A Week Later

We're home in Provo, and losing our tans. 

We left Sunday night, June 7. After the meeting ended on Sunday the congregation stayed in their seats and sang Aloha Oe to us, and then and showered us with hugs, kisses, good wishes, and leis.

The last five months were a joy.

Before and After

This was a wonderful time for us. We think it shows. Here we are on June 1, taking a break to pack to come home. Below that is us five months before that--in the airport on New Year's Day, ready to board our  flight to Hawaii. 

Goodbyes

We leave this time tomorrow. We've been saying goodbyes: to the lovely women who give Linda their leis when they greet her, to the hula kids, to out sister missionaries who have had dinner with us as much as we could get them, to the beach.

Hukilau

We live on Hukilau Beach, and on Memorial Day a local family did a hukilau. It's as the song we learned as little kids said: They take a very long net out into the middle of the bay, paying it out from a boat, and then take it to the far end of the beach.  At that far end, people start pulling it in and moving down the beach toward the starting point. Eventually they get there, and they pull out the fish they have caught and make a big lunch.

Winding Down

We didn't master surfing. It's very hard and very strenous. We found we lack the strength and flexibility to "pop up" when we catch a wave. We would catch them, but not be able to pop from being prone on the board to standing. I kept getting stuck at kneeling. And paddling is exhausting. 

But we were successful at paddle surfing. It, too, is strenuous and requires balance, but we could do it. You can see deep into the water from the standing position. I watched a turtle fly under my board. And you can catch waves. But I wasn't able to keep my balance. If we lived here we would buy boards and get better at it.

Linda wanted surf shots of us to photoshop onto big North Short waves.

And we acquired a volunteer pet. Look closely at our kitchen counter. 

A month later....

Things have been a little busy. Becca and Austin were here for almost two weeks and Greg had to get a new class in a new term up and running. We finished our kapa class, we started stand-up paddle surfing, the Iosepa canoe got launched in our bay, made friends with Cyril Pahinui--a wonderful slack key musician--and went to a jam session at his house, and the weather changed to summer. It's hot and humid and still now. No more body surfing waves. Lot's of good snorkeling. And less than three weeks until we are back in Utah. 

Greg

Spring

We visited the PCC and Waimea Valley with Chuck and Elaine and Stephanie. New flowers and plants, and some shopping. We found a colorful eucalyptus tree trunk and jade vine flowers 40 feet up in a tree.  Have you ever seen a flower this aqua color?  The center is purple!

Greg

More Kapa

Here's Dalani--on the left--with a kapa. She teaches early monring seminary

Week 2: we trimmed and sanded bamboo sticks to carve a stamp design for decorating the kapa.  Greg did some lovely curvies representing humpback whales breaching.  I did a boring triangle, calling it shark teeth.  We all enjoy the friendly talk during class.  Andrew comes.  Now Greg is no longer the only male. Dalani’s daughter is at the hospital dialated to 6 in labor with grand daughter 2.  The first grand daughter only stayed 5 minutes, so Dalani is very excited.

Week 3: we pounded fermented very sour smelling kapa on hardwood anvils-sitting on the floor again.   Hawaiian kapa is fermented, breaking down fibers and rearrangeing fibers for strength and smoothness—like felt, but stronger.   The loud pounding rules out much talking.  Then we accordion folded our kappa and put water in the bag for more fermentation.   Dalani’s daughter was sent home to wait.  They will induce delivery on Saturday.

Week 4: we pounded again, this time folding once to give shredded strands some coverage.  Greg and I sit rudely sticking our leg out while the others sit politely  in Indian position.  A small film crew comes to film our pounding.  We are starting to learn how to pound; Dalani deftly moves our strands and gives us individual help again.  By the end of class I am so stiff I can hardly walk.  My sit down bones are still hurting Saturday eve during the stake conference meeting—and they are still hurting today—Monday.  

Dalani’s grand daughter is 6 pounds (Samoan babies are twice that weight), but she’s perfect and really cute.  Dalani is sacrificing her baby time to come to class.  Baby is named Bailey, after her gggg grandfather missionary who came to Hawaii.  He was the only one who married a Hawaiian.  He built a girls school.  The others simply intermarried the white missionaries.  Their names are Castle, Cook, and Dole.  Recognize those names?  They got away with huge tracts of land in Hawaii while native Hawaiians wait for a small plot of homestead land to put a modest home on.

Linda

Linda

Hawaiian Kapa Making Class from Dalani

Dalani  has recreated kapa making using only the tools and finished kapa pieces left behind by her ancestors.  She teaches our class at Leeward Community College from 6-9pm each Thurs. eve.

Six of us in the class.  We are all teachers.  Hawaii has 10% LDS, and we find that all but 1 student are LDS.  And the teacher is too.  Greg has her beautiful daughter in law in his lit. class at BYUH.

The first evening Dalani unloaded an 8 ft tree (wauke trees) and a large river stone for each of us.  We sat on mats outdoors as she showed us finished kapas and hardwood pounding tools.  The Hawaiians sit Indian style neatly.  Greg and I rudely stretch a leg or two our straight.  Then she set us to work.  We scraped the dark bark off our trees with the edge of a large round shell.  Then we sliced the inner bark from top to bottom with a shark-tooth knife and peeled the pliable 3/8 inch thick inner white bark away from the center core of the tree.  We threw away the inner core, accordion folded the inner bark, placed it on a river stone, and pounded it to break down fibers.  When class ended, we put our kapa into a large Ziploc bag labeled for each student. (There’s no way I can exchange Greg’s perfect intact piece for mine with shredded half length.) Dalani took the bags home, added water, and set them in the sun to ferment nicely.

