A few things we've been up to...

Da Poke Shack +Donnie=  Satisfied

Another gorgeous shot of A-Bay

Since my last post was almost exclusively about running, I thought I'd add in a few more details about what we've been doing besides running. :)

Good Times at A-Bay!

Last week we went to a beautiful, shady and calm beach that is a little hard to spell, we call it A-Bay. It's not as far as Hapuna, but it is now our new favorite. We went there a week ago, on the day that the Spurs lost to the Heat. It was a great start to the day, but a very sad ending.

The Keck Observatory!

Mini-Me Keck

On Monday, we took a drive out to Waimea to see what was out there. There isn't much. The weather is much cooler up there, so it was a nice respite from the heat and humidity. We had lunch at a taco shop/brewery, then headed over to the vistor center at the Keck observatory. It was small, but very cool to see all of the little models and replicas of the telescope. Paul wasn't interested for very long, so we moved on and drove out the Mauna Lani.

I liked this guy.

Please help me figure this out...

Mauna Lani is a resort community where we were going to have dinner at Ruth Chris's to celebrate Father's Day. We ended up there a little early, so we decided to explore the grounds. There is a gorgeous golf course, and a neat little walk that takes you to some petroglyphs. We weren't really dressed for hiking, so we just took the paved path up to where a few of the rocks with designs were. It was cool to see all of the designs, men, turtles, things I couldn't figure out.  I would like to go back to explore a little bit more, but if we don't get the chance, I'm satisfied. From there we wandered around the shopping center at Mauna Lani until our reservation time. It was a glorious meal, as it always is at Ruth Chris, and Paul had pretty good behavior, so we savored the food and the company. When dinner was over, we walked downstairs to watch a troupe of Hawaiian dancers. It was my first time seeing hula dancers live, and they were great! The men even did some fire dancing, which looked incredibly difficult. It was a long, but wonderful day, so we headed back to Kona from there, and all fell asleep relatively early.

Dancing!

Tuesday started out stressful.  DHL contacted me that our visa documents had arrived in San Antonio, but when my friend Jane went out to pick them up, they were nowhere to be found. After calling every neighbor on Angie and Ron's street, it was finally located. Jane graciously drove back across town to get the documents and overnight them to us here. They didn't arrive until Wednesday, so we decided to go on a coffee adventure on Tuesday.

Hmmm....yes, please.

Tuesday, after a delayed start, we drove back up into the cool mountains to tour the Mountain Thunder Coffee Plantation. It really wasn't a tour of the plantation, so much as a tour of the way they turned their coffee plants into award winning coffee, but it was neat. Paul was more interested in splashing in the mud puddles, but it was too cold to let him do that for long. We bought some delicious Kona coffee, a little overpriced, but definitely worth it, then headed back down to Kailua. The rest of the day was lounged away with naps and eating, and soon Wednesday was upon us.

Ron and Angie took the day and went out to Hilo, and Donnie and I dug in to wait for our documents to arrive. Luckily, they came early, and we spent the rest of the day much the same as the day before. I did fill out our applications for our Chinese work visas. This set of paperwork was a lot less tedious than the previous round, but it's still been a challenge.

Today we got up and went for our longest run since Sunday (only 4 miles), and then went to watch soccer and a cool bar called LuLu's. Everybody was super friendly, and I had some delicious breakfast tacos, and we sat there for quite a while. When the game was FINALLY over (it went double overtime and extra penalty kicks), we headed back to tackle the process of mailing off all of the stuff to get our visas.

We piled in the car, headed to UPS, and Paul fell asleep, of course. We woke him up for a passport picture, which he was less than pleased about, printed all of our applications, and put our passports and all our paperwork into an envelope and shipped it off. It is now in the hands of www.mychinavisa.com.

Mountain Thunder Coffee

Tomorrow I will embark on my first surfing lesson here in Hawaii. I've had one other one, long ago in Costa Rica, but I expect this will be completely different. It was one of my resolutions to learn to surf, so I'm happy to be taking the first steps to accomplish it. It only took 3 weeks ;)

Andie arrives in a week, and I cannot wait to share this experience with her! I am already making a mental list of all the must-dos while she is here. I hope she is doing the same. :)

The passage of time seems to have slowed, but I know it is only temporary. Too soon our relaxing summer will be over, but I can't help but be excited. I even snuck a peak at the IKEA website in Shenzhen to see what kinds of things we may be buying. It's silly things like that that make me so anxious to get to the finish line. :)

Till next time, aloha.