My 1st Thanksgiving Away From Home

Hey Everyone,

We decided to go to Kailua Beach which isn't far from campus. We left after brunch and stayed at the beach for a few hours. We went in the water and layed out in the sun. Then we headed back to campus for Thanksgiving dinner. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, yams, corn on the cob, and cornbread. It was pretty good. They happened to have the tv on TBS and they were playing Thanksgiving episodes of Friends which was great. Then we went down to the student center and watched some more episodes of Friends. After that we watched Home Alone because Alex and Tami had only seen the second one when he's in New York. Here's pictures from my Thanksgiving.

So instead of wrapping my door like a present I decided to make a fireplace out of construction paper. I've been working on the different elements for the past couple weeks and I cut out all the parts on Thanksgiving night and put them on the door the morning after. So here are the pictures of my door.

Sending you all warm wishes and aloha kisses. Jessica :)

Waimea Bay & the Swap Meet

Hey Everybody,
This weekend was quite fun. First I found out in my History class that we had a flash flood warning for the entire weekend. It rained all Friday and most of Saturday. We woke up to flooded fields as seen in the picture below. But we were determined to make it to the beach since the internet told us that it was not raining on the North Shore. We got drenched walked to the bus stop but that was alright because we had over an hour long bus ride to the North Shore.

Jon fell asleep on the bus so we had to take a picture of him.

We couldn't go to the North Shore without stopping at Matsumoto's. The good thing about the rain was that there were not a lot of people there. Alex was cold from the rain and the shave ice only made it worse. Alex is in the picture above.

We finally made it to the beach. Of course I had to get in the picture. We had to cross this little bridge from the bus stop to the entrance and I slipped and almost fell after telling everyone else to walk carefully because the bridge was wet and slippery.

We had to check out the sign about Humpback Whales. They are frequently spotted at this beach during the winter months. We're going to go back to hopefully see some in January or February.

The 2 above pics are of the beach which looks so calm but has a dangerous shore break. Keep scrolling down and you'll see what I'm talking about.

See what I mean. The waves didn't break until the shore

Jon, Tami, and Alex decided to explore the "cave" for shells while I...

Did some yoga. It was so relaxing on the beach. Not only did I do yoga but I was also a ballerina. Don't try to look for the pic of me as a ballerina because I didn't put it on here.

This is such a cool picture not only because of the wave behind us but I love Alex's face.

We were waiting around for some more big waves to take pictures in front of.

This was the best Alex and I could get before we started walking down the rest of the beach.

Here's Jon and I waiting for the big waves that never came while we were getting our picture taken.

Here's Tami and Alex waiting for the waves as Jon and I were.

We stopped at Giovanni's again to have shrimp for dinner. It was so delicious.

On Sunday we got up super early to catch the bus around 7:30 am to go to the Swap Meet at Aloha Stadium which takes place every Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. The Swap Meet is a giant flea market that goes all the way around the stadium. We got a little lost but that's alright. We got these awesome calzones from a vendor for breakfast. Then we got fruit for dessert. Tami and I got pineapple and Alex got mango. We all had Li Hing powder on our fruit. Li Hing powder is a red powder that they sprinkle on fruits. I think it makes the fruit taste sweeter but I'm not really sure what kind of a taste it is supposed to have. We tried it for the first time at the Dole Plantation during their pineapple cutting demonstration.

Here we are getting ready to find our way out. We left at 12 and when we got back on campus we decided to take a nap before dinner because we were exhausted. I definitely want to go back there because you can find really good deals.

Sending you warm wishes and aloha kisses. Jessica :)

Honolulu Zoo & Symphony Performance

Hey Everybody,

Sorry it took me so long to write this. On November 16th we went to the Honolulu Zoo in Waikiki and Tami and I had to go to the Honolulu Symphony performance for our music class. This is the skyline that we could see on the H-1 on our way to the zoo.

This is the Nene Goose which is Hawaii's state bird and it is endangered.They had 4 giraffes and 2 hippos at the zoo. We watched the hippos swim for quite some time before moving on.

Then we got to see a turtle race because they had just put out food for the animals. The turtles were fun to watch eat.

This is Rocky the Orangutan who was being fed by the zookeeper. He also drank some Gatorade while we were there and we found out that Orange Gatorade is his favorite.

These Lemurs were next to the pond of little turtles that had just been fed so they were wondering where their food was.

This is a paint tree which has very smooth bark and looks as if someone painted all different colors all over it. They are really cool trees.

This sign says that this zoo is the best zoo within 2300 miles and shows the distances to the closest zoos.

Jon and Alex had fun petting the goats in the Keiki (kid) zoo.

After leaving the Keiki zoo Tami and I had to get heading to the Honolulu Symphony performance at the Blaisdell Concert Hall.

While we were waiting for our teacher to get there it rained and we saw a double rainbow. They are kind of hard to see but they are there.

Here's Tami and I waiting to go watch the show. We had a fun day at the zoo and watching the symphony. It was a neat opportunity to see the symphony perform.

Sending you warm wishes and aloha kisses. Jessica:)

Dole Pineapple Plantation

Hey Everybody,
The trip to the zoo got postponed so we decided to go to the Dole Pineapple Plantation. We ate brunch and then waited for the bus. Once we got going on the Pali Highway we saw an accident on the opposite side of the road. (It turns out that an older couple was driving and the man had a seizure. He hit the median and flipped the car but they're both doing fine.) So we then made it through the Pali Tunnels and got to see the next exciting thing on our journey. Since there was an accident they were having all the traffic rerouted. One of the tour buses tried to turn around in the median and got stuck. So when we were driving they were unloading all the tourists that were on the bus. The rest of our journey was pretty uneventful compared to the very first part. It took us about 1 1/2 hours to get to the Dole Plantation. We were quite happy to arrive as you can see in the picture below. I went with Tami, Alex, and Jon.



This is us before we started the maze. We were so excited. We had to trace 8 stencils on our card.


It took us an hour and a half to finish the maze but we did it. I rained off and on the entire time we were in their. We got lost a few times but it was so much fun.

There is a coy fish pond that you can feed the fish at and they go crazy when people would throw the food in.

The last thing we did was get some Dolewhip. It's pineapple ice cream and it was so good. Then we headed back home for dinner. I hope you enjoyed the pictures cuz I had fun taking them. Sending you warm wishes and aloha kisses:) Love Jessica