Adventures in Paradise

Hi everyone...Allison here providing you with more details on our adventures in the paradise called Hawaii. (Check out Abe's post below for a more thoughtful reflection.) Abe and I feel so blessed to be able to go to Hawaii. This trip was an unexpected find at an affordable price. We booked it with the thought that we would have lots of adventures that hey, to be honest, we probably won't have the opportunity to do for a while either based on finances (since we're planning on buying a house next summer) or status of life (i.e. adventures that you can't do with a family). So, here are some of our adventures:

1. Surfing. We took a one-hour surf lesson. Well, actually it was 3 minutes of on-land training (1.5 minutes of that was in Japanese to accomodate our other classmate). Then we headed into the water. Abe calls this experience the scariest hour of his life. I was able to ride a couple of waves while standing (bear in mind that I didn't know how to stop so I almost hit two girls on a raft. Thankfully, they peeled off in different directions so only the raft went barreling through the air.) Surfing, however, was a humbling experience for Abe. He did manage to ride a couple waves, but had the same stopping problem I had (no one told us to stop you have to jump off, but we figured that out eventually.) In the end, I know I would take a surf lesson again, just with a different company. Honestly, I never would have even tried surfing lessons, but it was Abe's idea and, since he's always saying I need to be more adventurous, I was too chicken to tell him I was scared!

2. Snorkeling. We had a much better experience snorkeling than surfing. We saw tons of fish. The only downside was that in order to see the fish you had to swim near coral without trying to touch it since coral is a living organism. However, since we went at low tide, this was tough, especially when the waves started picking up. I have a welt (not a bruise, but a welt) on my leg from getting knocked into coral. In the end, we would definintely do this again. This was Abe's favorite part of the trip.

3. Kayaking (Attempt). This adventure did not go as well. Being midwesterners, we were unaware that doing anything water-based in the late afternoon was a bad idea due to high tide and fiercer waves. (Bear in mind this was why our surfing experience was so bad -- we went surfing at 3:30 p.m.) So, here we were at 3 p.m. trying to put a kayak in at a beach. We flipped over at least 3 times before some locals felt sorry for us and towed us out. But then the tide pushed us to an area of the water we weren't supposed to be in. We got yelled at by some kite-surfers, but were really unable to do anything about it. (We were paddling like crazy, but we were actually making negative progress.) We eventually let nature bring us back to shore before hauling our kayak back to the rental place. Thankfully, there was a great shaved ice place in the same shopping center. And, we took a scenic route back, so it was a good experience in all. We would try this again, just on a less choppy body of water!

Overall, we had a great trip. We did a lot of things we never thought we would ever have the opportunity to do. And even the rough parts of our adventures left us with good memories that we'll never forget.