Life Is Good!

We absolutely love where we live and we feel so lucky and happy we made our dream of living close to the ocean come true! This evening I went for a walk and on my way back I turned the corner and the ocean was right there facing me. It brought a sense of calmness over me and I couldn't help but smile. It's weird, but sometimes we forget we are living in Hawaii, we get caught up in other things but then we look out our kitchen window and see the ocean or drive 10 minutes to an awesome beach and we say, "wow, we live here and love it!" My walk was definitely one of those ah-ha moments. I sat and watched as the outrigger canoes were speeding by. We truly love being here.

One of the things we've been doing in the mornings together before one of us heads off to work has been exploring. We love hopping on the scoot or boot scoot (it's official name) and finding beach access through some incredible residential areas. We can't believe some of the houses we've seen with the ocean as their back yards. The picture below is an example of that, homes are inches away from those palm trees. And that big building in the background is just a few blocks from our apartment. Also we've started a collection of sea glass so it's been fun walking along the beach finding pieces.

One of our explorations was to find Dog The Bounty Hunter's home. Zach knew the street to look down and he was told he wouldn't miss it. We definitely didn't miss it since his face is plastered to his gate. Zach was beyond thrilled.

Where we live there's also a lot of marinas and canals, which I think is awesome! I love seeing all the boats, kayaks, and paddle boards out in the water. The other morning on our way to the beach we stopped to watch a little Christmas parade and we're hoping we'll get to see the Christmas light boat parade in a few weekends. We are getting pretty excited for Christmas, we can't wait to decorate our apartment!

One different thing about living on the island is at the end of each month people put their "junk" out on the curb to be collected on trash day. But before trash day people are welcome to take all they want and all they can carry. We talked about maybe getting some things if we saw something we needed and in okay condition. One night I came home from work and saw a yellow shoe rack sitting out front our front door with our shoes in it. Then a few nights later Zach had lunch with me at work and he was so excited because on his drive over to meet me he saw a leather chair on the side of the road. He told me he was going to check it out on his way home. When I got home that night I was greeted with a "new" brown leather chair in our living room. Then Zach flopped onto it and pushed it into its reclined position. He loves it. At first I wasn't too fond of it but now I'm glad we have it. I just can't believe he walked home with it over his back. And the other morning we picked up wooden dinning table chair that I hope to sand and paint. 

Zach loves kickin' back in his leather-bound scholarly chair.

We are still working on setting up our home. We are hoping to get our bed situation figured out and a sofa soon. But we love our apartment. It's so nice to come home to something that is ours. This is our table and 2 plates. It's not much but we are happy.

Now we can't wait to have visitors to share this awesome place with!

Thanksgiving

This was my 3rd Thanksgiving away from home and missing out on the fall season. But I am extremely thankful for where I am right now and that Zach and I have embarked on this new journey together. We both have so much to be thankful for…each other, our friends and family, our health, our jobs, our apartment, and of course living in Hawaii. 

 This was our first Thanksgiving together in a long time and the day was perfect! Zach had to work 5 hours but gets double time pay, which is sweet. I had Wednesday and Thursday off so I baked pies and walked to explore our area a little more…we live so close to the ocean, however it’s not the beach, you can’t go swimming because it’s designated for launching boats and jet skis—now if only we had some water toys.. Our plan was to try and squeeze in a beach trip, seeing as we’ve never been to the beach on Thanksgiving so when Zach got off of work he met me at the farm and we headed to the beach it was nice to get in the water and Zach caught some barrels, which he loved. 

 Thanksgiving on the farm was great, we got to hangout out with our farmily and meet new people. But the best part was seeing how they cooked the food, it was very Hawaiian style. They made an emu, basically it’s an under ground oven. They dug a pit in the ground then placed fire wood with rocks over the wood. They lit the wood on fire to get the rocks nice and hot and when the rocks were hot enough they placed banana leaves over the rocks and placed all the food wrapped in tinfoil on top of the banana leaves and placed more banana leaves on top of the food and then covered everything with burlap sacs and left it to cook pretty much all day. They ended up cooking 3 turkeys and 4 chickens along with a lot of cassava, breadfruit, and sweet potato, all harvested from the farm. 

 We enjoyed all the fixings and the turkey was delicious. My favorite part of the day was spending it with 3 WWOOFers from Sweden, who never experienced Thanksgiving before. One of the girls kept saying, “I want to do it how the Americans do it” so she became the turkey baster despite being a vegetarian and not eating any. And she kept saying she was so full but still wanted pie, we highly encouraged her…she was so funny.

The newest member of the farmily

The emu pit

My baked pies. I was a little worried they wouldn't taste good or there wouldn't be enough so I asked Zach to bring a pie from work and when it was pie time he realized his pie had to be cooked. Needless to say we now have a fresh berry pie in our freezer. Luckily my pies were a hit and there was plenty of dessert.

It was a great Thanksgiving! 

We are very grateful for all our family and friends and hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving!

Apartment!!!

