Flora and fauna on the Road to Hana and Halloween in Hawaii

On Tuesday, Wade and I did "the Road to Hana" Hana is on the east side of the island, we live on the west. The official road to Hana starts about 45 from where we live and then goes for 32 miles, but it takes awhile. It is very twisty and turny. I took some ginger capsules ahead of time, it's supposed to help with carsickness, but I still felt carsick. We saw many beautiful sites, including waterfalls but Wade did not want to go swimming under them. :-( We even brought our swim suits, but alas. He said we could do it next time but I'm not sure if there will be a next time after how sick I felt the first time. I think it would be fun to take Mom and Dad on the Road to Hana but I would have to advise dramamine and that might just knock us all out. At one of the places we stopped at, I saw the coolest mushroom, or at least I guess that's what it was. I will try to post a picture of it. We also saw some beautiful flowers and a really cool spider in the center of his web. I did take a picture but when I tried to get closer, he dropped out of his web. It looked like something from the nature channel! We went through Paia again too, and ate at the same place as last time. We saw this “all natural” couple. I don’t know what the heck their baby was wearing. He kinda looked like a scarecrow. He had some weird homemade hat on his head. They looked like they made his clothes but had no experience whatsoever in sewing. And then there was the fact that he had no diaper on, and yet could not have been potty-trained. I realized this when the dad pulled up his little dress for some reason. And the mom had on major flower power pants.

Last night for Halloween, Wade and I dressed as Troy and Gabriella from High School Musical. My costume ideas went all over the place. I had decided against those costumes at first and was thinking about being Hannah Montana but then what would Wade be? It would have been fun if one of us was her and the other was Miley Cyrus, but one of the rules for the ward party was no cross-dressing. ;-( So I found the graduation gown (or maybe it’s a choir gown-don’t really know) at the Salvation army and bought the accessories such as a trendy hat for Wade, a brown wig and a hat that said “I LOVE TROY” and jewelry for me at Claires.

I carved 2 pumpkins using stencils and got rave reviews at the ward trunk or treat. Nobody else around here seemed to use the stencils to make the cool designs, so they were very impressed.

The pot luck at the ward trunk or treat was interesting to say the least. I even wrote down some of the dishes purely so I could write them on this blog. There was some sort of salad with lettuce, peas, bacon bits, cheese etc that could have been good, if it did not have pure mayonnaise on it. Then there was the 3 or 4 hot dog dishes, in addition to the regular main course of hot dogs. There were even red hot dogs. Very disgustingly red. There were pig in a blankets with these little sausages, a hot dog casserole in a pumpkin, spaghetti, a pork and beans like dish, homemade sushi, (now, I like sushi, but only from restaurants-there was some brown stuff in the middle that I was just a little too nervous about), chicken nuggets from the grocery store, along with some McDonalds Cheeseburgers and Chicken sandwiches. I think there were also spam burgers. You really had to see it. I brought apples and caramel. Wade could not find anything he could stomach and had to make a run for the border. Taco Bell that is. One of my favorite costumes was a little kid dressed as a sushi roll-with her little baby brother as wusabi! It was so cute. I had to get a picture. I got to hold a little baby girl dressed as a fairy as she fell asleep. She was so cute but she had the funniest look on her face as she slept, like she was disgusted or something.

After the ward party, we went down to Front St. There were some crazy costumes! Mostly it seemed like people were walking along the streets just to show off and to see others’ costumes. We saw some guys dressed as Mormon missionaries and I went closer to see what their tags said. He was smoking and asked me if I wanted to join and I said, “I AM Mormon.” I think he felt a little dumb and said, “oh sorry”. They were not the only Mormon missionary costumes we saw though. There were some very scandalous costumes there. Many people were a lot more than half naked. There were some really funny costumes too though. I saw a whole group of people from super Mario brothers. There was Mario, Luigi, the princess, a mushroom, and a few others.

1:30 AM and I can't sleep

Today Wade and I had another day off. We went bodyboarding. Or tried to anyway. We found a spot where we saw some surfers out so we decided it would be a good spot. It was tricky to get out very far in the first place because it was so rocky. But we did. "Catching a wave" is not easy. I just don't see the appeal in surfing. I heard someone say it was 90% waiting, 5% paddling and the rest actually surfing. It's very true. Anyways, so we waited a lot, then you have to be at the exact right spot on the wave. We never actually were carried far by a wave, mostly we would just get carried up really high and then low. Eventually we gave up . Better luck next time,right? I also hope to go cliff jumping over at Black Rock on one of our next days off. Black Rock is a spot right down the beach from the mall one of our stores is at, Whaler's Village. There is great snorkeling there-that is where we saw the sea turtles and rays, along with all kinds of other cool fish. One of my favorites is the trumpet fish. It is very long and skinny and comes in many colors. Almost looks like an eel sometimes.

