Joe and I have officially signed a lease! We are working on cleaning the place a bit more before we move all our stuff over. I will post pictures soon!
Other than that, I don’t have much going on. Still trying to find another/better job and going to roller derby practice when I don’t have to work.
Also, check out my instagram! I post several pictures with instagram, and you can click on the picture to the right of my posts to see them all!
Good news, everyone!
I officially went to my first practice and I am pretty certain roller derby is for me. It’s a nice combination of sports I’ve already done (fighting, soccer, skiing) and sports I’ve never really tried (Anything with more than 2 wheels). I will hopefully be getting more pictures of that soon!
In other news, work is pretty great. It’s a lot like the health food store I worked at in college. It’s locally owned and there’s a lot of very friendly regulars. I am hoping that they will move me up to full time since the full time cashier just quit, but they hired another part time girl. We’ll see, but right now I’m still looking for another position.
My bike is now mostly ride-able! It would be completely ride-able, except that I need my female specific seat from my packages, and my blinking lights for night riding. Other than that, here she is!
Joe and I went snorkeling at our favorite beach yesterday. He let me borrow his fins, but I ended up preferring no fins. I found a day octopus and a yellow and white striped eel! There were so many cool fish! The tide was really low so everything was really close to the surface. The following link is a video of the octopus!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9R1MwXxx-8
In our apartment hunt, Joe and I have decided on renting a 3 bedroom house. It’s actually the first one we saw, but has since been renovated and thoroughly cleaned. More on that later! 🙂
I’m excited to be working in another health food store. I only get 12-16 hours as a cashier right now, but they might be adding me as a nutrition and vitamins consultant in the near future.
I have also met with the physical therapist with whom I’ll be interning, but won’t be able to start working with her until all the paperwork goes through the hospital.
(more…)
This was a picture of Mauna Kea on Saddle Road on our way home from Pāho.
I have managed to conquer my sea sickness with the help of Bonine! I went sailing again this Sunday and got to meet a more new people. We stopped to go swimming near a bit of coral, but I did not have my snorkel, so I was just swimming back and forth. I got to see a bit of the coral, but unfortunately I did not get any pictures of the coral this time. 
I will post pictures of coral and things when I get a chance to go snorkeling for longer. Joe and I plan on doing that sometime soon.
I now have a bicycle! I answered a Craigslist ad for a man selling a bike from Puna. One thing to note about people from Puna, is that they are nicknamed “Puna-tics” (pronounced like lunatics). Evidently people from Puna and Pāhoa, in the southeastern part of the island, are a great deal more eccentric than the rest of Hawaii. The man with the bike walked into the grocery store barefoot after selling me the bike. 
The bike is in great condition. It seems that it was sitting unused for a long time. Joe cleaned the chain for me today, and I took it apart to clean it. All it needs is some cleaning, grease, and new pedals. I also have a few pieces to add once I get my shipping packages. I can’t wait to get to ride it! Not just commuting, but some longer rides will be so fantastic.
I have two job interviews this week! I’ll let you all know how that goes. Joe and I will also hopefully be deciding on which apartment we’ll be moving into this week. I can’t wait to have a full kitchen! I miss making dinner and baking. Hopefully, I’ll get to bake for some of our friends in the future. I have also thought about introducing the local crowd to the game of Euchre. Joe isn’t much for board or card games, but I think that some of our friends might enjoy it. Thoughts?
I love taking pictures to share with people. That’s become pretty easy out here because there are so many beautiful things to take pictures of! Every time I turn around there’s another flower or bird or mountain view that I want to share with friends and family back home! I will try not to flood my blog with those kinds of pictures, but I wanted to share this stereotypical hibiscus flower with you!
So every Sunday, there is a group of people that Joe knows and I am beginning to become more and more familiar with that go sailing. The primary owner of the boat is Tommy and his co-owner is Jack. They are both older gentlemen with lots of sea-time experience. They like taking groups of people of all ages out and sail up and down the Western coast of the Big Island from about 1-4pm. I’ve ridden on the boat before, but the last time I had Bonine. Bonine is a great drug for motion sickness, and is like a non-drowsy, more effective version of Dramomine. This time I decided to be ‘brave’ and see if I really needed the Bonine to be on the boat, or if I could get away with just wearing sea bands. (sea bands are elastic wrist bracelets that have a rounded button that press a pressure point on your wrist to relieve nausea) It turns out that Bonine and I are bound to have a long lasting friendship on this island…
Joe was very sweet and sat next to me for just about the entire sailing trip and reminded me to put more sunscreen on. Here we are sitting on the edge of the sail boat and dangling our feet into the water, which helped me feel better. He had a lot of very helpful suggestions, like watching the island instead of the moving boat or water and stopping to swim. Swimming was a lot of fun and refreshing, but did little to relieve my sea sickness unfortunately.
We did get to see a pod of dolphins that followed us around for a while! That was pretty cool! They were much smaller that I had imagined.
After we got done sailing, Joe and I went to one of our favorite beaches to sit in a hammock and catch the last hour or so of sunshine. The tide has been very high lately due to a phenomenon called Super Moon. This makes the tides a bit higher than normal. The next super moon is in June and it is supposed to cause even higher tides.
I also got a pretty awesome picture of the sunset….
Joe and I looked at our first rental together today! We found it on Craigslist. http://honolulu.craigslist.org/big/apa/3715689354.html
It’s a little house in a quiet neighborhood. The guy who showed us the place said that it was the home he grew up in. It’s a 3 bedroom house and very cute. The main room and kitchen is all wood (or wood laminant or something) and the rest is carpeted. The kitchen even had the most awesome little window box for a little potted herb garden! The whole thing comes partially furnished with two leather couches if we want them. There was a large flower growing out of the gutter that made the place a little more charming. We did however find out that the previous tennants, who had just moved out the day before, left a colony of fleas. We have several more places to look at, but this one wasn’t bad as long as the owner can evict the fleas.
I have found something delicious! For anyone who likes a margarita (or any mixed drink I imagine) should find a bag of this–>
There is a local brew house here that makes a lilikoi margarita and salts the rim with this plum, salt, sugar, and stuff powder. It’s really good!
This weekend Joe and I will be barbaqueing, sailing, and possibly beach volleyball with friends.
While I have arrived on the Big Island, it’s really hard for me to really absorb that I live here now. Not having a job yet and four boxes of my belongings on their way here have left me with a feeling of being somewhere between vacation and loitering.
Joe and I live in a tiny one bedroom apartment. It is great for one person, but Joe wanted to wait to pick out a new place with me when I got here. I am excited to expore with him. We have a small breakfast table in the kitchen, and a futon in the bedroom that currently holds all of the clothes I brought with me.
Our apartment is part of this larger house above. The first two windows on the left are the house owners’ garage, then the next window is ours, followed by the house owners door. We have the space between the garage and the door. I feel a little guilty because I have added so much clutter to Joe’s space! This apartment is not ideal for two people, at least when one of those people is me. It makes me want to be more efficient like Joe or my sister, Niki. In addition, we were woken up at some point in the middle of the night by the two dogs that live in the yard howling for a solid 5 minutes… One of our top priorities right now is trying to find a new living space.
So far, I woke up on a tropical island today, put on a bikini, took care of an abandoned bird egg, counted geckos, and now I’m on my way to a black sand beach in a jungley valley. Later tonight, I’ll be watching Into Darkness with my boyfriend and new roommate.
Paper Cranes in Hawaii 
Written
on June 27, 2013