously, though, it's a good thing they've painted instructions "Look Right" on the crosswalks so you remember to look the correct way for turning traffic. The crosswalk signals are interesting too, they make a funny noise when they change to "walk" (it's a little green man though). I wish you could hear it, it's really odd sounding.

About the new hostel. There is one medium-sized common room, right next to the kitchen which is very open, so it feels all connected. There are tables for eating and lots of sofas, mostly pointed towards the big screen tv. Last night, tons of people gathered down there to make dinner and watch tv. The channel it was on showed a bunch of episodes of Friends and Malcolm in the Middle, but there was also an ad for Maury, on later (oy). Amazing. It just has a much friendlier, more intimate feel than the other, enormous hostel (although this one's name is The Big Hostel, ironically). My dormmates are nicer and generally seem more considerate - I think because they tend to be longer term than the other hostel. All in all, a good switch.

Right now it's Monday morning and I am at the IEP office waiting for orientation to begin. Later I will get my cell phone and call the woman in Brisbane about working there, and go to the bank to open my account. It's supposed to get to about 25C today (about 80F) and it's been mostly gorgeous clear blue skies so far :)

Paradise Found!

There it is! It got nice out the last two days. Unfortunately, my cousin Laura wasn't feeling well, but her husband Jay kindly took me around Tuesday afternoon. We walked on Waikiki Beach and then hiked up Diamondhead. Then today, since the kids had a half-day of school, we went to the beach! It was pretty cloudy so we didn't take a lot of photos, but Jay did take me snorkeling, which was awesome. Being a diver in the Navy as well as an avid surfer and snorkeler, he knows a lot and it was really fun. Laura and I went to the swap meet, which is a big outdoor market that encircles the University of Hawaii football stadium with gobs of cheapo touristy junk, but I did manage to get a new bathing suit and a sarong. All of these activities are featured in the album "Hawaii Part II" under the Flickr link to the right.

Jay and Laura are going to lend me their big packpack so I should go make sure all my junk fits in there. Then it's off to bed and up early for 10 and a half hours on the plane!

Oh by the way, I am aware that the world clock link on the right ("Sydney Time!") is not working. I'll fix it as soon as I have time. In the meantime, you can go to www.timeanddate.com/worldclock and look it up.

Paradise Lost

Greetings from Hawaii! This is a photo of the sunset from the plane, shortly after takeoff from LA. The sun was setting for about an hour as we followed it west.


My friend Paul referred to Hawaii as Paradise the other day, but the weather here has been uncharacteristically grey and rainy, which has proved finding activities difficult. On Saturday, my cousin Laura, her husband Jay, and their boys Keegan, Brendan and Collin took me on a driving tour of Oahu, which included the Heiau, Laniakea (Turtle) beach, and Byodo-In Temple. On Sunday, we were rained in most of the day but did manage to drive to Ford Island and see the base and Pearl Harbor from the west. Today (Tuesday), Laura and I took the kids to school and then went to the USS Arizona Memorial. We had lunch with Jay (who got out of work early due to sewage overflow in Pearl Harbor from the rain) and Collin at the Rainbow Bay Marina, and then hung out at their house.


The weather is supposed to get better the rest of this week so maybe I'll have photos from the beach and other outdoor activities later! In the meantime, check the Flickr link on the right for the album "Hawaii Part I"!