back in hawaii

i had an amazing winter break at home with my family and friends... it was so much fun that i didn't even want to come back to Hawaii! but after a few days of settling in, i am now very happy to be back in the perfect weather and pretty scenery :)

it's crazy to think that so many people who were here in school with me last semester are now back in negative-degree weather and snow... and i'm back here on the beach sweating! i hope this next picture makes everyone desperate to come visit and hang out with me in the sun while everyone else is freezing their butt off :D

as you may know, i've moved from my dorm to an on-campus apartment where i have a roommate who is also part of the exchange program i'm in. i knew her last semester but both of us signed up randomly for housing and got each other as a roommate which was pretty crazy... but here is my side of the tiny room we share. it took us quite a while to figure out how to set up the room to get the most space out of it... which i don't think really worked. but my little corner isn't so bad :)

and here is the view outside of my room window! it's not as nice as the view i had last semester of Diamond Head and the cityscape, but i still get to see a stream and very cool tree. plus i get to fall asleep to the sound of the stream at night. :)

this is the sink outside of our room which we share along with the other 2 girls who live in the apartment with us. they have a bigger room upstairs.

and the bathroom shared by 4 girls. fascinating i know. this apartment is clearly old and in need of a deep clean...

this is our little kitchen... it has termites. but i bought ant killer... hopefully it will do the job. other than that, everything works!

and finally, the little living room. my favorite part is the string lights along the ceiling :) and we just got a tv. yay!

on another note, classes are cancelled tomorrow due to high winds (around 60 mph). hehe

a maui thanksgiving

this weekend i went with my friend Caleb to spend the holiday weekend in Maui! when we first got there, we met up with more friends to cook up a feast for Thanksgiving dinner, and it turned out to be amazing! we had chicken, potato casserole, stuffing, gravy, corn, green beans, candied yams, cranberry mango relish, deviled eggs, rolls... cherry cheesecake, boisenberry cheesecake, pumpkin pie, pistachio pudding, and chocolate cookie bars! while everything was cooking we went out to the beach across the street to watch the sunset :)

after stuffing ourselves with delicious food, we were out for the night. the next morning Caleb and i woke up and took a drive around Kihei, which is the town that our condo was in. we drove out further to explore more of the island, and came across this cute little beach that we ended up going back to a few times later:

this is a picture taken during our exploration outside of Kihei... one of the most beautiful drives i have been on.

we also stopped at a scenic point along the road where you can look out and see a lot of the island... it's that strip in the back that goes all the way across!

and here is another picture taken during our drive. amazing.

we found a little fruit stand on the side of the road and decided to make a stop for some star fruit... hands down the best star fruit i've ever had. even better than the one i picked from a tree! :)

and then we found a black sand beach with rope swings to watch the sunset from! it was the perfect end to our day of exploration...

the next day we took the same route out to the west side of the island and made a pit stop at that same fruit stand to pick up a coconut! the guy chopped it open with a machete and gave us straws so we could drink out the coconut water before he cut it up for us to eat. if you can't tell from the picture, Caleb wasn't too thrilled by the taste of fresh Maui coconut... but i thought it was delicious :D

here is a picture i took of our cute little car along our drive around the west side of the island. the majority of the drive was along a one-lane super windy road... and it was rainy! we actually had a near head-on collision with a hawaiian dude who was flying through like it was nothing, but we made it out safe :)

even though it was rainy all day, the scenery was still amazing, as you can see:

later that night Caleb took me out to the Four Seasons Hotel restaurant where i had the most delicious scallops i have ever tasted. seriously. amazing. this place was like royalty... it was dark so i couldn't get the best picture, but there was this beautiful fountain in the middle of a courtyard area outside of the restaurant:

there was better weather the next day, so our goal was to find beaches. we made it out to "america's best beach" where we went swimming in these huge waves... just kidding. i was way too scared... but we did get to watch the surfers ride these monsters :)

and to end the day, we found a hidden spot to watch the sunset. we had to drive down a little red dirt road and walk through an abandoned temple-looking area to get to this beautiful beach. it felt like we could have been in a movie.

