aloha cousins!

i am in hawaii, cruising like a millionaire (except that i'm staying in one of the practically underwater cabins, but whatever) and having a blast. :) today is our first full day on the ship and we are docked at hilo on "the big island".

we arrived in hawaii on thursday evening after a long LONG day of traveling (i had two stopovers, the rest of my family only had one). it was all we could do to stay awake through dinner (hawaii is 6 hours behind the east coast). but i did make one great discovery at the ubiquitous "abc" stores (there's one about every block in honolulu) - they carry onigiri, which are these fabulous japanese snacks, basically rice and some sort of filling (salmon, tuna...) wrapped in seaweed and absolutely delicious.


waikiki at sunrise
friday morning was probably the earliest i've ever woken up on vacation... i was awake from about 3 or 4 am - dozing when i could. but we all got up and decided to head down to the beach for sunrise. unfortunately we were on the wrong side of the island to actually see the sun rising up over the ocean, but we still had a nice view of waikiki and diamond head.

we hit the beach pretty early and started the tanning (burning) process. i'm happy to say that i'm NOT sunburned (yet) and am well on my way to a deep, dark hawaiian tan (hopefully). by noon time we were pretty much done on the beach (we were there by like 8am) so we had some lunch and did some relaxing.


germaine's luau
friday night we went to germaines luau. basically a huge buffet of traditional hawaiian foods - such as the roast pig and poi and lomi-lomi. then there was a fabulous show of many different kinds of island dances. we saw some from hawaii, tahiti, new zealand (who knew?), and samoa. oh, and did i mention the drink tickets? ;P tropical (and your average run of the mill drinks as well) drinks and both meg and i purchased the souvenir germaine's glass (which only cost one ticket to refill - the same as the little cups). good times had by all.

saturday we hit the honolulu zoo which was nice. and then it was down to the port to board the ship. our rooms are actually really cute and the beds are super comfy. this morning i even woke up at a somewhat normal time (not normal for me, but there are people who wake up at 5:30am, right?). so before i know it i'll be on hawaii time... and looking tan like a native... maybe...