I'm back from Hawaii! Well, rather I was back from Hawaii a week ago, but then I had a busy weekend catching up with my friends, and then work started Monday, and then I busted my ankle. It's been a fun week!
Hawaii was GORGEOUS! We stayed at a resort on Oahu. It was 87 degrees every single day with a light breeze blowing just enough to keep you from getting too warm. We spent many many hours just lying by the pool or on the beach. We hit up a luau for dinner one night, and the entertainment and food were both phenomenal! The host of the show was a real Samoan Chief, and he was hysterical. He told jokes, made fun of the guests, sang songs, and amazed us all with some incredible fire dancing. They had mini craft clinics before dinner, where you could learn to make a crown using palm fronds, weave a hat with bamboo leaves, get an airbrushed tattoo, or learn to make fire. The food consisted of a buffet of traditional roast pig, teriyaki steak, chicken, barbecued beef, poi, lomi-lomi salmon (my favorite!), garden salads, macaroni salads, bread and rice. It was delicious!
The after dinner entertainment was my favorite part. The show consisted of showing the different types of warrior and women dances from all different Pacific Islands. The dancers were amazing, and obviously very proud of their skills and heritage. They represented Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand, and Hawaii, among others. The culmination of the entertainment was the fire dancing. I wish the pictures I took did the dancers any justice. It was unbelievable. They made it look so easy! One guy climbed a palm tree, and using only his feet to hold him up, twirled a baton lit with fire at both ends. I can hardly light a match without burning myself, so I was completely impressed with these guys!
We also took a sail on a catamaran and went dolphin watching and then snorkeling. I'd never been snorkeling before, and was pretty nervous, but its amazing. The fish were swimming right around us and weren't scared at all. The only rough part was that the current was unusually strong that day (according to our boat crew) so it took a lot of effort to keep over the reef where the fish were hanging out. But it was awesome anyhow. The dolphin watching was my favorite part (as anyone who knows me would guess). I took about 200 pictures of the dolphins alone. I haven't uploaded the pictures yet, but I'll post a few sometime this week, so you can see how close we were. They swam right up to the boat, and I swear if I wasn't afraid of falling in with my camera, I could have reached right in and touched them. They didn't jump as much as I would have liked, but they did do quite a bit of swimming on their backs and flapping their tails to splash us. It was so cool being so close to them!
The best thing about Hawaii, in my opinion, is the brilliant sunsets. they're just phenomenal. I took tons of pictures of those as well, and like the dolphin pictures, I'll post them this week after I've downloaded them off the camera. I spent hours watching the sun glisten off the water, and wondered constantly how anyone could ever voluntarily leave the island. It's just an amazing sight.
We came home Friday night, and I spent the next two days hanging out with and catching up with my friends. One of my friends turned 50 last week, and rather than limiting the celebration to just one day, he stretched it into nearly a week. Which meant that I had the chance to be there for the big birthday dinner. Lots of intoxication fun was had by all.
Last Monday night I had a true moment of brilliance when I fell down the last two stairs at Donald's house, and sprained the hell out of my right ankle. It swelled up like a balloon within seconds, and the pain was pretty severe. Thankfully, Donald had crutches from his knee surgery a few years ago, so I've been hobbling around on those for the last week. I went and got x-rays taken, and it's not broken or fractured, which doesn't really make me feel better. I tried walking on it way too soon, and now it's just going to take longer to heal. Not one of my brighter moments. I'll be on crutches for at least another week, and I'm so not happy about it. I hate needing help. I can't carry anything, have trouble opening my own doors, and it takes forever for me to get from point A to point B. It's just so frustrating having to rely heavily on other people for things I used to be perfectly capable of doing myself. The silver lining, I guess, is that my arms are going to be in great shape by the time I'm off the crutches. The insides of them are bruised, but my biceps are starting to get cut. Oh joy!
That's my last two weeks in a nutshell. Pictures will be up in the next day or two for your viewing pleasure! Enjoy!
