Pearl Harbor, Punchbowl, and Waikiki

Aiiight.  Sorry for the delay.  Busy, busy, busy.

So the morning after we flew into Oahu, we were like, let's go to the hotel pool!  The pool is really neat, but what is even neater is the koi pond near it. I have never, ever seen koi this huge before!  (And we stayed in China for four months!)  We're talking like 2-3 foot fish!  We could see them from the 11th floor!  They were huuuge!

 Ben got me the cutest swim coverups and hat:

My skin is pasty white.  But we have learned, have we not, that it's not worth getting tanned or burned.  I beat one kind of cancer.  I don't need to deal with skin cancer on top of it.  #totallypreventable.  That is the first time I've ever used a hashtag.  I don't really get them.  Do you have to be on instagram to use them?  I might have completely broken internet rules, using a hashtag when I'm not on instagram. Will someone please clue The Technophobe in on these things??

Um, so we got all sunscreened and Ben dove head-first into the freeeezing waters of the hotel pool, and then we realized that, duh, we had to get ready and drive over to Pearl Harbor.  We are the bigggest ditzes.

Pearl Harbor:

 I really love the tree-like cutouts on this memorial.

 The exposed bottom of one of the boat parts is exposed above water.  You can see it behind us in this selfie:

Speaking of selfies, I have never seen so many selfie sticks as I did in Hawaii.  Many of the Asian tourists had them.  It was a crackup.

And yes, my hair is growing in with a kind of ashy-blonde color mixed with the brown.  It's bizarre.  There's this little girl in my ward here who had leukemia, and the tips of her grown-in hair are that ashy blonde color.  Mine did come in kind of blonde on the pate and brown around the edges at the very first.  It's a trip.  Oooh, and it's also stick-straight.  I'm seriously, seriously hoping it continues in its newfound straightness.  I always had to straighten it or curl it before, because it was naturally...frizzy.  Oh, and it's also very, very soft and thin; where it was courser before.  Ben likes to rub my head.  (He calls it chinchilla hair.)  Everyone likes to rub my head, actually, when I come to think of it.  I don't mind.  It reminds me of when I was pregnant and everyone wanted to touch my belly.  They just want to feel it and join in the rejoicing of that whole process.  I kind of feel like my friends here are like that - rejoicing with me in the hair that's growing in.  I'm good with it.  I might have to start using a little product soon, though.  I'm starting to wake up with major bed-head. :)

Back to Pearl Harbor.  It was super-duper windy.  Locals said that the trade winds were happening when we were there that whole week.  It was windy, stormy, and rained on and off the whole week.  Being out on the harbor, though, the wind was absolutely whipping around us.  It seriously felt like maybe 30 mph winds.  I was like, "Am I back in Idaho??" You Idahoans know what I'm talking about.

I knew that my parents had gone to this memorial called Punchbowl a few times when I was younger and they took trips out to Hawaii.  I suggested to Ben that we go find it.  Thank goodness for the map app on our phones.  We had a GPS thingey in our rental car, and it was called NeverLost.  We came to call it AlwaysLost.  It was really vague.  It would be like, "Coming up, bear right."  Say what??  We need exit numbers! We need number of miles!  There are lots of freeways in and around Honolulu - you need reliable navigation.  We tried using it a few times and eventually gave up.  Ridiculous!

I'm really glad we went to Punchbowl.  They call it that because it's a big crater on a hill overlooking Honolulu.  In the crater is this memorial and cemetery.  The cemetery holds thousands of graves of the men who died in the Pacific region during WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.  The memorial lists the men killed whose remains were never recovered.

 

 We were so in love with the trees there.  And below, you can see part of Honolulu and Diamondhead:

Since we were already in Honolulu, Ben and I decided to check out Waikiki Beach.  I went to Hawaii with my parents 20 years ago, and I remember walking along the beach at night and enjoying the warm water washing onto my feet and the twinkling lights of the hotels on the beach.

We had to park approximately a million miles away and walk through a park to get to the beach proper.  There are a lot of weirdos in that park, dude.  There were tons of homeless guys, as well as people who were like, "Look at me!  I juggle in the park!"  "Look at me!  I do weird balancing things with partners in the park!" 

It was very hippieish and reminded me of the parks near beaches in San Diego.  It was funny. 

These trees!  So cool!!!

 

 When the sun set, everyone just kind of paused what they were doing and enjoyed the sunset:

 Ben took this picture on his PHONE!

 I can't believe how good it turned out!!