Hey there everyone,

I know you have been wondering why I haven't posted anything lately...some of you have been harrassing mom and dad about it. I apologize. Things have been a little crazy lately. I am currently sitting at the Sydney airport waiting for my flight to Auckland. But here I go getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning...or from where I last spoke to you all.

I told you all about Saturday night and my time with Erin. Saturday morning I decided to go whale watching. I booked my ticket and
went downstairs for breakfast. The hostel in Waikiki serves breakfast every morning from 9 am to 10 am. It consists only of toast, peanut butter, butter and jam. While at breakfast that morning I met an interesting German by the name of Sven. Before the whale watching shuttle picked me up, Sven and I took a stroll down the strip of Waikiki. He had gotten in late the night before as well, but he hadn't made it down to the beach yet. We sat on the beach for a little while, but I had to head back to catch the bus to the boat. Funny story here...the place I booked with did not give me good directions as to where the shuttle was picking me up. They were to be there at 1230. I arrived at the location (orthe location I thought it was) at noon. I waited until 1245 and no bus came. Needless to say I ended up taking a taxi to the marina in order to get on the boat. The place reimbursed me for the cab, which was good.
Apparently I had been waiting in the wrong location the entire time. Whoopsy! Aside from that little blunder the trip was excellent. The crew
was very nice and very friendly. The whales were absolutely extraordinary. We saw a pair of humpback whales, mom and baby. They were so adorable...I know this is repetitive, but I can't even tell you!
The mom only surfaced a couple of times while we were with them. The rest of the time it was just the baby at the surface. The mom was probably just under the water protecting the baby from any sort of danger.
The baby did the typical humpback move of jumping out of the water and landing on its back. The baby was about 15 ft long and also did a lot of tail slapping. It was so amazing!!! The nice part about the boat I went with was that it probably held up to 150 - 200 people, but there were only maybe 30 of us on the boat
which made watching the whales very enjoyable.

In a way missing the shuttle was nice because the man in the taxi gave me a lot of insightful information. I then took the shuttle back to the hotel where I met up with Sven after showering. We walked down to the International Market. Because it was close/was the Chinese New Year, there were people dressed up in dragon costumes while others marched along beside. It was pretty cool. I'm sure you will all laugh at this, but the majority of the food there was Chinese. Sven of course got a Chinese dish whereas I found the only burger place in there! hah! Anyway, then after dinner we walked back down the Waikiki strip and sat on the beach talking for a while. Sven's English was very good, but he was a bit self conscious about it. He used to be a professional soccer player in Germany until he injured his back and wasn't allowed to play anymore. He then went to school for tax consulting. He has a job interview here in a few months and it's in English. He spent the last four weeks in Vancouver at Language school. Then he was spending a week in Hawaii before spending another 4 weeks in language school, this time in Toronto. He said he just wants to make sure he doesn't sound like an idiot saying the wrong tense in the interview. I thought it was very funny...I would sometimes use words that Sven wouldn't know. He would ask me to spell them and then he would write them on a list with a definition that suited him. I thought that was a very clever idea. It was kind of nice for me as well because it really made me think about communication and how I needed to explain what these words meant.

anyway, back to Hawaii...

The next day I went Scuba diving with Aaron's Dive Shop. Great group of people by the way! Anyway, so they picked me up from the hostel and we drove to the west side of the island which is where our dives were. If you all can believe this (yes you can because it's me...) I was so excited to take pictures with my new super expensive under water digital camera. I made sure to charge the battery and everything. What do you think I did? I FORGOT THE BATTERY!!! Talk about a blond moment! However, there is one good thing to this story. I behaved myself very very well. Typical Krissy would have become very upset and thrown a fit. BUT...this time I remained calm and laughed it off. It was very disappointing not using the camera, but it was also nice. Sometimes when you take pictures, it's almost more of a hassle than not. It makes it harder to enjoy the experience because you are too busy worrying about getting the best shot. The diving was great. We saw a lot of fish and other wildlife. The first dive was on a 180 foot ocean liner that was artificially sunk in the 1980s. Come to find out, the Mahi was the first US artifical reef...thus back in the 80s it was one of the worlds number one dive spots. While there I saw a school of approximately 10 to 15 spotted eagle rays. They were absolutely beautiful! As I said before, I saw many other fish as well, but we won't get into the nerdiness I possess when it comes to knowledge about fish. The second dive was just around the corner and in much shallower water. The Mahi was at about 66 ft at the top of the deck and the bottom of the boat was in about 92 ft of water.

