Christmas Party and Turtles

We had Lindsey's Christmas part this weekend and it also snowed up on Mauna Kea! We were able to see the snow yesterday, but it was cloudy today, so no pictures were possible. Looks like it might be a white Christmas afterall.

Sally listed off a bunch of questions in her in response to our last post. Thanks for all the questions Sally, we'll try our best with them from what we know.
1) What kind of bugs? Well, the scariest bug of them all (which both of us have yet to see) if this huge centipede that can sting you. It gets about 8 inches long. If you just Google: Hawaii Centipede and look at the images, it should pop up. Scary! We also have scorpions in the drier areas, these really big black bees, huge snails, and a lot of normal things, the most disappointing of which are mosquitoes (but they're not bad at all near the coast).
2) Weeds in the backyard? The only plant that I really know in the photo beside the palms are the reddish and green, really thin plants that are in the center of the photo, near the stairs. Those are native to Hawaii and are Ti plants. Traditionally, they always put these around homes to protect them.

Lindsey running around with some of the staff's kids.


The Christmas party was at the Hilo Yacht Club, great location, but confoundingly...not a yacht in site.


Just today we went snorkeling at a new beach near our house and all these turtles were just hanging out.


Some of the people were feeding them grass, which we learned later upsets their stomachs. They typically love to eat the limu (seaweed) off of the rocks. But with all that grass, they must just get excited and eat it anyway.


It was so nice and sandy all along the bottom. The water was pretty cold, but it felt really nice.


Turtle eating some grass.

New Apartment and Hawaiian Christmas Tree

While no one has exhibited much sympathy for the fact that there is no snow here, avocados are always in season, and its always 80 during the day with no humidity, it will be hard to adjust to the rhythm of the almost imperceptible seasons. So, while there are lights up, Christmas displays in stores, and the second advent candle is lit, it feels like the same summer month keeps repeating. It's basically the Hawaiian sequel to Groundhog's Day. The weather is great, but it is strange when time is passing, but there is not way to tell that it is. I know, boo-hoo.

Well, the one fun thing is that we just moved out of our basement apartment this last weekend! We were both so happy to get out of the cave we have been living in for the last three months. The new place is a small one bedroom, but it's just perfect. It's really cozy and we didn't need to buy a lot of furniture because there was a built in kitchen table with benches, and the previous tenants sold us some of their furnishings.


Here's the view from the front door, looking through the kitchen into the dining/living room.


We have a small loft in the bedroom, which is super good surfboard storage.


This is the view of our backyard.


Here is our little bedroom, the only real piece of furniture that we had to buy was this bed.


Here's our cute Hawaiian Christmas tree! Our old landlord cut this tree down at her house, so I kept it in a bucket for a few days and then I trimmed it down to apartment size. The locals like to have "mainland" trees, but this one is really cool.


We didn't have any ornaments, so we made little ones from sea glass that we collected awhile back.