Waikiki Marina Resort At The Ilikai Honolulu

We're slowly adjusting to island time--actually staying up til 9 pm and waking up at 6. (better than 8 to 3!) It's strange to watch college football games before breakfast! Last night we received a flyer about a parade that would take place right outside our hotel so of course we rearranged our busy schedule to fit it in. Found a shady picture perfect spot a few minutes before the 9 am start ...

... are generally covered by their own car insurance policy when renting a car, which is definitely not the case for us, even within Australia. Americans will often also be covered for rental car insurance if they use a 'Gold' credit card to rent the vehicle. Again, this is very rare here - if it is offered at all usually it is only coverage for a few thousand. It's also not covered by your travel ...

... ahhh...we were then greeted by our camp director, Amos. He said he was originally from Kenya and had been a camp director here at Hawaii for 4 years. He's SUPER nice and seems really laid back. I also met my project director, the person that I will be working with at the Marina Campsite, and she also seemed really nice. Her name is Andrea and she told me that just she and I would be running our camp of 20 kids from ages 5-9. I found out the ...

... above the remains of the USS Arizona, the burial place for the men that were on the ship when it was hit. The end wall of the memorial center is a memorial wall with a list of names, all of whom died on the USS Arizona. <br><br><br><br><br>As we didn't get to do any shark diving in Fiji we booked a tour to do a shark snorkel. We were three miles out to sea off the north shore of Ohau to the shark grounds. As soon as the boat stopped we could could see ...

... there we took turns getting pushed onto waves and trying our luck at hanging ten. I wiped out on my first try but was able to stand up and ride a wave on my second try. I was so excited when I was able to get up on the board! The hardest part is balancing but they told us that if we stayed low on the board that it's less likely that we will fall. You stand on the board a lot like you stand while playing defense in basketball ...

January 1st 2009 Happy New Year to everyone! Mark, Tom and I slept through all the New Year noise. Not so Ali and Annabelle. The first noise I heard from the New Year was a deep, rumbling thunderstorm moving across this part of the island at about 6.30am. It was rather comforting though to snuggle back deep into to the Westin bed with this ...

... urchin spines sticking out of her leg within the first 10 minutes. We took her back to the top, her boyfriend stayed with her, and my instructor and I went back down. I thought the first dive was an experience ... this second was truly amazing. We swam and floated and saw just about every fish from Finding Nemo, a bunch of sea urchins, which of course I stayed away from, amazing coral ... this really b ...

... that on youtube. I keep asking him if I can watch it. Hilarious. The swells out beyond Diamondhead were enormous--the tourguide claimed 11 feet. In any case, when you were in the front of the boat they were looming over you, then miraculously the boat would climb it, and usually you wouldn't even get wet. Eventually I did though. When we turned around, and had the swells at our back, I began to feel a bit uncomfortable ...

... not sure my theory on that one works... So I caught up with family friends who were coming to Darcie's wedding and managed to get some free accom... sweet! A shower and breakfast later, I was determined to beat off the tiredness from the flight and see something of Honolulu... so I went for a walk up Diamond Head a crater from a Volcano that has blown its top years ago... Then to the infamous Waikiki beach where I had ...