Hawai'i - Day One continued...

Okay, so back to where I left off. I love flying, so getting on the plane and taking off was very exciting. The flight itself was relatively uneventful, though I was sitting next to and amongst a large group of high school girls flying out to Hawai'i for a band competition. The girl next to me wouldn't sit still for the entire five hour flight, and kept taking pictures of herself and one of her buddies. *sigh*.

The approach to the islands was very cool. Five hours of blue ocean and some clouds broken by 30 minutes of flying past really beautiful drops of land. We saw the Big Island first, with its volcanoes, then Maui, then Molokai and L'anai, and finally looking down saw Diamondhead and Oahu. We flew over Honolulu and Waikiki, and past the island, to turn and bank in and down and land in Honolulu. It was a beautiful approach.

I got off the plane, found the rental place, got my car, and with the help of Jeff's navigation device, made my way out of Honolulu and heading towards Waianae (the town where the school is). In a valley next to Waianae is the town of Makaha, where the resort and golf club was that I was staying at. I got there in good time. What I saw on the way up there gave me second thoughts. The beaches all the way up the coast were covered in makeshift tents of all kinds, and old, broken down cars. I'd been warned by the lady at the rental car agency that those tents belonged to homeless people. After a while, the beaches cleared slightly and I found myself in Waianae, passing the high school.

This area looked pretty rough. In my mind I was comparing it to the rundown areas of Delray and Deerfield Beach in Florida, and the shabbier parts of Watts and Santa Ana where my current high school is. A lot of it reminded me of towns I'd seen in Central Texas, as most of the soil on the island is a deep red color, and quite a bit of this area tries to be agricultural. The whole time I was thinking, "where is the tropical paradise I've been reading about?". But I had been forwarned by my readings about this area. I guess I wasn't quite prepared for the reality of it. These things always look different in my head.

The resort was beautiful. The only thing that kept me from totally enjoying it was that it was soooooooo humid. It was hot too, but that had something to do with the fact that I had worn jeans for the flight. But the humidity was oppressive. I mean, I almost think it was worse than Florida, but I'm not sure since I've become so accustomed to SoCal living. I immediately missed the cool, dry air of CDM and the SoCal coast. I'd brought my big Museum Crew jacket with me, and I knew right away that if I moved there, I would never get a chance to wear it. Now I know what that book I read meant when it said that a true islander gives all of their cold weather clothes to the Salvation Army.

Once I got my room, I pretty much passed out (since I'd been up since 4am my time, and that was a long flight) until dinner time-ish. I headed back out for dinner in Honolulu, wanting to explore a bit. I was pretty tired though, and didn't end up doing much exploring. I went back to the resort and that ended my day. The weather was pretty dull, so the sunset wasn't exciting or anything.

That's all for Day One.