A different kind of beauty

As all of you have heard me say at one point or another, Hawaii is absolutely gorgeous. I remember the first time I flew in and was taking the "coconut express" to the university, I was completely in awe of the beautiful lush mountains, and breathtaking beaches. Never had I experienced anything so...green!

Even though it is obvious that Hawaii is completely aesthetically pleasing to the eye, I have personally been so lucky and blessed to have grown up in an area that is also breath taking and beautiful-Lake Powell/Page, AZ. Everytime I come home, I am reminded of how beautiful this area is. Literally millions of people every year come to experience Lake Powell.

This past week was a particularily good week having my sister in town. Last Monday we went to Antelope Point Marina and launched two kayaks that Jess brought down, and we kayaked into Antelope Canyon.

It was great that we did this by kayak instead of a boat or jet ski, because we were able to go all the way up the canyon until it became very narrow, and ended with a very small beach which was only wide enough for our two kayaks.

As you can tell from the pics, it was also very dirty/'twigy'/silty the further up the canyon we went.

After we reached the pseudo"beach," we hiked a little and came upon the end of the Antelope Slot Canyon which was beautiful and fun to explore. We didn't even have the pay the Navajo Nation $18 bucks for a tour! :)

Jessie and I started to have a little too much fun creating photos imitating "The Lion King," "The Little Mermaid" and other random stuff...

I guess Jessie found it funny watching me struggle to get back down...

We knew that it was about time to turn back around when we came across the gate keeper..

Needless to say, we had a great time paddling around and discovering new things. I love how many different things that this area has to offer, and I just wished that I would taken advantage of it more when I actually lived here for more than just a couple of weeks at a time, but I'm grateful that I still can come home and enjoy "Page America," as Bubba on the local radio station would put it.

undecisive

So I finally just barely discovered a cute website (www.thecutestblogontheblock.com) with free blog backgrounds, and it even has easy instructions! The problem is, is that there are several designs that I like. Therefore, if you have been checking my blog within the last week, it has already changed about 3 times.

I hope you like variety. enjoy :)

"Do as I say, not as I do"

Coming home for a short summer= crunch time to find a job and make money for college. Luckily within a little over a week, I was able to find work through Aramark, which is one the concessionaires at Lake Powell. I have worked for them in the past, and knew it would be easy to find work through them. So the job that I landed was being a boat instructor! hah! I won't mention the last time I drove a boat before I got the job...

I was a little nervous and intimidated to start the job (as I usually am with new jobs) but it has been going really well so far. It can be pretty rough at times, because the shifts are 12 hours long all day and in the sun, but that means that I work only 4 days, then I'm off 3 days, which I definitely can't complain about. I even got lucky enough to get Saturday, Sunday, Mondays off! It couldn't get any better than that.

I find it funny and ironic how at work, we are trained really well and do a good job at teaching our guests the parts of the power boats that they are renting, where things are at, the rules of the lake, and how to drive a boat, but when it comes to us, there are many of us who are still a little timid in driving them ourselves. Now don't get me wrong, we aren't these crazy drivers that don't know what we are doing, but it's just funny to me how several of us kind of lack some confidence in our abilities, but we do just fine instructing.

Besides having to clean a ton of power boats every day in the hot sun and long days, my job is pretty great. I also work with a lot of nice people, some of which come from all over the world-several from England, one from Jamaica, Australia, etc, etc. One of my supervisors tells me that after I "pass off" the instruction all the different sized power boats and PWC's, that he wants to move me up to the houseboats.

Mmm... I don't think so.

P.S., the picture I have to the right is one of the type of boats that we rent out...soon I hope to pass it off so that I can start giving instructions on it =)

4 weeks and 6 days left...

Ok, so I MAY be pathetic. I've accepted that, and I'm officially ok with it...
This count down is for the day that Wolfgang comes to visit me! He will be flying into Phoenix late Sunday night, August 17th. Then on August 26th, we will both be flying back to Hawaii to start school the next day; we even get to sit next to each other on the plane! I'm really excited for him to come, in case you couldn't tell. Not gunna lie, I am sort of nervous for him to meet the parents (don't be offended mom); I've never brought anyone home before. It'll be exciting to see the ladies in church talk too- My parents and I will have to get ready for the interrogations. I'm excited to show him the little good ol' town of Page, and the surrounding areas. The funny thing is that he has actually been to Page before, when he was about 10 or so. I'm convinced that pretty much every European will at some point in their life come to Lake Powell...
Nontheless, I am ecstatic for Wolfgang to come and visit. :)

Playing catch up: Best last weekend in Hawaii

Ok, so I lied about catching you all up the other night, but, here I am! So the last weekend I had in Hawaii, I was very determined to see some sea turtles! Throughout the time that I was in Hawaii I saw quite a few sea turtles swimming around, but I never did see them up close on the sand or anything. I had been told by my previous roommate that there was a beach up kind of near the north shore area called Lankiakea Beach, nicknamed "turtle beach." This beach was somewhat small, but well known for the many sea turtles that chill out in that area. So, Wolfgang and I and our friend Sam decided to head up to this beach and see for ourselves. We first accidently ended up at a different beach, but we were told by a local that the beach we were looking for was just the next one over. So instead of going back and walking on the highway, we decided to stay on the beach and walk over. The area we had to cross was very rocky and very..."boulder-y," and while we were heading to the other beach my friend Sam says, "Look! sea turtles!" and there they were! three big ones! I couldn't believe it.

It was definitely a good thing that Sam spotted them, because I would of walked right past them without even knowing. There they were, just laying out on the beach basking in the warm sun, in a little rocky cove. The great part about it was that we were the only three people to witness this, so we were able to get really close. They are such beautiful animals! so cute, I was way too excited. In fact, I think all my excitement might of scared them or irritated them just a little bit, and they ended up taking off. You think I would be a little bit better at this, considering I'm going into marine biology... but if you know me well, you know that sometimes I can't contain my excitement very well; it's as if I turned into a little 5 year old. (proof: ...)

So needless to say, I am really grateful that I was able to accomplish my goal of seeing sea turtles up close. After the turtles left we continued on to Laniakea Beach which was still cool, but nearly not as exciting as what we had just witnessed, because there were a lot of tourists. Although it was fun to see the sea turtles swimming around really close to shore. I guess technically, you could say that we "swam with the sea turtles," but not real close by any means, especially with the sea turtle patrol team or whatever keeping a close eye on anyone getting too close to the turtles. Even though they were annoying, I'm glad they were looking out for them.

I couldn't of asked for a better last Saturday in Hawaii.

Time for an upgrade

So I was informed last night by Jessica that my blog layout is...plain (boring). Ok, yes this is true. So the only thing I've figured out how to do is to add that pic off to the right hand side. Like it? I hope so. Bare with me as I struggle to make it a little more exciting; I'm not good with these kinds of things! Thanks for keeping me cool though Jess ;)

Back on the Mainland

Well, I'm officially back in Page! I've got a lot of catching up to do on my blog, and now that I don't have to deal with finals/packing/moving anymore, I can finally play catch up. I'll do a blog post tonight.