Oh Hawaii....

So we've been here for two full days now and trying to get use to everything - waking up early and trying not to miss breakfast, eating all the time anyways because they have snacks out all the time, being cold over night because we only brought sheets but then being way to hot during the day and lastly, getting used to being around such wonderful people.

These are our digs - we got two bunk beds beside eachother but we have a big room with our own bathroom and a small fridge and sink with cupboards...pretty great! Our first day, 31st, I had a meeting at 9am. Thankfully we got on campus the previous evening at 9 or so so we had some time to unpack and sleep before staffing really started. I was welcomed with a great team of teachers - one is from saskatchewan so we feel quite a connection because of that. We got right into it and spent the day setting up welcome packages and figuring out how registration would run. Dustin in the meantime sat around trying to make himself busy as his registration was today, the next day. We were busy for most of the day - busy meaning working some, talking more. This is Dustin's first pic from through our room windows facing the ocean.

It's been great. Today we missed breakfast again - only to save us a few bucks because dustin still didn't have his id card but we got him registered and he got right into the School of Photography room to watch skate videos and diddle on the macs there. Unfortunately, the video he really wanted to see wasn't there so instead of emailing friends and family he emailed Dan to tell him to update his videos...funny stuff, oh men!

Today for myself was great and as I said on the previous post, mom would have loved meeting all my newfound korean, thai, japanese, spanish etc. students! Most students had spent the whole night travelling and were quite tired but there were the few that stayed around and chatted - particularly the only girl from thailand - she's 33 and quite a good English speaker but has so many stories to tell as she's worked for Campus Crusade for 11 years in Thailand, crazy! So we spent the day getting people settled, eating(which will become a normal occurance), and chatting! Tonight is our one night off since the weekend will be full of parties and eating!

Another exciting thing is that we finally found Joe and Nancy Biggs - they are a couple that we've met in morocco and in spain on my dts as well, my friend from starbucks is a good friend of nancy's and its just such a small world. So we met them today and I think they will be our first official couple friend out here...second official one though is Jeff and Roseanna - she is a teaching in the TESOL program (just to clarify, I am teaching in the ESL, she is teaching the teaching course) - the connection is that they have a Wii which will make us instant friends.

Some other exciting news is that Dustin's course will supposedly be packed full of travelling around the island, working hard and studying a lot as Dennis, the leader, is quite the hardworker.

We also met some aussies today, out visiting family, and they told us of this free dolphin tour about 20 minutes from here which excites me greatly.

Oh yes, New Year's Eve - hopefully people aren't wondering what we did because.....we walked around kona for awhile but it was only 6 when we headed down to the beach for the big festivities....there was tons of things going on down there but things were just starting up so we looked around and headed back up to the base for some supper...well, I ended up taking a nap and all the sudden it was 10 and dustin was sleeping so we missed it:( Guess we should have tried harder because it would have been sweet but seriously, hawaiian's party all the time so I'm sure we'll be able to experience flame throwers and hula dancers another time.