Birthdays and Kwaanza

I took a lil' blog break but never fear, I am back. I am pretty sure I have yet to write about our Kwaanza fun. On December 26th, all of us on base went across the island to Kihei to a touristy beach. It was pretty crowded with people trying to get as much sun as possible before returning to whatever frigid wasteland they came from. We had a lot of fun bodyboarding and I saw one of the biggest mullet owners ever. A great day!

I saw a flier in town that advertised a Kwaanza celebration. For those of you unfamiliar with Kwaanza, it is an African American holiday between Christmas and New Year's. There are many traditions that I don't fully understand but when I saw the words, "soul food potluck" I knew I had to be there. Soul food may very well be my favorite genre of food. We went to a local elementary school and found possibly the largest concentration I had ever seen on the island. There just are not very many black people here. I miss them. We hung out, ate and played Kwaanza bingo. We were going to get our faces painted like African animals but the line was too long.

The 28th was Amy's birthday. I am very intent on making people's birthdays as good as I can. Since Amy is my closest friend here, I had to make her birthday special. I did not let her know what the plans were. We started the day by going to IHOP for breakfast. Then we went to the Maui Ocean Center. It is this aquarium that Amy really likes. I had never been there and my previous unsatisfactory aquarium experience made me skeptical. It ended up being cool. They have some really amazing fish and it is cool to think that they are all located in the ocean around Hawaii. The sharks and the jellyfish were my favorites.

After the aquarium, we went to play mini-golf. Amy and I both got hole-in-ones. Seth did not, haha. Then we came back home and watched more episodes of Lost. We are pretty into it. We have been getting the discs from Netflix so we can't watch them exactly when we want them but we didn't have to pay for the whole thing. I made Amy a rice krispie cake since she can't eat white flour. I think she had fun. If not, at least I did.

Now we are back to work. I have a lot to do after a weeklong vacation. I am most excited about exploring my new job. Hopefully I will still be able to put my heart into housing as well.