The Tazmanian Devil has Arrived

Well she has come over about 3 1/2 weeks early, but Nola made it off the plane from her trek to Hawaii. For those of you who didnt know, there is a strict waiting period for dogs to get into hawaii. There is a serious of tests and shots they have to go through and then, once they past the rabies test, they wait 120 days before they can enter the island. So my brother and Polly graciously took care of her for the majority of this quarantine, but since Alex got out of school and they are traveling, they had to send her on over to hawaii. I am not sure how Nola's flight over here was since I cant understand what she says yet, but if it was anything like our flight to San Francisco, she barked the first and last 45 minutes of the flight. I didnt get to meet her at the airport, but she was taken from the airport to the quarantine facility and i got to go see her at 3:30 yesterday.
Quite honestly i dont know if she remembered me, but she did look as if she was about to have a heart attack and peed twice when i went into her kennell.
Anyway, she is currently living in a large kennell surrounded by a couple hundred other large kennels all filled with barking dogs. I was told by two separate workers there that they loved Nola because she didnt bark and was always really sweet. They obviously havent spent too much time with her yet.
She is going to have to stay in quarantine until June 14, so I can only see her during visiting hours, which are not very condusive to my work schedule. They are Tuesday-Thursday from 1-4:30. Not only that, but the kennell is in Aiea which is about a 25 minute drive from work.
I went to see her today, and sat in the kennell with her for about an hour and played with her. These kennels are huge - about 25 feet long and 5 feet wide, with a people bench and a dog bed. There is even a private bed room for the dogs to sleep in. You all know how much i love this crazy dog, so of course, i took a ton of pictures of her. Those of you who are really really bored can look at the pictures on the link below.

http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=808241148539233132/l=99719279/g=32613520/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

So I will continue to go visit her a few times a week and make sure she doesnt forget me until June 14th when i can finally bring her home. Seriously, I got so sad when I left her yesterday that I went right out and bought all of her food, treats, a bed and a ton of toys.

By the way, Im sure my mom and Alex noticed, but i have no clue if kennel has one L or two and I am way too lazy to look it up on dictionary.com.

My little drinking buddy Elizabeth Bowen comes to town on Friday and is staying until Tuesday, so watch out for the next blog, there could be some interesting pictures of us.

Zane's visit

This past weekend I had my first visitor from the mainland. Zane Curry came to see me. His excuse was so I could help him with his company (which I hope I did), but I really think he wanted an excuse to come out and visit. And becuase of his trip out here, I finally have some pictures to post up here of someone other than ford, jeff, and me. Im sure it was getting a little boring with just the three of us each time. I did make sure that my mom sent him over with several cans of Rotel since it doesnt exist out here, and that is the only thing that can really make a good queso. I am going to have to save a can for when i next go to kauai so ford can have some real queso as well. We didnt really do anything other than chill out on the beach and eat every few hours. One of the places we went was this mexican restaurant called La Bamba. It is supposed to be a really good mexican restaurant out here (which isnt saying much), but I think I have been seriously deprived of quality texmex for too long. I thought the food was pretty good, and when i asked zane how it was he said not very good. So when i come home in september i am planning on eating mexican three times a day.

I did discover a new beach that i think might be my favorite one so far -Makapu'u. It is on the east side of the island and is not crowded at all, and very local. The only thing is that you cant really get in the water because the currents are so bad out there. You can only get in if you have flippers. It was cool to watch all the bodysurfers and boogyboarders out there though.
Other than that and a day of surfing and cooking out, we didnt do too much else since I had to work. Zane went on a dive off of Hawaii Kai to a plane crash site and said that was pretty cool. But I really have no crazy stories to report.
I hope everyone is doing well back home, and I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of mainland visitor #2 - my good friend elizabeth bowen.

Kauai is now my new favorite island

I have really been slacking lately, so this post will encompass my last couple of weeks here. To start off, we celebrated cinco de mayo here. Now i thought my friends were joking when they said that they were going out for Cinco de Mayo, since there is not one mexican, or spanish speaking person for that matter, on the entire island. We did actually eat mexican food and drink margaritas, but i will say it didnt compare to what i would have had back in Houston. I did call my grandmother to wish her a happy cinco de mayo since everyone here was wishing each other a happy day, and she got upset with me. She reminded me that we are, in fact, not mexican so why would i even think to wish her a happy cinco de mayo. She really doesnt want anything to do with this holiday. So in the future i will have to remember the peruvian celebrations and call her on those days to make it up to her.

I was talking to my dad around this same time, and he was telling me about all of the rallys in houston surrounding the new immigration policies, and he asked me if we had any out here. I will say that this is probably the only state where i would venture to guess that everyone is 100% legal. i mean my dog is sitting in quarantine for 4 months just to get off a plane over here, and everytime i come back from the mainland i have to claim every possible thing in my bag, so i think it would be nearly impossible to get here illegally. And since we are 5 hours by flight from the nearest non-us country, swimming here seems out of the question.