So on to the second dive...the second dive was in about 30 feet at its maximum point. Here there was a lot more coral and less fish, so it was a nice contrast... I got to see it all. There were only 4 of us diving and the dive master dove with us. It was nice to have him there because he showed us things we never would have seen on our own. For example, he found an octopus that none of us would have seen otherwise. Unfortunately we did not see any turtles on this dive even though it is one of the places on Oahu best known for spotting turtles. Oh well, I guess these things happen. THe Divemaster with us was named Kevin. great guy. He used to do research on introducing wolves back into the smoky mountains. He has a degree in environmental science/education. He said it was very difficult after a while trying to explain to people why these predators needed to be reintroduced. We had some very interesting conversations on the way back to Waikiki. When I got back I decided I was going to rent a car. I took a shuttle to the airport to pick it up and was able to park it at the hostel. While waiting on the shuttle to pick me up, I ran into Sven who was with a group of people I had not yet met. Two girls, sisters, from Australia's capital city Canberra. Their names are Feirlee (I'm sure I have spelled it wrong), pronounced "fair-lee" and Brittany who goes by Bit. Feirlee goes by Lou. These two girls turned out to be some of the most amazing people I have met so far on this journey. I have a feeling we will have a lifetime friendship. The other person with them was a guy name Louise from Brazil. The four of them waited for me to return from the airport before going to dinner. We went to the Cheesecake Factory. Funny I know...but we had to find something that was going to suit a German, Brazilian, 2 Aussies, and an American. So Cheesecake Factory it was. After dinner we all headed back and decided it was time for bed.

I invited the girls to come with me the next day on a drive up to North Shore. While Waikiki is nice, it is very touristy...not what you think of when you think Hawaii. However, everyone told me I need to head up to North Shore and check out those beaches. The girls decided to come with me and we had such an amazing day. The drive there is gorgeous. You drive along the water the whole way there. For those of you who don't know, North Shore is very famous for it's surfing waves. We stopped at a couple of places along the way. The pictures I have added to this page are from our trip. I would like to take the time to let you all know that it was Bit's photography skills at work in some of these pictures. I was driving so someone had to take pictures along the way. (Quick side note: this airport computer won't let me move the pictures around so there will be captions at the end).
We stopped at Malaekahana state park first. The beach here was nice, but not as good as I was expecting from the Cab driver's description. We then drove on to Sunset Beach which was beautiful as well. We stayed here a little longer; however, the day was full of drizzley rain. We then went on down the way to the most famous beach in the area: the Pipeline. We stayed here probably for an hour and a half or two hours. We sat there throughout the rain and enjoyed the beach. There was a body surfing competition going on while we were there....cameras and the whole lot! Rumor has it from Erin (the girl in my room the first night) that Jack Johnson was there for the competition. Unfortunately, no matter how hard the 3 of us girls looked, there was no Jack Johnson in sight.

We took some really cool videos of the surfers. There were some amazing surfers there. The Bodysurfing competition was cool, but we watched the surfers more. After hanging out here for a while we decided it was about time to head back and meet up with the boys for dinner. We grabbed something quick and then went out for a little while. There were about 10 of us
that went out together. and no..we didn't get too drunk! =P I know what you all are thinking. Here's where things got interesting. Lou is only 18, so we went to a club where she could get in. It was absolutely dead so we headed back to the hostel. Here we met up with other people from the hostel including one of the off duty workers named Eddie. He talked us all into going down to the beach for a late night swim. It was about midnight at this point. I went upstairs, changed clothes and went down with everyone to the beach.

We all had a great time playing in the ocean. Yes, I know this goes against by belief of swimming at night, but there are wave breaking walls, so the chances of a shark getting in are very low.

Then...the plan was before my plane flight Lou, Bit and I were going surfing. This did not happen because here we go again...are you all ready? I couldn't, and still have not, found my driver's license. Oops. So needless to say things have been kind of stressful. I was sure I had it with me when I checked back into the room after going out, but the girls in my room helped me tear everything apart and we never did find it. So, I got on the flight to San Francisco leaving my ID behind whereever it may be. Then I caught my connecting flight to Sydney 50 minutes after landing. Now here I am at the Sydney airport waiting on my flight to New Zealand! I hope that you all have enjoyed this lengthy post. I meant to post this the other day, but as you can see with all of the excitement it didn't happen.

However, I met some great people in Hawaii who I will never forget. Lou, Bit and I are already planning weekend trips to visit each other!

I hope you are all doing well back home in the states! I miss you!

Love,

Krissy

P.S. I promise to try and do better about posting! The pics below are in reverse order.



Rainbow on the way back to Waikiki from North Shore



The Surfers from the Pipeline beach



Malaekahana beach to the right side



Pic along the way to north shore



pic along the way to north shore



pic along the way to north shore



pic along the way to north shore