Saturday morning I woke up early and headed down to Waikiki beach with Zach Tepper, a friend of my next-door neighbor that goes to school out here. We laid out, read on the beach, and of course got in the beautiful ocean water and floated for a while. Zach had to leave around 12pm to head into work at Jamba Juice, so I decided to stay at the beach a while longer. I walked the boardwalk for a good ways and walked the Waikiki shops for a bit. Then I headed back to campus to talk to the family. After a fun conversation, I headed to the huge Ala Moana Shopping Mall, because I heard about the great sales going on. A couple hours later with a couple of extra bags, I returned to school with some amazing purchases! (Banana Republic was my friend this weekend…)
On Sunday, I went along with Corrie and her family on their journey to the North Shore. Now for those of you that are not up on your Hawaiian geography or knowledge, the North Shore is known for the huge waves for the big surfing events that take place in January and February. On our drive to we took the scenic route, which was absolutely gorgeous. It reminded me of Highway 1 in California, and a little bit of the Great Ocean Road in Australia. Words and pictures cannot do the view justice! We stopped at a few lookout points, went through some small towns, went past Chinaman’s Hat, stopped at a shrimp shack, and arrived at a cute little town for some good shopping. I bought this beautiful necklace, a swimming suit wrap, and a Hawaii license plate to hang up in my room. Before we left the town, we grabbed the most amazing snow cones (shaved ice on top, homemade ice cream underneath, and great syrups to top it off) from a place called Matsumoto. I really need to find another place like it. Next stop was Turtle Beach. Here we found three Green Hawaiian Sea turtles sun bathing and many surfers. Then it was time to start heading back to Honolulu, but before we completely left the beauty, we stopped at this cute little restaurant and had an amazing meal.
Oh I forgot to add that by the shrimp shack there were these few little shops that had these creepy manikins! I had Corrie pose by one of them… take a look at them for yourself!
Don't these wonderful people make you want to shop there?
Monday, I joined Corrie and her family once again to the Polynesian Culture Center. This center was filled with information about the Pacific Islands. It had six villages in it: Samoa, Aotearoa, Fiji, Hawaii, Tahiti, and Tonga. Each village had different presentations, activities, and reconstructions of what a village would look like. I really enjoyed visiting the one from Fiji. Kim, they greeted us say Bula and there was hut that looked like the one we stayed in at Coral View! They had canoe rides as well, but we did not have enough time to take that. That evening following dinner, the performers put on a show. It was amazing. My favorite part was probably the fire dancing.
I have a feeling it’s going to be hard to beat my first weekend here in Hawaii, but then again there are still many things I want to do, hike Diamond Head, see Pearl Harbor, do some more hiking, surf, and whatever else is thrown my direction. I do know that I am absolutely thankful to Corrie, Lisa (Corrie’s housemate), and Corrie’s family (Lauren, Dan, Ashton, Tessa, and Claire). They were such a blessing to me this weekend, and reminded me so much of my family. Thank you all for being so wonderful to me!
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