Hawaii

Aloha!

I'm sitting in our newly rented car right now (it's a Dodge) and we're on our way to have our first breakfast on Big Island, Hawaii. It's already our fourth day here but we just arrived yesterday on Big Island (sometimes also called the island of Hawaii). Oh we just passed a street called "Kamehameha" which reminded my of my own childhood memories; e.g. Dragonball Z episodes with Dave at 7 pm at night :-)

[...] the breakfast was yummy! We went to a local shopping center and met, how surprisingly, a local there, a 62 year-old coffee farmer who will sell us some coffee later from his farm :-) I cannot describe how excited mom is! Maybe she'll be able to pick/harvest a few coffee beans on her own and I'll definitely take a picture when she does that.

Anyways, so let me jot down my first impressions about Hawaii before I forget them; when we first landed on Oahu, I noticed that there aren't any Mexican or black people here at all.. however, there are a lot of Asian people, especially Japanese people. I mean, on the one hand it makes sense that so many Asian people are on these island [because it's actually close] but on the other hand it's new to me because I'm still used to seeing Mexican people and black people everywhere from my time in LA. I think it only takes 6 or 7 hours by plane to fly to Honolulu from Japan, so it's basicially the same time than from LA to Honolulu.
Anothing thing I noticed was that the reduced speed limit in Hawaii. In Los Angeles, it's 65 miles on the highway and 40 on a normal street while here in the paradise it's 55 miles on the freeway and 30/35 on a normal street. So everything is slower...but I guess one reason for that is the tropical weather :-) We have about 75+ degrees everyday but the main difference is the air: It's so humid and warm, you feel like you're on a tropical island haha
Unfortunately, one downside of Hawaii is that everything is a lot more expensive :-/. For example, you pay more than 4 $ per gallon (LA: 3,29 or in August it was even 3,03) and everything else is about 30% more expensive. I think that's just the price you have to pay if you wanna be in the "paradise".

Today we are going to visit the only active volcano on this island which will probably take the whole day because the volcano is about 2 hours away from our hotel (one way). I'm really looking forward to it because I've never seen an active volcano before in my life! As a matter of fact, I just read in the local newspaper this morning that a house close to the volcano *went up in flames* because some of the lava of the volcano hit the house. How stupid can you be and build your own home in such a dangerous area...I mean, it's probably cheap land but you certainly will pay the price for it one day.

I made a bucket list for my time here on Hawaii and I wanna share it with you: I want to..

a) Go n see the world famous Waikiki beach on Oahu-check
b) Go n see an active volcano
c) See the black and the green beach-check
d) Work out with my father- kinda check
e) Go snorkeling in the warm ocean
f) Do a few sprints in the sand (speed training) //workout
g) Go to the rainforest on Big Island and see the impressive waterfalls
i) Don't get a sunburn haha

[...] I just came back from working out with dad and now I quickly wanna wrote down what we did today: We saw the volcano, saw real lava and we also saw a black beach! We left the resort early in the morning (9 or 930 am) and we returned home at around 7.15 to 7.30 but it was definitely worth it! Just take a look at the pictures we took!

Oh and before I finish my blog, I want to post a few new interesting sayings/words I've heard/learned:

a) conceited= eingebildet [synonym=cocky]

b) to confine= etw. einschränken, einsperren, einengen

c) Like father, like son or the apple doesnt fall far from the free

d) To sweat like a pig (not a horse, Florian Wolf! :-) )

Mahalo for reading my blog!

Flow