Thanksgiving Firsts

Thanksgiving in Maui was quite an experience! I experienced a lot of 'firsts' this Thanksgiving, one of the major ones being that it all happened in Maui!

Some other Thanksgiving 'firsts':

- First time to be away from home for Thanksgiving. It had to happen sometime! I called my family just after they had finished eating and I still had to finish the dessert I was making for our Thanksgiving. I missed them a lot.

- First time to go to a Thanksgiving Eve service. Hope Chapel put on an amazing service. The church was decorated in an enchanting way and my favorite part of it all was the hula. Every time we have a special occasion there is always hula and it is always my favorite. I like that every move means something and together it tells a story. It really is a beautiful and incredibly graceful dance.

- First time to make pumpkin muffins. :) Well, leave it to me to wait until the day of Thanksgiving to go to the grocery store. At least there were lots of other people there... it made me feel better for being so last minute. Of course they were out of canned pumpkin, EXCEPT in the last two Pumpkin Bread Kits left on the shelf. I contemplated buying the kit just for the canned pumpkin and still making pumpkin pie with that, but after so much time in the store I gave up on that idea and decided to make pumpkin muffins with cream cheese icing. They were good! 

- First time to eat Thanksgiving meal with 25-30 other people. Compared to the max of about 12 people that are usually at our house it seemed like a whole lot! The interns were all invited to go to the Walshes home. Four of us went and the other four went to other homes. So Kim, Joshua, John and I all joined the Walshes and several other families, including the Kims. The Kims are a family I've gotten to know pretty well since I've been here. Their daughter Kaimilani is in tweens and her mom Stephanie is always inviting me over to make jewelry with her (she has more beads than all the beads I've ever seen combined! And she makes beautiful jewelry). I love hanging out with the Kims. It was was truly a blessing to be invited to this Thanksgiving!

First time to hang around outside on Thanksgiving, let alone eat our Thanksgiving meal outside! Obviously it makes sense when you live in Maui and the weather was perfect for a meal outside. Usually I put on nice pants and a sweater for my Thanksgiving outfit, but this time I wore a dress... outside.

First time to get made fun of for "dressing up" on Thanksgiving. :) Dressing up was wearing a fairly casual, in my opinion, dress - nothing fancy. I definitely wasn't the only one to wear a dress, but it did get commented on. I could have worn shorts and a t-shirt and that would not have gotten commented on. Hilarious!

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Countdown till home: 3 weeks and 1 day

Christmas All Around

One month from today I will be on a red-eye flight headed home for Christmas! I don't think I am more excited about anything else but going home for Christmas. Of course, as soon as the month of October rolls around everyone starts talking about Christmas, stores begin getting their Christmas things out, Christmas songs are playing everywhere, and half the commercials on TV have a Christmas theme of some sort (like the Hershey's commercial that's been playing for years and years now where the little kisses play "We Wish You a Merry Christmas"). Even though all these things are happening here in Maui just as much as anywhere else (well, maybe not quite as much) it still feels nothing like Christmas around here. And I don't think many people here disagree with that statement...

Some of the things that make it feel like Christmas to me are cold weather, scarfs, mittens, pea coats, snow flurries, breathing in crisp air, eating warm things like oatmeal and chili and drinking warm things like cider and hot chocolate, lots and lots of Christmas lights, evergreen trees and their smell, the smell of cinnamon or cranberry, many more things, but mostly being with your family and the people you most enjoy spending your time with. 

So things are a little different here. For instance, yesterday I walked into the children's ministry building to switch out my laundry, because that is where the washer and dryer are where we do our laundry, and I immediately heard some people playing and singing in a room down the hall. The best part was not only that they were singing "Santa's Coming to Town" followed by "Silent Night" but that these songs were accompanied by the ukelele. Only in Hawaii will you hear Christmas songs being played on the ukelele. It was great and definitely made me laugh a little to myself only because I had never heard it before. So that's Christmas Maui-style for ya. :)

Counting down the days till I'm home! 

(that would be 31 in case you were wondering)

Pics from a couple years ago when we went looking at Christmas lights:

Me and Christian

Erin and Christian

Intern Retreat '08: Keanae Peninsula

It started and ended with a very windy (as in hairpin turns, not gusts of wind) drive in a 15-passenger van (plus a van for cargo) with the Hope Chapel interns, Pastor Craig, Janna, Jason and Marla. We set out for an adventure to the east side of Maui where everywhere you go it looks like your living in a postcard. We stayed in what they call the Kepler Cabin on the Keanae Peninsula, just off the Road to Hana, and spent the weekend full of hiking, swimming, cave exploring, picture taking, game playing and eating lots of food, lots!

Just to give you a little taste of what went on as we skipped work on Friday and church on Sunday to pack in a few fun-filled things that are a must when you live in Maui:

- We stayed on Keanae Peninsula - In a little cabin all twelve of us stayed and the best part was all sharing one bathroom. haha. Okay, maybe not the best part! We just got to chill together, get to know each other, play cards, and rest. Then you could just step outside and have a great view of the ocean just a few steps away.

Kepler Cabin where we stayed.

Just outside the cabin.

The group in front of our 15-passenger van.

- Hiking through the Bamboo Forest - starting out easy, squeezing through the thick of the bamboo stalks, climbing over slippery rocks in a river bed and finally finding ourselves looking at a beautiful waterfall and swimming in the pool there. On the way back we even swung on vines just like Tarzan!

Before we got to the bamboo part of the Bamboo Forest hike.

Walking along the rocks. Actually, more like crawling when you actually get going, because it's so slippery!

Girls in front of the waterfall.

Swinging on a vine!

- Exploring Wainapanapa - Swimming in a pool where there are caves to explore, swimming and feeling our way through the cave in the pitch black, and emerging into the sunlight at the top. Then just taking in the beautiful view at Wainapanapa.

In the water by the Wainapanapa caves.

- Ohea Gulch - This is also known as the Seven Sacred Pools, but apparently that's only what tourists say so in order for me to be less touristy and more local-y I will go with Ohea Gulch or the Ohea Pools. It was gorgeous. We swam around and jumped off the rocks into the water.

Seven Pools

I'm jumping off into the water (upper left).

Me and Whit

- Bird Island Hike - At first we were a little complainy at the tall itchy grass we had to walk through , not knowing where we were really headed. I looked up to see if there were birds, there were not. A little while later you realize why you will walk through itchy grass to get to the destination. Pictures cannot capture the amazing view! We hung out, had a little worship time, and the boys jumped off the cliff.

You can't really tell but this is looking out over a cliff. It was so pretty!

From here you can see Kaenae Peninsula where we were staying. It's the peninsula right behind the rock in the pic.

Looking out over the cliff... this is where the boys jumped in!

Bamboo Forest

Get together the interns and mix in a bit (or a lot) of bamboo, pretty scenery, rocks to climb up and rocks to jump off of and you get a pretty great Saturday outing in Maui:

Entering the Bamboo Forest... what an adventure!

When they call it a bamboo forest they are not kidding!

Monkeys

More bamboo

Hardest part of the hike! You had to use ropes to climb up the rock.

View from the top... it is pretty steep. And scarier going down if you ask me!

At the end of the hike there is a place where you can swim around and climb up onto the rocks where the waterfall is and jump into the water. 

Some of us decided to do flips off the rock into the water. I made John for first and here's his oh-so-graceful back flip.

There's me. I over-rotated and ended up landing on my back! It didn't feel too good, but it was still fun!

Josh pulling a front flip in some crazy kind of form.