Weekend in Waikiki

Aloha!!
Last weekend Abby and I had a fun filled Sunday. We started our day early and went to the Swap Meet at the Hawaii Aloha Stadium. At the Swap Meet you can get basically all the good touristy stuff they sell in Waikiki for like 1/3 of the price. You can also get a bunch of good legit Hawaiian jewelery and other goods. I basically got all my gifts for friends and family there. Abby and I also discovered the amazingness that is homemade local Hawaiian bread. Nothing sold by any company at any store could top the taste...or the price we got the two huge loafs for. After the Swap Meet we went to the Waikiki Aquarium which was really fun even though we kinda work at place with the same kind of sea life everyday!! Then we just went and explored downtown and looked at all the little side street performers and artists. We saw some African Penguins at the Hilton Waikiki Village. I opened another oyster shell and got twin black pearls!!! I made them into two gorgeous pendants...I know earrings would be the obvious choice but since I don't have my ears pierced that wasn't really an option. We had soo much fun walking around in the craziness that is downtown Waikiki at night. Pictures and videos below :)

A Coconut Drink at the Swap Meet

On Waikiki Beach with Diamond Head in the Background

Me and Abby at famous Dukes Statue in Waikiki

When walking down the strip in Waikiki random guys will put Parrots on you and offer to take your picture..then they will ask for a $5 donation for bird food. I think these two cute pictures are worth it

Though I am smiling in my mind I'm thinking "Please don't bite me!!"

Waikiki Aquarium

Downtown Waikiki

An Era Ends in Hawaii

Well, last night something that started almost 12 years ago came to an epic close. In sixth grade my Reading Teacher, Mrs. Doreflinger, (and yes that was her real name), began reading us a new book called ''Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone''. Last night Erin, Abby, and I, who have all been avid Potter fans from the beginning, ended the Harry Potter era of our lives here in Hawaii when we watched the final movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. It was, as always, amazing, epic, funny, and sad. It was odd when we were walking out of the movie to realize that something that had been a part of pretty much half our lives was over. Moving on to less dramatic news, I got another surprise bouquet of flowers from Thomas yesterday, and with us only having 5 weeks left til the internship is over. The flowers, or at least parts of them, will probably be on my nightstand until I leave.

Erin, Me, and Abby waiting to go into the last Harry Potter Movie

The nightstand in my room with Thomas' flowers, the monkey mom sent me and all my little goodies from my Hawaiian Adventures

Tide Pools and Makapu'u Hike

Aloha!!
Well guys my adventures last weekend led me, Shelly, Jeremy, and Abby to the tide pools below Makapu'u Lookout and Makapu'u Beach. The tide pools are really interesting. They are basically indention's in the shoreline that fill up with ocean water during high tide and have become small ecosystems within themselves. There is also a cool double blow hole at the tide pools. In the video you can see how high the waves crash on the rocky shoreline at high tide, and at the end of the video you see me getting wiped out into another tide pool after a wave crashes into us. When we were leaving the tide pools we found a coconut shell with a weird looking face in it. Of course we kept it and named him Craig Wilson...he will be hanging on our wall soon. We hiked up to the top of Makapu'u lookout and I carved mine and Thomas' name into a cactus on the edge of the lookout. It's a common thing to do, and now our names will be overlooking Sea Life Park for a very very long time. :) See pictures and video from the weekend below.

Me and Abby hiking Makapu'u Lookout with the lighthouse seen in "50 First Dates" in the background

Craig Wilson

Tide Pools

Makapu'u Beach and Lookout

Green Sea Turtle Hatchling Release

I got the amazing opportunity Thursday night to be involved in the release of green sea turtle hatchlings. It was really fun and interesting. Sea turtles are an endangered species and we released 15 hatchlings into the wild. As always pics and a video of the release are below.

Green Sea Turtle Release

Random Things

Ok so I know I haven't posted anything in a while so since I just blogged about my 4th of July weekend I figured I would post one more blog about two random things that have happened/ have been happening. Ok first random thing, ever since I moved into my room at Shelly's I have noticed three little birds that come and sleep side by side on my window seal. Every night without fail they are always there and always squished together. Courtney and I decided to name them Randy, Paula, and Simon (we were very sleep deprived at the time but the names stuck). Second random thing, we found a pretty nice size crab frozen in the Pacific Herring in Fish House Tuesday. Since again you have a bunch of young adult people who are up at 6am and sleep deprived, we kept the crab and made it our fish house mascot for the day. The name we all finally settled on for the crab was "Sebastian Jose P. Herring"...again it was very early in the morning and we needed something to entertain us while sorting through hundreds of pounds of fish. There was also a debate started when I suggested to name the crab Sebastian, like from The Little Mermaid, as to whether or not the Sebastian in Little Mermaid was a crab or a lobster. The debate lasted all the way until breakfast that morning where Google settled the debate agreeing with me that Sebastian in The Little Mermaid was indeed a crab.

