I LOVE THIS PLACE

Today was a good day. I woke up had a good breakfast, then went snorkeling where I saw this really cool fish.

And I guess this is what it would have looked like if I made it mad...

I was wondering if I needed to keep my distance because it looked a little like a puffer fish even though it was only a few inches long and I looked it up and I was right. It is a puffer fish. I can't believe that I can just fall out my back-door and see stuff like this. God really is good, and I feel like he has been really good to me lately. 

It reminds me of a story my institute teacher shared about a friend of hers that was single. When she would want things, she would pray and say, "What I really want is to be happily married but since I don't have that can I at least have this other thing instead?" My institute teacher said that she got a ton of stuff by praying that way. I may have said a prayer similar to that to get me here. :)

I got a text from a friend who said that she was going to be here next weekend with her sister and she wanted to hang out. Yea, more things to be grateful for. Socially it hasn't been amazing, which is what I expected which makes me grateful when friends do come and visit. She said that she wanted to do things that I have been wanting to do but didn't have anyone to do them with so that made me happy.

After showering, I went to the temple and did a session, which was great and everyone was so kind. Lastly I went to the PCC and got my Kama'aina discount. This $30 pass gives me unlimited entry to the village and I can see the late show any time I want. I walked around a little bit and visited the islands of Samoa and New Zealand. I just love watching their native dances and cultures. It was a good day that just made me grateful for God's goodness. 

Loving Life

Although my first month in Hawaii was filled with mold and sickness, I am now feeling much better. My energy is coming back and I was able to go running on the beach today. I am finally getting settled into my new place and I love it. It is tiny but it works really well for one person. It took me the last five days to get the mold cleaned out of my body. Now I just have to deal with the second-hand pot smoke that blows up into my window. It's gotta be better than the mold right? I might be feeling more relaxed, hard to be sure. ;)

I finally got my car registered and I got my Hawaii driver's licence. Some people say you should just keep your out of state licence but there are some good discounts available when you have a HI license. Hopefully it will be worth the $40 I had to pay to get it.

I get to wake up to this beautiful view...

 I get to walk a few steps out of my back door and see this...

I also have the best visiting teacher that just brought this by my work for a valentine gift and she isn't even my visiting teacher anymore...

I got an email today from a friend of mine who said, "I think of you everyday when I walk outside and see snow and think about you frolicking in the surf." It totally cracked my up and was a really good reminder of how lucky I really am to be here. 

The Joys of Freezing

Sure, there is a long list of people who would like to live in Hawaii if they could find a job and if they could afford it. Sometimes I tell people that I became fascinated with Hawaii after living in Minnesota. Usually people around here just don't understand what the big deal is with being cold, I mean freezing. I was talking to some coworkers last week, reflecting on how ridiculous life can be when it gets REALLY cold. By REALLY cold, I mean below 0 and sometimes it got really interesting when the temperature dropped to about 70 below with the wind chill.

The most basic frustration was when your car wouldn't start. There were a few things you could do to prevent this when you knew the cold was coming. You could buy this fuel additive called heat that would keep your fuel lines from freezing. If you were a lucky one who had a garage you didn't need to worry about getting a block heater for your engine. Just don't leave your garage door open or you could easily end up with frozen pipes and pay a pretty penny to get that fixed. If you didn't have the luxury of a garage or a block heater and you really couldn't call in to work, you could set your alarm to go off every couple of hours and start your car to make sure it would start in the morning.

It was easy to fall in love with the bus system there. Mostly because you didn't have to worry about winter car issues. Here are a few I had the pleasure of dealing with.

• car door locks were frozen with ice inside
• an inch of ice on your car that your scrapper was worthless against
• removing 10 inches of snow from your car
• shoveling your car out of it's plowed in parking spot 
• car latches being frozen open so they wouldn't latch shut
• hitting black ice or get into some other weather related accident
• tires freezing in a deep puddle of ice

Some of the bus shelters even had heaters inside. You could just press a button and have some heat for a few minutes. The buses were also very reliable under the circumstances.  Once I had to take the bus when it was 70 below and I remember wrapping 4 scarves around my head so only my eyes were exposed and wearing so many layers that I didn't really feel a thing as I waited for the bus which was surprisingly on time.

When you couldn't get into your car because the locks were frozen you would get really creative in your desperation. One girl told me that she had to use a blow dryer to unfreeze the hatch lock of her car and then she had to crawl in that way to get the car started. I used a hot iron on my door latch when it froze open. I tried using a lighter on my locks which worked pretty well.

They had all sorts of gizmos to help you deal with these issues. I remember a roommate gave me a heated scrapper that I could plug into my cigarette lighter. I don't remember that being super effective.  They had something call lock de-icer, I found that a lighter worked faster.  People who tried to use credit cards for scraping were in bad shape. You needed the deluxe scrapper with a long arm to brush all the snow off your car to survive. Honestly you needed to have a couple in case one broke. I also remember when I was in high school and a friend and I were lamenting the weather. We had both broken our ice scrapers after a bad ice storm, so we just laughed about how pathetic we were. I learned to never drive in the winter without a shovel in my trunk. It came in VERY hand MANY times.

You may ask, "What do you do for fun when it gets to be THAT cold?" Well we always had a good time spitting and watching the spit freeze before it hit the ground. You could blow bubbles and they wouldn't pop like you are used to seeing, they would freeze and then flake away. You knew it was really cold when the salt in your tears couldn't keep your eyelashes from freezing together. It was good that I could at least laugh about it because mostly, I probably should have been crying. Usually when it was that cold you could only be out for a few minutes at a time or you were risking frost bite.

