Life on the Islands

Now that I've been in Hawaii almost 3 months I suppose it is time for an update:)

I can't tell you how much I am loving life here on Oahu. After 6 months in New Hampshire I think I had forgotten what it feels like to live somewhere that feels like home. I am still in awe that most places are just getting over their winter season but here I've been laying out in the hot sun on the beach since January when I arrived! I LOVE eternal summer:) I'm already trying to convince Sam to try and stay here for his follow-on shore tour!

It's been super busy since I arrived. The first couple of weeks were a whirlwind of appointments and house hunting and car shopping. I was fortunate to find a little "island beater" car in my price range and the crazy thing is that as I was test driving it I found out the previour owners were both Cedarville graduates! Small world! After much strife with Navy housing I ended up accepting a home in Pearl City Penninsula that I was pretty bummed about at first, but now am happy with. The best part of the first couple of weeks was the dogs arriving safely with no problems, that was what I was having the most anxiety about during this move.

As soon as I got things kind of settled, I started student teaching at Castle HS. I adore my host teacher. I have learned so much from her. We have lower level classes which I enjoy but often get frustrated with the extreme lack of motivation in most of our students. The culture in Hawaii is a lot different than the mainland and education is just not a priority for many native families which I feel is unfortunate but a reality I have to constantly deal with in my job. Teaching has totally consumed my life at this point and my current battle is to balance my personal life with my profressional life. Most of you know I love to run and take spinning classes and I haven't had time to do either in the past two months. That is not something I can deal with if teaching is going to be my career so something has got to give, I just don't know what yet!

For the first two months I was here, me and the dogs lived with my very gracious best friend from college and her husband and son. It was so much fun hanging out with Molly every day and Bella and Dietrich (their 1 year old) had the best time playing. When I finally moved into our house to get all moved in before Sam arrived I was pretty lonely at first without the hustle and bustle of the Larson house. We'll be returning the favor to them shortly as they are about to move to San Diego for Josh to go through SEAL training and will be staying with us their last few weeks on the island. I can't wait to have us all under one roof again!

Sam finally arrived a couple of weeks ago. It was pretty neat watching the submarine pull into port. He said it was kind of weird since I did the entire move on my own from packing out in NH to moving in in HI, to leave our place in NH with all our stuff there and to show up a few months later half way around the world and all our stuff was unpacked and waiting for him to arrive here. Fortunately he was happy with my paint color selections which turned out a bit brighter than I had imagined

We have already had vistors! My good friend since way back in middle school Teenie and her boyfriend Max came out to visit the week after Sam got home. Teenie knows the island so they were able to guide themselves around since both Sam and I had to work. We did get to enjoy a couple of dinners together though which was really nice!

Today some of our good friends from Charleston, Art and Leanne, are arriving to spend the week with us and we cannot wait! I am on spring break from school for these 2 weeks (yes, we get 2 weeks off in HI... awesome!) and Sam goes on leave for a week starting Thursday, so it's gonna be a big vacation for all of us and we can't wait to spend some quality time with our good friends from our favorite part of the country (yes Charleston is still my favorite place... even over Hawaii!)

I hope all of you faithful blog readers are doing well and hopefully it won't take me another 3 months to post the next update...

Here are a few picture of the house. Nice colors huh? I can't decide if my favorite thing is having a fenced yard (even though it's tiny) or having tons of storage which is awesome. I guess I'd have to say my favorite thing is probably not having white walls anymore!

My next project (when I have some spare time... ha) is to paint our old bedroom furniture which is a hodge podge of stuff given to us from various relatives who didn't want it anymore when we got married. That is why our bed currently is not assembled!