Long Beach

I went to Long Beach this weekend to join my friends to celebrate something great that's happening to another friend.
I also went to my sisters' house and spent a day with them.
Our original plan was to drive to LA to Olvera Street. Turns out the Dodgers had a day game which would have screwed up LA's already messed up traffic, so we decided to stay local.

Turned out to be a good thing.
We went to Belmont Shore, one of the places I used to frequent when I lived in the LBC.

We didn't stop here, but when I was younger I used to use my fake ID here, a lot.

 I bought myself a bracelet of mahjong tiles. The lady who sold it to me said it was an ancient game that Chinese Royalty played, but she didn't know what any of the tiles meant. I told her I knew what they were and that I can play mahjong and she seemed impressed. She told me that they were made out of yak bone. For $6.95 I doubt my bracelet is made out of anything but plastic and elastic, but I'm going to tell everyone it's yak bone anyways.

 On our way home we stopped at the house I grew up in. I moved here when I was about 2 months old and lived here until just before my 21st birthday, when I moved to San Francisco. The house looks a little different. They remodeled the front quite a bit, but they did a nice job. I'm glad the new owners love the house and are taking care of it.

Our plan after our adventure was to go back to my sisters' place and hang out by the pool. When we got back to the apartment, however, we all sat down for a minute. My minute of sitting down turned into a 3 hour nap. I woke up just before dinner. No pool for me, but I had a relaxing time, nonetheless.

I have to write a Thank you note.

I have to write a Thank You note.  

I get to write a Thank You note.

 It is my privilege and honor to write a Thank You note.

I haven't written very much about my huaka'i on my blog. I have plenty of lines of prose tucked away in a folder on my desktop, mostly my top-line thoughts of the day that I'd scribble out each night when we'd get back to our hotel room, hoping that what I was writing would jog my memory when I had more time to sit down and write properly. I also have a half-written missive to my Kumu, my mana'o about our trip and my personal experience. I haven't finished any of it. Each time I try, I just can't seem to get it right, to be able to convey what an amazing time I had, what it meant to me to be able to go on this trip, and what we did that was so amazing. I don't know how to make people who weren't there understand why we did what we did and why it was so meaningful.

One of the places we went to was the estate of one of my Kumu's closest friends. It was a honor to be able to meet someone who knows Kumu as a person, and not Kumu the teacher.  We don't see that side of him often.

From her backyard, she had an amazing view of Olomana. In her backyard we had lunch, played a scavenger hunt and made up hula dances (my group came in 2nd, yay), all under the beautiful shadow of Olomana. And when we were done, just when the sun was at its hottest, we were treated to the best of all Hawaiian treats - Shave ice. Yes, a shave ice truck showed up and added the "and bag of chips" to the "all that" we had already experienced.

The last week at hula class Kumu listed all the places we visited. A group of us volunteered to write thank you notes on behalf of the class. I volunteered to write the note to the woman and her family who opened their home to us for the day. I felt compelled to be the one to write this particular thank you note. She and her husband came to our closing dinner a week after our visit to her house. We had a great conversation that was inspiring; I'm so honored to have gotten to know her.  I hope what I write in the thank you note to her and her family conveys to them the impression she left on me.

Samoa

This weekend the family and I drove to Arcata, Ca. While we were there, Hubby met up with some of his friends from college. We took in a super fun baseball game. (Go Crabs!) We went to the Oyster Festival.
One of the funnest parts of the weekend was our trip to Samoa.
We walked along a long jetty.

 The kiddies poked things that were trying to hide between the rocks

The Girl wrangled herself a seastar

The Boy got dirty and took a little nap

And I took this lovely picture of yellow lupins

It was a pretty good weekend.