House with a View

Joe and I are now moved into our new house.  It’s a 3 bedroom house, with two bathrooms and a huge living room area.  My favorite room in the house is the living room.  It has hardwood floors, with four large widows that face south and west.  Looking out of the western facing three windows, you can see the ocean on a clear day, and the late afternoon and evening just before sunset are amazing.  If you look out of the front door, which faces east, you can see Mauna Kea (the large mountain near us).  There is so much sun in our house, it makes it so inviting!  Hopefully soon, we’ll have all of our stuff arranged and totally unpacked so that I can post pictures.  The only downside to our new place is that the last tenants had some pretty serious flea and cockroach problems, which our landlords are continuing to pay a terminator to come fix.  We have no fleas inside and there are boric acid and roach traps all over the house.  I think we’ve seen a total of maybe four cockroaches in almost 3 weeks, and most of them were dead.  Even so, Joe had to come to my rescue last night as I was surprised by a speedy little cockroach in my bathroom drawer.  I will get used to them eventually, but right now I’m glad that Joe will come to take care of them.  On a braver note, I’ve come to appreciate the three or four web building spiders that have taken up residence in small corners of our house.  Apart from two spider bites after not looking before I sat down, they don’t ever bother us and probably eat a few pests.  We them outside when they get too big… and by we, I really mean Joe. 

The first night we spent in our new place was interesting.  We were going to bed and I got up to turn out the light, and had to pause because there was absolutely no light in our room at all.  This is very different to our old place because there was a street lamp not too far away.  We quickly got used to the darkness and crawled into bed.  Then we start to hear creaking sounds.  I ask Joe if he thinks there is an animal in our ceiling, since we know there is a small bird family living in part of our eves.  Joe says that he doesn’t think it’s an animal.  Then I wonder out loud, “Do you think our new place is haunted?”  We both freeze completely for a moment and listen.  Even never having had any proof that ghosts exist, the thought is still creepy in a completely dark, new house.  My wild imagination waiting for whatever transparent, sheet covered, being to come warn us away from our beloved, new place.  After a few moments, Joe realizes that the creaking sound is from the ice maker in the freezer.  We both sort of accept that and feel better, but neither of us fell asleep for a while.  I feel bad that I had Joe to snuggle me and make me feel better, but as the protective snuggler, Joe had to wait until I was asleep to start nodding off himself. 

Right now, the trade winds are blowing particularly hard and low on the island.  This means that it is super windy most places, but it also blows the clouds off of the mountains so you can see them the most clearly.  I also found out that it means spectacular star gazing from one of the nearby mountain roads.  Joe pulled over so we could stop and watch them.  It was great!  I could see the Milky Way very clearly, but I couldn’t identify that many constellations.  Joe said it’s even better on top of Mauna Kea.  Besides the wind, the star gazing here is spectacular because of the lack of light pollution.  Since there are two different telescopes on top of the mountain, billboards are illegal and all the road lights are an reddish-orange color, or an orangey-yellow color that don’t produce a lot of extra light.  They’re kind of eerie to drive through sometimes, but if it means awesome star gazing, I’m all for it.

In other news, I may or may not have a mailing address soon.  I have to work with the post office to get our address cleared up.  If our house indeed is visited by the USPS, then I will have one soon.  If we have to get a PO Box, it may take some time before we have mail sent somewhere besides Joe’s work. 

Hawaiian Cultural Note:  Pauhana, often shortened to Pau, means “quitting time” or “after work.”  Used in a sentence, “It’s almost pau for us!”  or “We’re going to have a pauhana party on the beach.”

Hawaiian Cultural Note: Most Hawaiian food that you get at farmer’s market or take home from a restaurant comes with white rice and mac salad, which is a cross between macaroni salad and tuna salad.

Hawaiian Cultural Note: Most people know that “aloha” means hello in Hawaiian, but the most common greeting among people that were born and raised on the island is “Hauzit?”  It’s the phrase “How is it?” all mashed together. 

Hawaiian Cultural Note:  It is usually perfectly acceptable for patrons of most businesses to be shirtless, bikini clad, and sometimes even barefoot.  Nice places and places far away from the beach and tourism are less likely to be ok with this, but there are a lot of restaurants near the beach that are cool with shirtless, barefoot beach bums. 

Hawaiian Cultural Note: Flip flops are called slippers.

Hawaiian Cultural Note: There is no racial majority in the state of Hawaii.  This is the only state that every race is in the minority.  This differs from island to island, but across the whole state, no race occupies more than half of the population.