There is a local treat here called "shave ice", not shaved ice, "shave ice". It is of course though, shaved ice. Real shaved ice, not those yucky ice crystals that you have to crunch on.

I am thinking maybe I will be a mummy for Halloween. I thought of just wrapping a ton of toilet paper around me, but i don't know how to get it to stay, so maybe ace bandages. I was looking for cheap modest costumes online and there was a link for teacher costumes. They were cheesy little jumpers with apples and little abc blocks on them. I thought it was very funny and then realized it was not a costume website, but an actual site for clothes for teachers. Ugh! The site suggested that they were great gifts for teachers. Gag! If one of my students ever gave me one of those, I would fail them. Some of the other costumes I have considered are Sharpay and her brother from High School Musical, but I just don't think people here would appreciate it as much.

Wade and I drove to a town called Paea, I think that's how it's spelled, last Saturday. We had a very tasty dinner. It was just a place where you order at the counter and then find your own seat but it was delicious. Wade had fried breaded mahi-mahi and fries and I tried a mahi mahi taco. I never wanted to try a mainland fish taco but it's so fresh here, I was sure it would be good and it was. We looked around at the shops, but the town closed up kinda early so we werent' there that long, it was very neat though.

We will probably be getting rid of our leased car soon. Too expensive. We got it because we knew Wade would be having to go to a lot of Doctors appts. when he hurt his foot but it is just too expensive to keep doing it. Back to the bus! And the bike I plan to get too.

At McDonalds the other day, I noticed they sold taro pies. You know, they have apple pies there on the mainland, but here it's taro or haupia. The haupia might be all right, but after my experience with poi, taro pie doesn't sound too tasty! They also serve breakfast combos with spam, rice, and portugese sausage. And you can find hot dog sushi at many places. At the grocery store the other day, i saw half a hot dog split down the middle and tied to a bed of rice. OOh, yummy (sarcasm) There is even mac and cheese sushi at this sushi fast food restaurant, Genki.

Well, I'm gonna try to go to bed now.

Yay I did it!

I created a blog all by myself! I've been waiting for Wade to set this up for me but he hasn't gotten around to it yet so I asked Kellie how to to it and here it is-I did it! Now I can't think of anything to say. Weird.

Today was my day off. I got my bangs trimmed and tried to go to the library but it is not open on Monday. Maybe if it was, the people around here would be more educated. There are a lot of things they say funny. They eliminate "a" and "the" from their speech. The first week Wade and I had our car, we parked in the wrong spot in our complex and got a note that said, "Eh!! YOU STAY PARK IN ONE WRONG STALL!! YOU NO MOVE'M TODAY.....IT'LL BE TOWED!! SHOOTZ We thought that was so funny that we just had to save it and put it on our fridge. We've had it ever since. I'm not sure who or what shootz means. Maybe it is a person, maybe it means "later"- I have no idea. Anyways, back to my day-I mailed some stuff and rested a lot. It was nice. I also stopped by a bike shop just to check out prices. They didn't sell used ones, but they said they will be selling their rentals in a few weeks. There are the cutest bikes here in Maui-I really want one so I can bike to work. People frequently have baskets on the front or back of their bikes. They have kind of a vintage style look to them.

It's been difficult working with our interns. The first 3 new ones got here in the beginning of September. We got our 4th intern a few weeks after that and she is a great salesperson and aspiring manager. However, she likes to tell us how she thinks things should be done. This past week, she wanted not only her normal Sunday off, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings off, she also wanted Friday and Saturday off! And she genuinely expected to have it! She was mad when we couldn't give it all to her! I just don't know what to do with these girls. If you ask for one big thing off, you should be willing to make sacrifices elsewhere. She called Wade at 8 this morning when we were still asleep to complain about it. They think we should arrange the schedule every week to do whatever is most convenient for them. They also got upset after the internet was taken away from the computer at work. Wade had let them know that it was fine if they wanted to check their email or whatever if they wanted to come early and to it before their shift. But that was not what happened. They were looking up stuff when they were supposed to be working. So our bosses decided to shut it off. I'm not sure if Wade was part of that decision or not. Anyways, they got all upset, acting like it was their basic right instead of a privilege. One of em was like, "This isn't even funny! I can't do my banking. I can't keep in touch with my family!" Wade suggested that they all go together and get the internet at their house and she said something about them not making as much money as we do. That made me very angry. The amount we do get paid is absolutely ridiculous. I just can't believe she had the nerve to get upset over that when it was their own fault for abusing the privilege in the first place!

I have no idea what to be for Halloween. I want to at least do something fun, so we are going to go to the ward trunk or treat, but we still don't know anyone well because of the inconsistency with which we were able to go to church. Afterwards we will probably go to some restaurant in Lahaina to see all the crazy people. Apparently Halloween is huge here. At least it was. Apparently last year it got a little too wild, do they're not gonna close down front st. in Lahaina for it this year, but it will probably still be big.

Well, I think I'm gonna go roam Front St. before I pick up Wade!