Island Hopping

I am writing this on my Blackberry at the Maui airport. This is not the ideal blog writing scenario but my friends are late to pick me up and I am bored.
I am getting back from my mini-trip to Hilo. My cousin, David lives there and his mom and our Aunt Nancy came for a visit. This is probably the worst time they could come: me with no extra money for a plane ticket and the Dts students arriving and our school about to start. My cousin tried to convince me to come via facebook and clearly it worked since I went. Luckily the money part worked out due to contributions from my cousin, aunts and parents. It turned out that I had a day off while the aunts would be in Hilo so I asked my bosses if I could go over for about 2 and a half days. They said yes and off I went.

My cousin, David decided we should surprise the aunts, which was a great idea. I pretended to ask them to help me read a map and they were surprised to see me standing there. My plane had come in about thirty minutes before theirs so David picked me up to plan. While we were deciding on the tourist scenario, David's seven year old son, Rowan said, "They are going to figure out you are not a tourist when you get in the car." He didn't understand that they might recognize me since they'd known me since I was born.

Hilo is pretty different from Maui. The area David lives in is a bit similar to the town I live in now. There is lots of rain and lots of vegetation. But where David's part of the Big Island looks like something out of The Lord of the Rings, Maui mainly looks like the Hawaii you see on TV: sandy beaches and sunshine. It was interesting to see all the differences. My favorite place we went had a huge waterfall and was near a giant Banyan tree. We have a big Banyan tree in Maui but this one was unattended so you could climb in it. It was really cool.

My cousin's house was really spacious and I am pretty sure it was bigger than the house I currently live in with 30 people. My only complaint about the accommodations was the loud roosters crowing at all hours of the day and night. They must not have good internal clocks because it definitely wasn't sunrise when they were loudly and obnoxiously crowing.

Quickly my trip was over and I headed back to Maui. Some of the students had already arrived when I got there. Tomorrow we are going on Exodus, our get to know you camping trip. I'll be out of technological contact for a few days but I am sure I will have great stories when I get back.