I saw fish! and the weeds obeyed!

SO, I think I was going to start by telling you guys about my trip to the market yesterday. Karin and I went to do the weekly shopping, and started with the produce. The fruit and vegetables are sold out of the back of a truck by this beautiful Hawaiian woman. She had lettuce, greens, beets and all kinds of stuff. My new friend Maria (did I mention her? the singer who's going to give me guitar lessons?) was selling the fruit, mainly jackfruit and Hawaiian breadfruit. We got one of each of those. The other thing I wanted to tell you about Hawaiians (and non-Hawaiians living here) is that they are so genuinely warm. Once you've met someone once, they greet you with a kiss on the cheek and act like you've been friends forever. Which sounds annoying but isn't when it's as sincere as it is. We then went to the grocery store and got the rest of what we needed, and again Karin knew half the people shopping there.

Anyway. That's yesterday.
This morning I woke to find it was pouring rain and Alexandriu was in the kitchen. Apparently he had gotten his car towed and had no way to get back to Waimea (where he lives) and had spent the night in the temple. While Lew took him to pick up his car, I finished the rest of the planting (rainbow and golden chard, basil) and moved some of the seedlings that had ended up in the "drip line". The vegetable patch is right by the house and one row of plants was getting drowned by the water dripping of the porch. I did all this in the rain, and hen got into dry clothes to wait it out. Everytime I do anything hard or get dirty, I picture Iesha and think "if Iesha could see me now, she'd die". (Do you read this, Yeshua?) Sometimes I even stop what I'm doing and grab a camera because I know you guys will want photographic evidence of this stuff. So Lew comes back and finds me knitting in my room and says that if it clears up we're going to go swimming at 11:30. This seemed so crazy-- it was literally POURING rain and grey in every direction.

But it did clear up, and I went back out to tackle the weeds by the bamboo patch again. The rain, plus talking to them and my discovery of the pick-axe made it much easier and I got the two huge patches out that had been so frustrating on Friday. [Just for reference: Liu Zhi is a MACHINE and while I was happily pulling weeds he built TWO sawhorses out of two by fours.]

After that, we headed to the beach. The Mauna Lani is a huge resort, one of the first on the island. They have a sweet beach club, and Lew and Karin have connections there to get us in. Once we got there, they pulled out the snorkeling equiptment and gave Liu Zhi and I a quick lesson. We got right in the water, and it was calm and clear as drinking water. After struggling with the snorkel for a bit I figured it out and swam about fifty yards out. There was tons of coral in all different colors and fish swimming all around it. I think I saw around 15 kinds of fish: black, yellow, flourescent blue, needlenose white fish, rainbow colored fish. Which reminds me: there were rainbows ALL DAY after all that rain.

So we swam for a while, had lunch at the beach club and then relaxed on the lounge chairs. The sun started to hide behind the clouds again and we headed home. Brina made calzones and Jessie's coming to dinner, so it should be fun. After a week here of eating so much fresh food and being out in the sun, I've gotten to tht point where I crave fruit instead of sugar and chocolate! What a nice change. I cut up some jackfruit for dessert and am going to sneak a piece now. Did I tell you that the seeds inside ackfruit can be boiled and eaten like little potatoes? When I opened this one today, many of the seeds had already started sprouting, so I'm going to get them in little pots tomorrow and see what happens...