Waimea Bay and Reading a Lot!

Last weekend, we pretty much settled into the home and didn’t do too much. We’ve been pretty much homebodies lately…saving money for Maui with Rich and Allison. They come next weekend. So pretty much we’ve been doing cheap stuff lately. We went to a movie and saw “The Last Kiss.” It was a decent movie. We laughed, Amy cried, business as usual really.

Amy was being Artsy with these shots of Waimea BayBeach park. There was a cool church on the right and a beautiful tree and crashing waves on the left behind the rock.

The only other thing we did all weekend was go to Waimea Bay for the whole day. We went swimming in somewhat murky waters and rode the waves in and out all day. I finished reading yet another book and we laid out on the beach for a long time. It’s a pretty beach, and pretty big, but we were surrounded by a ton of people and very few of them were speaking English. We got some French, Spanish, Russian…maybe, Japanese and I think Chinese. It was pretty packed around us, but there was another place even MORE packed around a giant 30-foot rock. And what would you do if YOU were near a 30 foot rock in the ocean? Jump off?! INDEED…same as me!
Here’s a picture of me jumping; I’m about half-way there by then. It was a LOT of fun. I only jumped once, but it was a really fun time. At the top, kids…like 12 year old kids were stepping up and throwing themselves off with one step. I inched and inched to the ledge…looked down and saw the kid who just jumped and waited for him to pass and then just jumped. The water smashed into my feet, then my arms and shoulders and finally my nose and face. It was a really crazy second and a half by it was a lot of fun.

Other than that, our lives have been school and school has been our lives. We watch movies and we relax, we go to the beach and we go shopping. Mostly we read a lot. School has been getting more stressful, but at the same time, it’s getting more predictable. I know what is going to suck and what will end affably. The kids are getting more used to me, but I am not entirely sure what I expect of them. Some are doing well…Here, kids who perform AT or above grade level are referred to as GT (gifted/ talented kids). They would be normal seventh graders at home, but not GT. Our troubled kids are referred to as kolohe. They take up about 80% of the time of class time and consist of about 20% of the class…I wonder if this demographic exists everywhere or just in Wai’anae schools.

At school, the kids are asked to read 1,000,000 words as part of their literacy push. As a show of support, I’m doing the million word campaign with them and I’m already doing alright…I’m currently at 626, 537 words and I’ve read 8 books and check how many words they have in them on this website. I am currently finishing The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis and after that I’ll be reading Eldest the second book of the Inheritance Trilogy by Chris Paolini after these two I’ll be over one million and more than halfway done with the teachers 2 million word chart. I’ve got more than any other teacher in the school. Yup, I’m bragging about reading…got a problem with that? I thought not.

I am just relaxing this weekend too, still saving money for Maui with Rich and Allison. So until we get back with something to show you or tell you….

Falls, Beaches and A Night on the Town

Once again, I am a week late in my updates. It appears as though our car problems will never cease. We drove a Nissan Sentra for about 10 more days…again. The car dealership told us that there was nothing wrong with our car’s brakes. Even after Goodyear gave us a list of things that needed to be attended to, Tony’s Auto Plex still maintains that nothing is wrong and so here we sit after visiting again this weekend to regain our lovely focus. It runs and we get to and from where we need to go easily enough. Can’t be too upset with that je sposé.Last Saturday we went to Sandy Beach after hiking up to Manoa Falls. The trip up to the falls was REALLY cool. We saw plenty of amazing plants and the hike itself was easy. The falls were less than impressive, mostly because it’s so dry this time of year. I guess there are some falls that are always flowing, so we’ll have to see how it goes. We did get to see some amazing Rain Forest type places on the hike. Manoa is a really cool place, it looks like they filmed some of the scenes for Jurassic Park in this opening. You come out of a covered trail with a huge drop off on your right and you see this opening! It was amazing. A little later on in the trip, we saw a few picturesque kind of places. This huge tree fit the girls pretty well. And the branches wrapping over the trail seemed like a really cool shot too. Amy and I were really excited to see bamboo growing in the wild, Megan was less than impressed (We’ll blame the Italian in her).

Isn't this such a crazy view?!

This is Manoa Falls...not so impressive without rain...It was still muggy as hell there though...

There they are in the tree...neat huh?

Later, after the hike, we went further east than we’ve been yet. We went to Sandy Beach past Koko Head. It is where the Blowhole is. The Blowhole is a hole on the top of volcanic underwater caves. When the water collides within the caves it has only one exit, the Blowhole. It actually does look like a whale sometimes, but you have to be patient. The beach itself was great. We saw some really cool shells and fish in tide pools close to the Blowhole. The waves were absolutely crazy, the swells were sometimes up to 10 feet. If the waves catch you, you’ll know it. Amy and I went in and got wrecked something fierce. Amy got it twice:

You see, the wave breaks and you can go with it, but it’ll flip you a couple times, which is fun. After we got ourselves up, I thought it was awesome, Ames was a bit more struck, but I got up and saw the next wave, so I dove back under the next crest and through the wave. Amy was not so lucky…the wave clipped her and threw her back down…it was a rough day to wear a two piece bathing suit with no straps…we’ll leave it at that.

We went to Turtle Beach on Sunday, also known as Cabanas by some as it is right behind the Makaha Cabanas (…imagine…so clever…). We saw a few turtles swimming, one was surfing in the wave. If we had a camera with a faster shudder, we would have pictures to show you, but alas, none such luck. We stayed at the beach from nine in the morning until around two in the afternoon when it started to sprinkle. It would have passed but I wanted to get off the beach. After that, we went to Costco and got some cheap gas. Costco is my new heaven…it’s so fun to get free samples as you shop for zillions of hotdogs. Such a good day.

This past week, I celebrated my 24^th birthday! It was a regular week besides that though. In fact, it was a very regular week. On Wednesday, my kids were out of control. A very happy birthday indeed…I couldn’t get them through the last bits of the experiment, so I had to stop and admonish them as a class, all the while apologizing to the eight kids who were behaving. So other than a rough school day, we went to the Outback for dinner. A couple of long islands and a nice big ole grilled Ahi steak later (love me some swordfish!!!), along with everyone else’s meals and a pile of cheese fries, we racked up a 100 dollar bill. Yikes! Other than all that, the week went by as usual.

This weekend we finally got out…after the whole car thing…we went out to Dave and Busters with some other teachers, then went out to a few different bars in Waikiki: Kelly O’Neil’s, Moose McGillicutty’s, and finally to Bobby G’s Spot. It was a fair night all-in-all.

Kelly O'Niel's

Bobby G's

So, Until I get something else fun to talk about...or maybe um....maybe...something....school-related! Then I'll write again I suppose...