Just a few days short of living in a tent on the farm for two months we found and moved into our very own apartment and it's a great feeling. We love our new apartment! It's an unfurnished studio, which leaves us with a lot of possibilities about the lay-out and decorating! We love the location, it's close to everything we need: shops, restaurants, grocery stores (Costco is about 5 blocks away), the beach, and my work is about a 10-15 minute scooter ride or a 25 minute bus ride. Zach's work is about a 40 minute scooter ride, I'm grateful he doesn't mind his commute. The apartment gets great breeze and it's full of natural light.  Oh, and the best part...we have an ocean view. The ocean is just straight down the road so we are able to look out our kitchen and bathroom window and see the ocean through the tops of the trees. We are loving it!

We are both so happy!

Our bathroom has lots of storage space including a full sized closet.

The only thing we don't totally like about the apartment is the shower--it's really small and the shower head faces the opening of the shower so water tends to get all over the floor if the shower curtain isn't placed properly. But we love the ocean view!

Lots of built-in shelving and storage!

Bathroom through the door on the right and the kitchen is through the door on the left.

Our huge walk-in closet. Zach is thinking about turning this into the bedroom to maximize the rest of the living space. I'm not so sure about that.

Our kitchen is full with lots of cupboards, a stove/oven, and a full sized fridge. 

More shelving, which is currently being used as our dresser for the time being.

We decided the best and fastest way for not sleeping on the floor was to get a nice air mattress until we can get a real bed, it works well for now. 

So, the last couple of days we have been getting house wares and groceries. Things are coming along and we are just so happy! 

Haunted Farms, Jobs, Tsunami Warnings, oh my!

This past week has been a whirlwind of events and emotions. Starting new jobs, while still living in the tent and semi working on the farm has been kinda crazy to say the least. For me personally I've felt really stressed out, I don't feel balanced or settled. Zach and I had a night where we talked about everything...did we make a mistake trying to move to Hawaii? Have we bitten off more than we can chew? Did we really think things through? And we came to the conclusion that it's not a mistake it's just a lot harder than we both anticipated. Of course moving somewhere new is hard and of course trying to make a life for ourselves on the island is even harder. Although, right now we feel frustrated and stressed out we know thing will get better. I pray that this beginning is the toughest part for us.

We both work at Wholefoods but at two separate stores. Mine is in east Honolulu and Zach's is in Kailua, about 15 minutes north of the farm. I'm working in the bakery/coffee bar and Zach is working in the prepared foods department. I have been working the evening shift, 2:30-11pm and I've worked 7 days straight (not my favorite) but we are both glad for the hours and money that will come. So how it's been working out is we wake up around 7:30am and try to do a little work on the farm so we are still contributing, then I get ready for work and head the bus stop by 12:30. The bus is about an hour ride and drops me off right in front of work. John is kind enough to let Zach drive his car to pick me up at 11:00 but I usually get out about 11:15, then we drive the 25 minute drive back to the farm and are in our tent and asleep around midnight.

Zach started working yesterday and it went well, he thinks he'll enjoy working in prepared foods. He has never worked with food before so he'll be learning a lot. He got to chop vegetables, cracked 500 eggs, stocked the salad bar, and helped out in the kitchen. As of right now his schedule is 11:00am-7:30pm so he is still able to pick me up. Although this current set up is not ideal we are doing our best to make it work.

Working in the bakery has been interesting, I don't feel like I received a proper training so I've been learning as I go. I basically prepare breads and pastries that need to go out on the shelves. I cut up cake slices, bake cookies, and help customers with cakes and pies. I trained a few days in the coffee/juice bar, which I enjoyed and hope to work more in that area. Luckily the store is very busy so the 8 hours go by pretty fast. We are grateful that we found jobs now we just need to find an apartment.

With our delima of working in different areas, living on the farm, and having to rely on the bus, which stops running at 10:00pm we thought it best to buy a moped with the intention of me driving it to and from work. Let's just say it's going to take me longer than we both thought to feel comfortable driving it the 16 miles. But Zach loves it and drives it all over and it does give us more independence. 

At the beginning of the month the farm decided they would host a haunted house to raise founds for the farm. It was a haunted farm theme featuring several things that we do on a daily basis, but much spookier. We had a real live chicken slaughtering section, a Black Soldier Fly maggot dinner buffet, a Mongoose petting zoo with real real Mongoose, a Bobcat Tractor gone wild, and of course a deranged chainsaw murderer. We asked for $5 donations for entrance, and the first night the farm raised over $400! The second night was more of the same, only things got really scary when the National Weather Service Tsunami warnings started going off and we were forced to close down the Haunted Farm and head for high ground. I was at work, and thankfully we got to close early that night. Zach picked me up and he said that the roads were packed with people forced to evacuate the lower coastline areas and that all the gas stations and grocery stores were packed with people trying to get last minute provisions in case the wave actually did hit and cause any damage. While he was driving the Deep Purple song "Burn" came on and it was the perfect song for that moment, driving along the coast of Hawaii, racing an approaching tsunami and the pending road closures to pick me up. We got back to the farm and talked with the other WWOOOF'ers for a bit before deciding that we felt we were safe enough and were going to bed. When we got up in the morning, turns out we were the only ones left on the island! Just kidding! Nothing really happened. The tide maybe rose an extra foot and nothing came from it thankfully. It was kinda cool to be here to experience a real tsunami warning though.