So this past weekend i went to visit Kauai. My main motivation for going over there was to hang out in this badass pad that ford and his roommate live in and watch anything and everything that came on HBO since i have given up cable. However, i will say that the island is so beautiful. I definitely felt like i was on a vacation the whole time i was there. We went out friday night to what appears to be the only bar in Kauai (or at least in Kapa'a where they live), and drank a little too much. My thoughts of waking up late were quickly shot down when the roosters started crowing at all hours of the night, so i was completely awake at 7AM. I cant remember who it is that is scared of birds (maybe Gainor?), but i would strongly recommend not going to Kauai. There are no less than 200 chickens for every human running around free on that island.
So we hiked Saturday to a waterfall called Wailua falls and sunday we hiked the Na Pali coast. Both were incredible, and i am happy to say that none of us got injured, although we almost lost Dunla (the dog) in the river's current. The Na Pali is the coast where we are going to kayak/camp in August. I cant wait because when you hike it there is so much that you arent able to see on the trail that we will be able to see in the water. It should be a very interesting trip since I dont think any of us have ever kayaked before, and the amount of food we are going to need to bring to keep me from getting whiny will take up an entire person's space in the boat. I am hoping we get to practice before we head out.
Other than that we hung out and ate and i got to watch some cable, which was nice. I did cook jose's dip to satisfy our craving for mexican food, but there is no rotel out here, so i had to make do with some salsa.

You can see all of the pictures from Kauai here -

http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=476171147892847790/l=98223485/g=32613520/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

I hope everyone is doing well. Our paddling season starts the sunday of Memorial day so Elizabeth bowen is going to get to see me in my first real race. I will have her try and take pictures so i can post them.

Some more things to add to my list of what i have learned while out here:
1. Flip Flops = slippers. It took me a while to catch on to this one until a friend of mine asked me repeatedly where his slippers were and when he found them he showed me a pair of flip flops
2. I still have not been able to find fish out here other than ahi, ono and mahi mahi. Desperately looking though
3. People out here speak the hawaiian version of spanglish - mixing in hawaiian words with english. So every day i am learning new words. One of the first ones i learned was pau hana (finished working) which really means happy hour.
4. Hawaiian music is really really good. Better than i thought it would be, and now i have tons of new songs on my ipod.
5. Roaches are everywhere. In addition to one crawling down my leg when i put on pants, another one crawled out of my suitcase after it was packed when i was heading to kauai.

Spam Jam 2006

I thought I had seen it all until I went to Spam Jam 2006. My weekend did not start off on a good note. When I heard Friday afternoon that the Texans were passing on Reggie and Vince, and being thoroughly pissed off, I woke up Saturday AM to see how the draft would pan out. I am now a Titans fan, although not quite as big a fan as Alex is. And, I would like to point out that Vandy's QB went to Denver in the first round - not too shabby. Anyway, after waking up at the crack of dawn to find out who I would be rooting for this year, I went to my first paddling race. Holy crap it was hilarious. I went to practice on Thursday (my fourth practice to be exact) and my coach asked me if I wanted to race that weekend. I really thought she was kidding, but I came to find out at the end of practice that she was serious. So I showed up at this race and had no clue what I was doing. there was a coed race and a girls race and guys race. Half of the team showed up hungover and the other half was so serious. The race was six miles and took us about 50 minutes, and the whole time the steersman was yelling at me about my form. Seriously, i wish you all could have been there. I am going to pay someone to take pictures at the next race.

On the way home I heard on the radio that Spam Jam 2006 was happening in Waikiki - everyone should make this a top priority to see once in your life. I was exhausted, but seriously, how could i pass that up? nowhere else in the world do 20,000 people show up to celebrate Spam. I think every big hotel and restaurant on the island had a booth and made their best spam recipe. They had the king and queen of spam, spam eating contests, and tons of spam paraphernalia. I will say that i tried my first taste of spam out here - spam jambalaya cakes. I dont know if it was the fact that there were so many spices or if it was because the cake was fried, but it wasnt too bad. Now, I am not going to go out and purchase cans of spam, but I am not as completely disgusted by it as i once was. So while my friends who are in school have spring break 2006 (Jake/Alex/Megan) i now have Spam Jam 2006, and I invite you all to come out and celebrate next year.

One thing I did find out at Spam Jam 2006 is that my name has a Hawaiian translation. One of the people I was with on Saturday told me this. So Mom and Dad, good work on naming me. not only can i have a name that translates for Spanish class, but there is actually a real translation in Hawaiian - Lahela. No clue how that translates to rachel, but there you go. Anyway, the rest of the weekend was spent buying overpriced groceries and gas, and surfing in the poop infested water. Oh, I did have a friend who saw a tiger shark about 2 inches from her board in one of the places we surf, so that was exciting in a scary as hell way. I have not seen a shark yet, but that is the third friend I have (and I dont have too many out here) who has seen a shark. Two tiger spottings and one white. I am going to start a tally on this.

I know I am bad about taking pictures, but I promise I will post some soon. Now I know this has nothing to do with Hawaii, but since I still don't have my dog due to the crazy laws here, I thought I would post some pictures of her. This is also a reminder to Alex to send more pictures over to me. Looks like she is being well taken care of though.



By the way, thanks to my dad, i booked a flight home today for the Rice/UT game in Houston, and will be there until tuesday, so hopefully I will get to catch up with everyone. I hope you all are well, and email me when you get a chance.
RR