Yes, this is the long list of reasons that kept me thinking about Hawaii all of those LONG Minnesota winters. I hope this makes sense now. I sure do appreciate being here thinking of all my winter memories.

Can I Afford This?

Lately, I have just been playing the guessing game when it comes to my finances here. I rented a place based on what I paid for my mortgage plus a few more hundred dollars I figured I had coming from my promotion. I used to think that Costco's produce was expensive and now I think it is as cheap as it gets around here. I also find it really hard to believe that I just paid $80 for an oil change, yes, it was synthetic for the record but still, that is crazy to me. I used to get away with $20 oil changes.

I decided to really figure out what my take home pay was going to be since my first paycheck was full of errors and then prepare a budget. After taking out all my monthly expenses, I still had $380 left over. Of course I wish it was more, I am glad to see that I have a tiny bit of wiggle room to survive out here. I might even be able to take a vacation here and there.

I went to an open house where they were showing five new homes for sale, just to get an idea of what the real estate market was like out here and they were selling for between $530 and $700 thousand dollars. I walked in them and they seemed more like modular homes than real sturdy homes. They seemed like they would just blow away in any sort of hurricane. Needless to say, I won't be buying anything like that anytime in the near future.

Feeling Blessed

I am feeling so blessed to be here in Hawaii. Even though I have had to deal with mold and I have to pay an arm and a leg to live here, there are so many reasons to be happy here. The weather is usually gorgeous and when it isn't it just rains intermittently. So far my job is low stress. I am told that my job will get busier and more stressful but I don't think I will ever have to deal with some of the horror stories that many of my friends in Corporate America have to deal with. Even my friend Melanie at LDSBC is working 12 hours a day at busy times.

I went to an all day training Friday that was all about leading like the Savior. I met two other mid-single ladies and we all shared our stories about how we felt the Lord has lead us here. It made me reflect on when I was trying to decide if I should go back to school to finish my bachelor's degree, and I was worried that if I went to school online that no one would want to hire me. I prayed about if I should go back and when I prayed I had a very strong confirmation that going back to school would be a good thing for me and that great things would open up for me if I made the commitment. It is nice to see the fruits of my labors.

The other thing that is great is that my employer really appreciates me. He is so happy to have me and he wants to make sure I am happy working there so I don't want to leave anytime soon. If I have a concern he not only validates it but he fixes things. In my old position I felt appreciated by the people I helped over the phone but I didn't feel appreciated by management until I decided to leave. Once I made that decision, they realized how hard it was going to be to replace me and bring my replacement up to speed. Sadly it took me leaving to make them see that they have to work harder to keep good employees.

Yes, things aren't perfect but this is definitely the adventure I needed. Now I just need to convince my friends that they need to come and visit me.  I shouldn't have to twist their arms too far this time of year. ;)

Yes! Yes! Yes!

I have been pretty frustrated with the mold in my apartment, and the lack of options in my price range. Monday I decided after seeing good places being snatched up before I had a chance to see them, that I needed to set up alerts on Craigslist so I could act fast on new places. Yesterday I got an alert for a new place and I knew I needed to be one of the first to respond. This is the studio I saw that comes furnished...

The ad said that she wanted a quiet professional with proof of employment. I thought this is ME! I texted her but when I didn't hear back I new I needed to call. I didn't get an answer, but I wanted this place SO bad so I called again because I knew she was getting bombarded with calls, and I finally got through.

Mercedes from Argentina said that I could come over at 5:00, I was the first to see it. I knew I needed to convince her that she needed to rent to me. She really seemed to like the fact that I didn't smoke or drink and that I had a verifiable job. I told her I would do everything I could to keep her place nice for her while she was gone. I looked in her fridge and noticed that it was loaded up with veggies, like mine and that she also shares my love for the Blendtec blender.

I knew there was a chance that she would decide to go with someone else. Maybe the fact that I didn't drink made her think I was a freak or something, so I went back to check out some other cheaper units in her building today and I saw her in the parking lot. At first I tried to avoid her because I wasn't sure if it was going to be awkward, but she saw me and came right up to me. I told her I was going to check out some other units and she said that was fine, but she said she had one last question for me, and said let her know if I decided to go with another unit.

I saw the other units and I pretty much wanted to throw up. I didn't know how someone could live in those places even if they were cheap for Hawaii standards. They were rusted out and never updated from 1970. Come on, I'd rather sleep in my car! Throw in some upgrades or you will never get those places rented out to anyone decent. Before I left I texted her and told her that I was only interested in her place.

She called me shortly after and said that she didn't want to deal with the stress of interviewing any more potential renters and I think she felt like she could trust me. Maybe when she saw me looking at other places she was afraid I would take something else. She said that she would send over the rental application today and move forward with letting me rent so she didn't have to respond to anyone else. I pretty much screamed for joy when I hung up!

Trouble in Paradise

Well I think that I have narrowed down the smell in this place. I am pretty sure it is mold. I am sure that mold is very common in basement apartments here. I thought I could get rid of it myself by bleaching the place down. After four hours of cleaning yesterday, it is still here and I am finding that I am allergic to it. Lots of sneezing, head fogginess and congestion. I talked to my landlord today and he told me that he didn't want me to stay if I was going to be sick, so this means I am back on the house hunt. I am hoping to find something really soon, but that doesn't seem to be an easy task around here. It would be nice if I could find a cheaper place to rent even if it is just a studio.