This weeks mission is to find an apartment!

 

Zach doing some farm work. Here he is burning an Ali Koa tree stump that is trying to grow despite our best efforts to kill it.

A picture of the two live Mongoose that we caught for the Haunted Farm. Despite not looking like much, these things are nasty and quite fierce. We didn't let anyone really pet them.

 

Here is Sara, doing her best Vana White with our new scooter and helmet!

Tantalus Hike

We both received great news this week…we got job offers from Wholefoods!!! More about that to come later… 

On Sunday we went on an amazing hike. John took 11 of us and two dogs through the woods. We were in awe of the gigantic trees and roots that lead the way. We sloshed through mud and climbed up steep hills while grabbing on to bamboo to help us climb. Along the way we ate strawberry guavas and ferns. At one part of the hike we ended up at the crater of an old volcano and we were happily surprised to find a swing hanging from a huge tree branch, of course everyone had to take a turn and swing. At another part of the hike we came across an awesome tree, Zach decided to climb it and got up to about 30 feet above ground. At the end of the hike we came out on top of a ridge and we could see all of Moana Valley and Honolulu, Waikiki, and Diamond Head. The view was incredible. Coming back from the ridge we encountered a guy walking with a wild pig draped over his back that he had just hunted with the help of 9 hunting dogs. Wild pigs are the largest, non-native predators on the island so they have to be hunted. John was a great tour guide throughout the whole hike, he knows so much about Hawaii it’s remarkable. The hike was about a 6 miles and took up most of our Sunday, when we got back to the farm we were beat but we were glad we went!

Huge roots that lined the path

Hiking through bamboo

Up in the tree 

Us and John

Diamond Head on the right, Waikiki in the middle, and Honolulu to the left

Dead wild pig

Pali Highway lookout

 A little video clip from the hike

We are excited to see what this week brings. I will write another post soon about our jobs.

Until then…

Month One

Well, it's been one month since we arrived in Hawaii and became a part of Nalolicious Farm.

We thought it would be appropriate to share fun/interesting facts we've learned about Hawaii for our one month mark....

It is not illegal to ride in the back of truck beds but people inside of vehicles have to ware seatbelts.

The highest speed limit on the island is 60mph and it's only on one part of the freeway.

Flip flops are called slippers.

There are stray cats everywhere.

The Pitbull is the state dog.

Weed is called paco loco and medical marijuana cards are only good for growing your own weed, not for buying it.

There are a lot of geckos and they crawl around everything.

The surf is measured from the back of the wave instead of the front, and is also measured at half of what it really is. On a 2-4ft day, the waves would actually be 4-8ft.

There is not much evening. When the sun goes down it gets dark quick.

Contrary to popular belief, the water is not as warm as bathwater. It is not cold, just not as warm as advertised.
Coconuts are a lot more work than they are worth.

The beach is our favorite past time!

This week 5 more WWOOFers joined the farm...it's getting a bit crowded.
We are really hoping we find some jobs soon.

 We went to the beach a lot this week

 Our lovely ladder stairs to our tent

 Twitch watching Zach battle a coconut

{yes that's a hatchet}

 The best part of Zach's week--manning the bobcat

First Visitors!!

The best part of this past week was having Princess, Peter, and Becky on the island! Of course Princess and Peter (they are on a US road trip) had to visit the 50th state, and luckily Becky also got to come. I wish we had an apartment already so they could have stayed with us but I’m so glad I got to see them! Unfortunately, I have been sick for the past few days so I only got to see them Friday evening and Sunday afternoon. 

Friday night was quite the adventure. We went with a few other WWOOFers to Honolulu and then met up with Princess, Peter, and Becky. There was an event going on called First Friday, it takes place every first Friday of the month and streets are closed off, live music is played, and art galleries are open to browse through. It sounded fun but our night led us to an “underground” art studio were poetry was supposedly being read, ukuleles were being played, and various other acts. When we got there nothing was going on, they were still setting things up. Finally things started and the first act was an excerpt reading from an author’s book…it was weird and we decided to bail. Luckily, we got John’s car to drive back so we dropped P,P, & B off at their hotel and then headed back to the farm, it was way past our bed time and I felt sick. 

 On Saturday I laid on the couch wrapped up in my sleep bag all day. 

On Sunday morning we were suppose to go snorkeling with Princess, Peter, and Becky but I still wasn’t feeling good. But later in the afternoon we met up with them, we got shaved ice, went to Waimanalo beach, showed them around the farm, then drove them to the bus stop and said good-bye. It was a great afternoon and I’m so grateful I got to spend time with them and that we had our first set of visitors! 

We are still on the job search; I didn’t get that receptionist position…I honestly didn’t think it would take this long to find jobs. But we keep reminding ourselves that we need to be patient and proactive. 

At the artsy studio

Shaved ice

Waimanalo beach