...i hate blogger.com. i have no idea how to rearrange my pictures and apparently i'm not allowed to copy and paste within my own blog. argh! 

Well we've had a wonderful day today on the beautiful island of Maui! My sister and I went paddle surfing which is in fact magnificent! It took all of my energy but it was worth it. After, I went snorkeling on the reef with my dad and while that was a bit frightening for me, what with the darkness looming and my body being threatened with impending doom of crashing into the reef. But it was so breathtaking!! We only stayed out for about 45 minutes because I get really seasick and was about to throw up in my snorkel, which could have very possibly ended in my untimely death due to drowning and I decided that I just wanted to pass out instead of dying. So we went in. But it was memorable, we saw all sorts of  tropical fish (including the Humuhumunukunukuapua'a fish which is the state fish of Hawai'i!), anemone's and puffer fish!!! And I was very proud of my sister and I conquering paddle surfing! Those pictures though are on a waterproof camera, so I'll post them later when I get back to the mainland and get them printed out. We went to a restaurant tonight called Mama's Fish House on the north shore of Maui and WOW!! What a place! It has now joined the ranks of my favorite restaurants! It was very expensive but had  breathtaking view, brilliant decorations, mouthwatering delicious food and a great staff. Here's the website, check it out!  Yesterday we found some tide pools and some gorgeous blue water so we played around there for awhile and then for dinner we went to a Luau on the beach! The food wasn't that great, although their Mahimahi was excellent, but the performances were amazing! Really fantastic and beautiful to watch. Plus I'm a huge sucker for cultural stuff and I don't think you could have gotten more cultural than that luau. All in all, it has been a couple pretty awesome days and I'm warming up to Hawai'i more and more as the time goes on. Tomorrow I was supposed to go on a 5 hour snorkeling tour of Molokai and swim with the sea turtles and check out some reefs over there, but after today's bout of seasickness (I'm still feeling the waves), I had my fill and I'm staying behind while my family goes and has the adventure. No worries though, I think i'll check out the spa and get a massage! Hope you like my pictures! 

Beautiful sunset!



Ooh! Big guy!

Look at the size of that snail!!

Outside our hotel, very pretty 
ooh! the Hawaiian Amber :P





You may wonder why my face is so upset. It is because my mother and sister woke me up from my deep and needed sleep to take a picture of me. yes. hence the face, i was not amused. lol 


What we see when we are standing on our porch.

So yesterday we didn't really do anything, it was very nice :) I read a lot and sat on the beach. We tried out the pools but weren't very thrilled with them. Our hotel is ginormous and so either you have the adult pool, where pretty much is just couples who are on their honeymoon clinging to each other, or the kid pools where there are 8 billion monkey children who are screaming, running and annoying people in every direction. Both quite awkward if you don't belong in either category, so we stuck to the beach! 

Aloha!

Look what I got Herb!!! Spam cookbook! Now we can cook a whole feast!!






Me faking being sick on it









Aloha everyone!

As many of you know, I am in Hawaii right now, courtesy of my parents who offered to pay for all of us to come. Yay! I am a poor college student, so without them I could not have come here! We left early early friday morning after some tension being that I realized that I didn't have my wallet on me, while we were standing in line to check in for our flight. ...*sigh* yeah. I would love to blame this on the fact that we were rushed and I was tired, but unfortunately I did the same thing when I was in Brazil, except when I was trying to catch a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Curitiba, it wasn't my driver's license I forgot, but my passport! Yap. So unfortunately I seem to be getting a record for being a dope and not thinking about those kind of things. I did however remember to pack underwear (I think this should count for something)! Anyway thanks to Meggie who woke up at 6am, ran to my house, dug through my room looking for my wallet and then drove all the way to the airport before I had to board the plane. Hehe thanks Meggie! And after a long flight we landed in Honolulu and we were welcomed by a beautiful garden as soon as we got off the flight! If you're from Arizona, you can understand our excitement to this, what with the fact that not only was it not brown, but that it was pretty too! Unfortunately my excitement died real fast with the next flight to Maui. I am not a good flyer and I get very nervous and whatever dummy was flying this plane, did not seem to understand the need for smoothness. Luckily it was only about a 30 minute flight, so just long enough for me to bend the metal on the seat arms from my gripping them with white knuckles and for my face to lose all color entirely. Once on land, (oh I could have kissed the ground!) we got our rental car and headed to the Grand Wailea Resort and Spa. My my my, is it pretty! And huge, what with it's six pools, hundreds of rooms, and it's own private beach.  (See above picture!)

Today, our second day, we ventured into Lahaina, which is about 45 minutes away. It was very pretty, with lots of little shops which of course my mother and sister had to look in depth at each and every one of them while my father and I sat around and sighed loudly hoping they would get the hint. I believe he got really bored because the next thing I knew I was being forced onto a submarine against my will. I was not happy at first. For the same reason I am afraid of planes, I am afraid of submarines. But what was I to do, waste all the money they spent on it? No, I had to go and just pray to God that we came out alive. We did and it was better than I thought, which was helpful to my heart. And then after resurfacing alive and well, we were rewarded with more shopping. But then dinner, so that was lovely :) Now we are back at the hotel and I am exhausted. I hope you all enjoy the pictures! Good night :)

california

My sisters and I at Sea World

This is me being scared that the dolphin was going to land on me.

The manatee exhibit was closed so we decided to play around on the statue outside.

Shamu!!

Meg and I having some fun at Sea World.

So i am now out of school until july, woo! The end of the semester was crazy busy and i needed some vacation time so i got lucky and just spent the last two weeks in beautiful San Diego, California. I went for a week with a bunch of my friends and lazed around, ate hawaiian food, cookies and sunblock. Although the sunblock didn't protect much being that i got a rather bad sunburn all over my body, but a good tan too :) It was wonderful hanging out with everyone and being able to relax and not have a care in the world. Thanks to everyone who went, good times :)

I returned home only to leave a day later to go back to San Diego, but this time i went with my three sisters. It was fun and relaxing, we ate huge sandwiches from the Cheese Shop in La Jolla, which is one of my favorite restaurants, laid on the beach, went to Sea World and played with the dolphins in their handy D.I.P. program they have and then we were joined by miss Bettina and we had a couple late nights watching the enormous waves hit the caverns and rocks in La Jolla Proper, finding a cool new coffee place called the Living Room, which we thought was like a toned down version of the famous Yaffa Cafe in New York. We went surfing and hunted for calamari all across San Diego and then ate on the beach. It was lovely and extremely nice to get out of town for awhile and relax.

I am now back home in Phoenix and "loving" this 107 degree weather that greeted my return. I have the next two weeks off to do absolutely nothing but sleep, read, play with my ducks and remind myself that i am unemployed and need to find a job. Soon I will jet off to Hawaii for a week and relax some more there, then when i return i will buckle down and start my summer film class and hopefully earn some money for more plane tickets! I hope all of your first few weeks of summer have been as enjoyable as mine!