Playing tourist for a week

Well, I promised to give the low down on my wonderful "spring break" from a couple of weeks ago, so here it is....finally.

Since the winter semester was finally over, Wolfgang and I decided that we needed to play hard for the week that we had off from school....so we did. First we rented a car (for super cheap!) and headed down to Honolulu with our friend Janelle to the zoo and to the beloved Cheesecake Factory...Mmm, then sent Janelle on her way back home for the summer. The following day we went back down to the Honolulu area to a place called Hanauma Bay with our friends Scott, Ben, and Jessica. Hanauma Bay is this awesome huge bay (go figure) GREAT for snorkeling. We saw all sorts of fish of different sizes and colors, it was great. I was wishing to see a sea turtle, but no luck.

In the morning a few days later in the Honolulu airport getting ready to depart for Maui, Wolfgang and i were confused as to why we couldn't find our flight number on the departure screen, and why our terminal looked so empty. After looking closely at our ticket, I found that Wolfgang had accidently made the reservations for 9:58 PM instead of 9:58 AM....

Apparently he's still learning English. ;)

Luckily, there was another flight an hour later so we just hopped onto that one. So for 2 nights and 3 days, we toured the whole island, quite literally, with an exception of one road or two. Good thing the rental was very very good on gas mileage, because the gas prices were at $4.21/gal. yikes. Plus, islands are only so big anyway, but we still put about 400 miles on it...

Some of the things we did there were go to several beaches, (of course), went to a beautiful nature park called "Iao Point,"

drive the scenic/well known "highway to Hana"(which includes 57 small bridges, windy roads, and some places large enough only for one car to fit through),

and also visited Haleakala National Park. Mom and Dad, I think you should transfer...?!

(Two of the "seven pools" at the NP, we swam around in the pool of the bottom waterfall)

In one part of the park, it had a peak at 10,000ft where we were told to watch the sunrise;

I hadn't been so cold in several months! it was about 43 degrees! simply ridiculous. Not knowing we would be experiencing such temperture change, we were definitely not prepared for that, but it was fun nontheless. Here are a few more pictures from our great vacation:

Wolfgang's first Krispy Kreme experience; he's converted.

Great sunset pic that Wolfgang took

If you would like to see more pictures, go to:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2083630&l=b73a6&id=193309198

crabs, sea cucumbers, and the occasional octopus...

Last year after I decided to change my major to biology, it didn't take long for me to question, "What was I thinking?" Well, classes like the one I'm taking now, Marine Biology, help me to remember why I chose the path that I did.

A big reason why I decided in the first place to stay for the spring term, was so that I could take this marine biology class that I am currently enrolled in. I am so glad that I did! (Plus, being in Hawaii for only 4 months turned out to not be long enough anyway...) It will definitely help me to know whether I really do want marine biology as my emphasis.

So far the class has been great, the reason being that we have amazing labs to go to each week! All of them are out in the field and we go somewhere new each week. Last week we had two labs, first at "Kaena Point" on tuesday and the other location at "Kahuku Reef" on thursday. Both were pretty similar, but it was great to spend a few hours exploring and collecting animal "specimens" from the tidepools with our nets, buckets, and jars.

Kaena Point

Me with my jar full of goodies- A sea cucumber, a few cowry shells with snails in

them, some marine plant later identified, etc.

Looking in on someone's bucket: Contains a sea urchin, convex pebble crab,

marine plants, cowry shells, and probably some hermit crabs.

The best part so far on the lab trips, was what I, myself, found at Kahuku reef....an OCTOPUS! Can you believe it? I hardly could myself. When I poked at the portion of its leg sticking out from under a small coral shelf, I thought it was just a crab or a shell, but once it moved and I looked closer, I could see its succors! After that some girls and I were determined to get him out, but after harrassing it for a while, we were unsuccessful. I then told a guy by the name of Adam about it, so then he took a turn at irritating the poor animal, and eventually he got the octopus mad enough to start inking like crazy and latching on to the stick that Adam was using to feel around under the coral that the octopus was at, and eventually he got him into a pucket where we kept him for a little while so that we could "Oo" and "ahh" at him, then later released him back to where we found him. A little bit of this adventure I caught on video:

* for some reason the video is unable to load, I'll work on that...

(No animals were harmed in the making of this video...)

And here's a few pictures of him in the bucket:

What a great way to start a class! I'm excited for the several more labs to come. The lab tomorrow includes rafting on a river (don't worry mom and glenna, its not even close to white-water rafting), and later labs that require snorkeling... :)

Good News, Bad News.

So the good news is, I don't have a virus! Bad news is, something is most likely wrong with my hard drive.

great.

I got some somewhat computer help (more of just advice) from these people on campus from the computer department, and they basically told me the only thing I can do is just backup all my important info on cds, external hard drive, really anything, just in case my computer does decide to die on me. Now the dilemma is that I only have one cd, and a limited amount of space on one USB drive, and no Wal-Mart nearby. Hopefully my computer doesn't decide to kill over before I get that taken care of.

I'll just have to hope for the best, and probably call and see when my warranty is up...

Moody Blog

I am pleased to announce, that my blog is no longer being tempermental and is now letting me see my own blog again after a couple of weeks! YES! I'm not quite sure why it thought it was funny to do that to me. whatever. But now that my blog works for me now, my computer decided to trade that in for a virus. potentially. I'm hoping that it's not anything too serious...

what to expect soon: pictures and summary of my amazing "spring break."