Randy, Paula, and Simon on our window seal

Tuesday Fish House Crew with Abby holding Sebastian Jose P. Herring

Sebastian decided he liked it better on Shelly's head :)

4th of July Weekend Fun

Aloha Everyone!!
Well my 4th of July weekend was filled with food, fun, friends and fireworks. On Sunday the gang all went to Waikiki Beach for "Sunset On the Beach" which is when they show a movie on a big screen and usually have some other entertainment as well. This time the Hawaii band played patriotic songs and we watched the movie "Soul Surfer" about a girl from Hawaii who lost her arm in a shark attack but continued surfing and following her dream of one day going pro. The girl whose life the movie was based on, Bethany Hamilton, made an appearance and watched the movie in a private section on the beach with us, as well as the actress who plays Bethany in the movie. On a random side note, I met a woman when me, Shelly and Jeremy were swimming at Waikiki who is a native of Forks, Washington, and yes I am a big enough Twilight dork to get excited about that. On the 4th of July I worked most of the day. We had a really good show at Cove so to celebrate we all jumped from the ship into pool three, which is about a 10 foot drop into a 20 foot deep pool. We were all just swimming around laughing and discussing the show when we realized we were being filmed by all the people who were leaving the show. It was awkward, but funny to realize I am on about at least 30 peoples video cameras jumping off a ship and swimming around in a dolphin pool. :)  After work I joined the gang at Kailua Beach for a cookout, fireworks, swimming, and my annual 4th of July Flag cake. We didn't stay long after the fireworks show was over because right before the fireworks show started it began pouring down rain, then it stopped for the fireworks show...and started up again 5 minutes after the show ended, that brought some unexpected excitement to the evening. As always below are some pictures and a video from the weekend festivities.

Sunset on Waikiki Beach

A random assortment of Sea Life Park Employees

Shelly and Kaycie

All My Roommates Courtney, Jeremy, Shelly, Kaycie and Me

Me and fellow Covie Abby

Kaycie and Me

Bethany Hamilton speaks before the viewing of "Soul Surfer"

The gang and my homemade flag cake...it was gone in 5 minutes.

Kaycie, Shelly and Helena attempting to eat the flag cake in a rain storm

Sea Life Park Employees after the fireworks in the rain...it was very cold

Hawaiian 4th Of July

New Experiences and Last Weekends Adventure

Aloha Everyone!!! 

Sorry it's been a while since I blogged. Life has been really busy. There is always something fun or crazy going on at my house, and we are getting much more hands on experience with the dolphins at Cove. So far I have gotten to feed out (give the dolphin it's dinner) Nani, and Kekaimalu our wholphin. I have also gotten to receive some of the animals which means a trainer gives the dolphin a signal to go to a certain place and I tap the water to let them know specifically who and where to come to and when they pop up in front of me I feed them fish and reinforce them for coming to the correct place. I was also lucky enough to get the opportunity to station our dolphin Itsi Bitsi. Stationing is where the dolphin sits in front you in the water and when they are moving around other animals you have your dolphin target (or put their rostrum) on your hand so they know that they are staying and not going with the other dolphins. Anyway back to my adventures last weekend. Me and Abby decided to be very touristy and go to the Dole Plantation and Macadamia Nut Farm on Oahu. The Dole Plantation was fun. They have these little booths where you can choose an oyster and open it to see if there is a pearl inside (there pretty much always is a peal). Anyway I did it and got a pink pearl out of my oyster and decided to make it into a ring so that I can have a cool more personal piece of jewelry to remember this experience. Then Abby and I decided to go to the Macadamia Nut Farm. When we got there we found out the tours didn't run on Sunday, but it wasn't a complete waste we still got to try the free samples, look at some chickens, and the drive to the farm took us on Highway 3 which is one of the prettiest drives on the windward side of the island. Here are some pictures from the weekend and a video of the drive :)

Can you see the tiny pineapple?

They have this amazing ice cream like dessert they make called Dole Whip. It is amazing!!!

I'm glad there are at least a few people out there who get why this is funny :)

My new pearl ring, with Nadal in the background winning his Wimbledon match :)

Abby and I make great pineapples

Me outside the Macadamia Nut Farm holding up a postcard of the Windward Oahu drive we just went on