Linda

Last Week

Last week was my birthday and my sister, Kelly, visited. We had fun eating the local treats, going to the farmer's market at Sunset Beach, and seeing the ambiguous middle-aged guy from "Lost" at the 7-11 when we were loading up on steamed buns. 

The waves finally settled down enough that we could have a good stay snorkeling at Shark's Cove and Three Tables. We saw lots of very spectacular fish. I saw an octupus hiding under a rock to I told Linda to watch while I moved the rock. I dove down, pulled the rock away, and watched the octopus swim away at full speed, shooting ink. Linda saw the ink.

After Kelly left we were exploring and found ourselves in an old sugar cane town called Waialua, complete with the town bank and the village green with bandstand and banyan tree.

Greg

Spring

There is a perceptible change of seasons. The waves are calming down. Surfing is something we have to wait to do until the conditions are right. Snorkeling is now what we can do more often. Our classes are winding down too. And the weather is getting a little warmer. 

We started taking a kapa class over in the Honolulu area. Kapa is Hawaiian tapa. We are learning the whole process. At the first meeting, we each stripped the inner bark off our own mulberry tree sapling, and then we pounded it out flat. We'll resume the process next time and eventually have our own shark tooth knife and kapa fabric with our printed design. I am the only guy, as usual. There are five other women besides Linda. The teacher is part Hawaiian who grew up on the mainland, returned here, and started rescuing kapa making from oblivion. During the three hours we worked together stripping and pounding the bark, we learned that she and all but two of the other women are LDS, and that the teacher is the mother-in-law of one of my favorite students. Strange.

We have been seeing whales spout and breach. Sometimes they launch themselves out of the water vertically and then crash back down. It's spectacular to watch. Didn't get pictures, though.

My sister, Kelly, is here. We took her to "culture night" where the campus nationality clubs perform their home music and dances for each other. Lots of fun to see our students do that, but we needed earplugs.

Greg

Stormy weather

Sun's out today for the first time in a few days. It's been very windy, enough to land roof shingles in our yard. The surf and wind have made the beach a mess. Our students have been bundled up in hoodies--with hoods up, and complaining about the cold. When they do we have a discussion about relativity. 

But Sunday we had enough of a break (Sundays are always the nicest days for Sabbath-breaking recreation around here) that we could gather some of the little shells we like as we walked. Even Mark Eubank was exclaiming about the weather after priesthood meeting on Sunday.

Yesterday there was an earthquake offshore at the Big Island and the announcements and alerts on tv and the radio forgot to be clear about the fact that there wasn't a tsunami associated with it. So we heard about an earthquake with no mention of a tsunami. But the sirens didn't go off and we didn't run for the hills. There are siren towers all along the coast for tsunamis.

I forgot to mention that when Tessa and Josh were here and we took them into Chinatown we found a "Lost" crew filming right at our parking lot and across the street from our favorite dim sum restaurant. It was so exciting--watching the same extras walk back and forth in front of a little building over and over again all afternoon--that I forgot to take a picture with the camera in my pocket. A crew guy told us where they were going to film some beach scenes the next day, but we decided not to follow them. We don't really watch "Lost." The trailer holding their two portapotties labeled "Men" and "Women" did have piece of cardboard stuck to it on which someone had written "Read the signs!"  I guess "Lost" has some toilet use issues.

Greg

Music

We have been enjoying the some of the local roots music--Hawaiian slack-key guitar, specifically. When the Hawaiians brought Mexican cowboys in to help them learn to handle cattle, they also learned to play their guitars. But when the cowboys left they didn't leave extra strings, so the Hawaiians loosened them to make them last and developed different tunings for their instruments. Slack-key has as many at 10 or 12 different tunings for different songs, and the guitar provides a bass line, a rhythm chording, and a melody line all at once. It is accompanied by beautiful singing. 

A good sample of slack-key music is on three Grammy winning compilation cds produced by George Kahumoku. We went to a concert with him and two others Saturday night. They are starting a tour of the mainland titled the Hawaii National Treasures tour. The concert was at Windward Community College, and at the entrance to the concert hall was a kitty-shiva.

Greg

After surfing

Between surfing events, Tessa and Josh were interested in eating. Our local friend, Joe Wilson, gave them lots of tips on food. So we had plate lunches with garlic shrimp and barbeque, dim sum in Chinatown, chocolate haupia (coconut custard) pie from Ted's Bakery, and the favorite--musubi from 7-11. Musubi is sushi rice with a slice of fried Spam, held together with a sushi seaweed wrap. They also enjoyed breakfast and lunch at the Hukilau Cafe. And lots of Diet Coke. 

Fate arranged that Josh would meet Nate Hong, husband of my graduate student, Maggie. They live in Honolulu where Nate is working at a law firm. Josh left the island with a successful interview with them under his belt and a real possibility of a job here next fall. 

Yesterday we took them to the airport, stopping on the way at our farmer's market for some jewelry shopping. After they made their plane--barely due to Fate attempting to keep them here by causing Tessa to leave her purse at our house--we got to shop at both WalMart and Costco in Honolulu Saturday traffic, and then ended with day with a concert down the road of slack key guitar and singing by three of the very best. We bought cds.

Greg