at the beach there was a paved walkout into the ocean with a bench at the end where we sat to watch the sunset. we even got to see a couple of sea turtles swimming around! and better yet... a humpback whale in the distance surfacing for air and flipping its tail out of the water! if only i had gotten a picture of that... it was the coolest thing!

on our way home we drove by a sugarcane field, so Caleb jumped out a picked one for us to take back to our condo... and here he is cutting it up. i had never tried fresh sugarcane before, but it was delicious!

the next day we made it to another beach on the way to the airport. it was nice because you could see the mountains in the background... 

but it wasn't long before our 5 day vacation was over and we were headed back to Oahu. here is a view from our plane :) i love Maui!

random happenings

these are just a few pictures from random things that have happened in the past couple weeks... first, there was a hula show going on in the middle of Ala Moana, the big open-air shopping center in Honolulu. there was a big crowd around this group of hawaiian women dancing in traditional style to pretty music :)

and this is a shot of part of a group i went camping with at Bellows! we made a fire and partied the night away... it was super windy at night so we had trouble keeping our tents up & staying warm, but it was such a great time!

and this is the view we woke up to the next morning...

and another!! :D

this is me & my roomie out at Waikiki for a snorkel session! :)

and here we are again after a play day out in the mud during a flash flood watch! a group of us went out and played kickball in a muddy field :) it was so much fun!

big island trip!

i just got back from a weekend at the Big Island! this was another trip with the Leisure Center here on campus, which was so much fun as always! we started off the weekend by spending our first night in Kona (the home of kona coffee!) which was a really awesome little town with lots of restaurants and shops to go to! they even had a bench like the one Forrest Gump sat on :)

our first group stop was at Kealakekua Bay, the famous bay where Captain Cook was killed...

then we made our way over to Pu'uhonua O Honaunau (City of Refuge) which is one of the best places to snorkel in all of Hawaii! there were lots of fish, colorful coral, a live reef, and even sea turtles! i never knew snorkeling was so much fun... this was a definite favorite!

here are some of the underwater beauties i got to see :)

there were also some historical sights we got to explore here, such as these sweet tiki's! except that we later found out that we weren't supposed to touch them... oops :/

our next stop was at the beautiful Punaluu Black Sand Beach for a picnic lunch.

i was able to get up close enough to take this picture of a Hawaiian Hawksbill Turtle!

then it was time for the volcano... the main attraction of Big Island! here we are at a steam vent in Volcanoes National Park:

and finally... the only active lava flow on earth! this was as close as we were able to get because of the dangerous health affects the smoke can have...

although the previous picture is pretty freakin awesome, a group of us decided that it was not good enough. so we went back to see the lava around midnight when the coast was clear & the guards were gone so that we could get closer... and it was so worth it.

we hiked about 45 minutes over dried lava that sometimes shattered under our feet until we felt the steam rising from below us. then we reached the edge of the cliff about 100 yards from the volcano where we saw the lava flow right into the ocean. it was the most amazing thing i have ever seen. and i got a picture with it! though it doesn't portray what we actually saw in the least...

after the best night ever, we got up and drove out to the properly named Rainbow Falls:

where we hiked up a trail and found a fun jungle area :)

and then we made another stop at Kaumana Cave, which is actually a skylight in a 25-mile long lava tube that was created in 1881 by a lava flow from Mauna Loa. inside there were really long thin roots hanging from the ceiling all the way down to the floor. it was really wet inside so we would occasionally get hit in the head with a fat water droplet!

this is a picture that we stopped to take during our 4-mile scenic drive. i love it.

and here is the 400 ft Akaka Falls!

we stopped in Waimea Town for lunch... we were obviously worn out from the weekend.

and last but not least, a little Black Sand Beach stop before heading to the airport! i even found a piece of green sand attached to dried lava on this beach (there is a green sand beach in Big Island that we didn't get to see, but still pretty awesome).

and here we loading the plane on our way back to Oahu! what a fabulous trip :D