Day 5 - Work and Manoa Falls

Today we started early - 5:00 a.m. We went in extra early so we could leave a little bit earlier today. I spent most of my time this morning verifying the student lists. So I had the list of students in every one of the classes offered here at BYU-H and a list of students that were loaded into the Student Ratings program and I matched them and made sure they were correct. I didn't check every single class, but I did check a bunch of them. After I finished that, I worked on some screenshots for the Exam Builder that we are designing for Provo's campus. We are trying to keep our projects running in Provo as well as doing the work we need to do here in Hawaii.

When we got to a good stopping point about 1:00, we left and changed clothes and hiked up to Manoa Falls. It was so beautiful! Really, it was one of the most beautiful places I have seen. There were so many tropical trees and plants and it was just amazing! It was a short hike, but really, really pretty. And there were all kinds of different plants and trees, palms, bamboo, some really big trees, and vines and flowers. I guess I kind of liked it up there. I will say though, that I probably haven't sweat that much anywhere else. It's about 1 1/2 miles into and back out of the falls, and my face was dripping with sweat. My shirt and pants were soaked. I looked really good! Haha! And my hair. Wow was I beautiful! Haha!

When we got back, we went by Costco and then we went to eat at a Thai restaurant. I had some fried rice and it tasted really good tonight. I like Thai food because it isn't too heavy.

W thought I would get the pictures off Tonya's camera, but I'm not sure where her camera card is and she fell asleep. I'll have to get it from her when she is awake. I think I will probably go get ready for bed too. 4:00 a.m. comes pretty early!

Day 4 - Work and Turtle Bay

Today was just another day in Paradise. We went in to work early again and had a good day. I went through and checked the data to verify that we pulled in the correct information. Then I started going through the list of students to make sure we pulled everyone into their classes correctly. I also went over and had a visit with Mark Wolfersberger. I worked with Mark at the ELC when I was there. He is one of the coordinators over the English Language Institute here. It was fun to catch up with him.

This afternoon, we went to Turtle Bay, which is a resort area. This is where Tom is staying. They have lots of trails and a beach there, so we went to check it out. We went out and saw the beach and looked at the waves. They were so big! We played in the sand some and had a good time. Then we were going to go swim in the pools in the nice resort area, but we were told we couldn't because we weren't staying at the fancy hotel part. So we didn't swim today. We just came back to our apartment and ate dinner and I worked a little more this evening. It was a good day. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures today either...I'll get some though soon!

Day 3 - Work and Waikiki

Today was a good day too. We got up early and were in the office by 6:00 a.m. I worked on making a list of things that needed to be changed on our Learning Outcomes website to send to the programmer. I'm sure he was thrilled to get 7 pages of things that have to be changed on the website to make it work better. :) Then we had a conference call back at the CTL with Jeff about our Exam Builder. After lunch, I worked on iClicker questions for American Heritage. Today it was interesting. It was about the Great Depression and the policies FDR put into place in the New Deal. As soon as I finished that, we came back, changed clothes, and went to Diamond Head.

Diamond Head is a crater where you can hike up and then look over all of Waikiki. You could almost compare it to hiking up S mountain, only not quite as high, I think. When we got to the trail head, we found out the trail was closed for maintenance and that it is only open from 6am to 12 noon. We'll have to go back another day.

We went around to Waikiki and put on our swimming suits and went for a little swim. Lori, thanks for letting me borrow your swim shorts. I really liked them a lot! I went in the water for awhile. I decided I'm not much of a water person. I think it is okay. I'd much rather walk along the beach and look around. I like the beach, I'm just not a huge fan of being out in the water and having the waves come crashing into you. I really like looking more.

We changed back into our clothes and went to a little Indian restaurant near the beach. I have had better food in other places, but it was okay. It was a little spicier than I like it, but I ate some daal (lentils) and we had some vegetable masala.

It's about a 40 minute drive from the Honolulu side of the island back around to the La'ie side. In a lot of ways, I think I like this side better. Honolulu is just a big city to me. What is it they say, you can take a girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of a girl. :)

Anyway, it was a good day. I'll download pictures probably tomorrow from Tonya's camera and then I'll post a few pictures of our adventures then. Until then, Aloha!

Day 2 - Work and Dole

Today we started to work. We got up early again and we went to the Administration Building where we are going to do our work and met with the directors and got to work. Mostly today I worked on writing information about the Exam Builder that we are starting to work on now. It’s only in the design phase (on paper) so we still have a lot to do on it. Then I was able to get online and so I created some images to input into the Learning Outcomes program that we are going to install while we are here.

About 4:00 we left, came back to our place and changed and we drove up to North Shore. We first went to the Dole Pineapple Plantation and saw where they grow fields and fields of pineapples. It was interesting to see how they are just little plants. It also takes a long time (18 months) to grow a pineapple and you can only get 3 pineapples in the life of a plant. The third one comes at about 45 months. No wonder pineapple is a little expensive. As we drove around the coast, we were able to see the waves crashing along the shore. This time of year the waves are between 10-20 feet high. No surfing for me! (Even one of the guys we work with won’t surf them and he surfs a lot.)

This is pineapple frozen yogurt with fresh pineapple in it. It was pretty tasty!

Hooray for Hula Pineapple woman!

Then we went to eat dinner at a little Thai restaurant. Unfortunately it was not good. I guess we will have to find something better tomorrow.

Aloha! From Hawaii

The CTL where I work has been developing web-based applications to improve teaching and learning on campus. (We hope they are doing something like that.)

My roommate and the programmer at the CTL were asked to go to Hawaii to install these programs on the BYU Hawaii campus. A few weeks ago, our supervisor called me into his office and said they needed to send one more person to Hawaii to be able to do the work that they needed to do and asked if I would go. So I talked to family about Thanksgiving and my other supervisor and said “Yes!”

