Aloha

That's really the only Hawaiian word that I know, so I'll make good use of it when L. and I fly to Kauai next week! Judging from the names of the places around where we're staying, I'm going to have a fun time trying to figure out pronounciation.

Hawaiian person: "alsmei weoiwei woaifnoai asoidfrneoi aofoafnei woeinei"
Me: "Aloha"
Hawaiian person: "No, weoiwnei hweoiwrnowei wheiewo woanfeowiheoi sdaovcnxieihei"
Me: "Aloha"
Shark that the Hawaiian person was trying to warn me about right before he bites off my leg: "Aloha"

Hee hee hee - if you picture that in cartoon format, it's quite entertaining :)

-or-

Me: "How to you get to the beach from here?"
Hawaiian person: "Start out at woeineeihei, then take a right on yeaoiaowei. Follow that until woeineoeieoijwoeiweoiei, and hang a sharp left onto waoeiwenoweonwoiafdmei. You'll see woeianrfaoiaweonweaieoei beach straight ahead."
Me: "Thanks and aloha."

I have a lot of stuff to finish up at work before I leave. However, my brain seems to have started the vacation without my body. All I can think about is plopping my ass down on a spot of sand next to the ocean and reading a good, non-work-related book. I'm also looking forward to exploring some of the local tourist places, and snorkeling (while hopefully not getting eaten by a shark, but more about that later). Not to mention spending a whole week in paradise with my wonderful boyfriend and his wonderful family!

We were online last night looking for various things to do. I definitely want to do some horseback riding on the beach, and there are a ton of beautiful natural things to check out such as waterfalls, rivers, etc. And of course, no trip would be complete without a luau, so we found one of those, too.

We also came across something called "snuba", which at first I thought it was a misspelling of "scuba". But, I was wrong. It's actually a cross between snorkeling and scuba diving. Your air regulators are attached to long hoses that hook into an air supply on a raft, so you don't have to wear all of the scuba gear. You just wear the mask and the regulator, and the raft floats around with you. Of course, you can't dive as deeply, but that's fine with me. I'm already freaked out enough about swimming in the ocean as it is. After years of watching Shark Week, and the ever-so-interesting dance of "check out these monster sharks eating everything and everyone in sight" to "sharks aren't people-eaters, they just mistake us for seals", I'm a little uncertain. I am, after all, entering their domain. And I'm not sure how flattering I find the comparison of myself to a seal. So we'll see how snorkeling goes. But, snuba is an interesting idea.

I haven't been on vacation to a tropical place in 10 years. The last tropical location I went to was Puerto Vallarta with my family and best friend after high school graduation. It was a wonderful trip until the last day when my friend got rather ill (because she was allergic to orange juice and we happened to drink quite a few Tequila Sunrises during Happy Hour the night before). It was not fun to think about having to take her to a Mexican hospital, and trying to explain to her parents how she got so sick. But, luckily she pulled through.

We were also flying standby, and the flights were completely full, so we ended up having to stay an additional night. The up side of that was that we stayed in a beautiful little apartment downstairs from a woman who worked for the same airline as my family. She felt badly that we couldn't get on a flight and offered the place to us for a song. We all agreed that it was far more lovely than any of the places where we had stayed before. So, it's funny how sometimes the unexpected things are what really become memorable. What a fun trip...