We left an oncoming snowstorm last Saturday to come here. The flight was really good (quite smooth, actually.) The pilot kept coming on saying the planes ahead of us were reporting really strong turbulent, but by the time we got there, they had dissipated. We arrived in the afternoon and it was nice and sunny and warm. We picked up the rental car and went to Costco to pick up some food to keep in our room while we are here. We went to a little Thai restaurant and ate and it tasted really good. I think we were all hungry!

Then we drove up the coast from Honolulu around the island past Kaneohe to La’ie. The drive was beautiful. It is just so green and there are flowering trees everywhere! It’s a little bit misty and humid, but just so beautiful. Tonya and I are staying in the VIP housing on campus – Hale 5. It’s a nice apartment with a nice living room with couches and a big-screen TV. It has a kitchen with stove, oven, microwave, refrigerator, etc., two bedrooms and a bathroom. It’s really perfect.

One of the men that Tom and Tonya have worked with before went and bought us some apples, grapes, water, pineapple, cookies, etc. for while we are here. It was really sweet of him. He also got leis for Tonya and me, which are absolutely beautiful. They are so full and they smell so good!

We were so tired the first day!

Sunday we woke up really early (jet lag) and read a little and tried to plan out the things we want to see and do while we are here. Then we went to church in the Stake Center here on campus and then we went to Pearl Harbor. On the way to church we stopped to take some pictures of us on campus. Then it started to rain, so we looked good to start and then got rained on. So much for doing the hair!

Pearl Harbor was a good experience. They have made a movie talking about the events leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the ships that were here. Then we got on a boat and went across the harbor to the USS Arizona Memorial. There was an almost sacred feeling there. Then we went over to the USS Missouri and toured the battleship, climbing up on the decks and looking at the guns and everything on it. Finally we went into the USS Bowfin, a submarine. It took some ingenuity and skill to build it and to design it to work just right. It was interesting to learn about it.

Here we are on the boat going out to the Arizona. You could still smell and see the oil coming up from the ship. It really was amazing.

Host a Murder

Our latest adventure was a "Host a Murder" party. The theme was a disco murder... So we invited some of our friends over and we all dressed our parts.

The people who came were (left to right):

Dan (not in the photo) was Sonny. Dan has come to a few of our other activities.

Kevin (Bruce Lee) - Kevin is from our program at school.

Jeff (Andy Warhol) - Jeff works with Tonya and me at the CTL.

Julie (Gloria Steinem) - Julie is Jeff's wife.

Karl (Disco dancer (I forgot his name)) - Karl has come to another one of our date nights and is also in Jeff and Julie's ward.

Vibeke (Lyza) - roommate

Me (Cher)

Tonya (Diana Ross) - roommate

We had a really fun time and we laughed a lot as we put our costumes together and as we saw everyone else's costumes. Everyone acted their parts so well and we had a lot of fun.

We just made snack foods for everyone to munch on. We made veggies and hummus, chips and black bean salsa and guacamole. We also made ginger snaps and pumpkin dip and peanut clusters. It was so much fun and we enjoyed it alot. We didn't take any close-up pictures, but we all looked really good and had a lot of fun.

Lori was my make-up artist and hair specialist because I needed lots of help in that area.

The Dirty Dash

The Dirty Dash was quite an event. Here is where I will chronicle it for you.

We started our Dirty Dash on Friday night when we had all of our team over for Taco Salad. We also made some Tres Leches cake. Mike and Jeff each brought their wives and Jenni came. All of our team consists of people that I work with.

Saturday morning, we traveled up the canyon to Soldier Hollow where they held part of the Olympic ski events. Just FYI, the Dirty Dash is a 10K with lots of crazy obstacles all along the way and a lot of mud. Here is our crazy team left to right:

• Jeff - aka "Speed Freak"
• Jenni - aka "Superwoman"
• Me - aka "Batgirl"
• Mike - aka Ninja
• Tonya - aka Popeye

Here we are being so tough...

Look at those muscles! What a pyramid!

We took about 10-12 shots of this trying to get all three of us in the air at the same time. We laughed a lot.

We had to take a few of these to make sure we were all in the this picture too.

Someone decorated their van for the event. Most of the stuff on this van was fresh manure - man, did it smell. The back had a pig tail and everything.

From the start of the race, there was a big sprinkler that had been running for quite awhile. It was a sloppy mess. Then we ran awhile and then we crawled through the tubes. They had tubes of different sizes. I guess I picked the biggest one. I must have a little claustrophobia.

Check out this mud! MMMM-good. You may also notice some costumes of people in the background. There were definitely some interesting ones!

Here we are climbing over the walls. I went over the first one, but the next two were really hard because there was so much mud in front of them, that it was impossible to jump to push yourself over the wall. It was neat because everyone helped each other.

We made it that far. Not too bad so far!

Then we crossed this muddy, muddy stream and I couldn't get up. My feet kept spinning out. Finally the guy standing there helped me get up...

This was the nastiest, swampiest blackest mud. The background looks really good. The mud was nasty though, and smelly.

We ran a bunch more and then went down the largest slip and slide in the world. I didn't go down very fast. I kept getting stuck....

After the slip-n-slide, we had to crawl through the mud pit. It was really crazy. The mud was probably 18 inches - 2 feet deep and really soupy.

Here we are after we finished! Almost as clean as we started!

How about the mud?

So clean!

Here is where we changed into something a little cleaner after showering in the world's coldest outdoor shower before going home.

We came back to our house and ate some leftover taco salad from dinner the night before. We also looked at our pictures and had some good laughs. We were glad Jeff had his camera to document the journey around a very muddy track.

We took showers and naps and felt much better after the day's events! It was really fun, and probably something I would do again next year.