Back again from volcano...

First of all, for those of you who don't know my address... it's
HPA/Cornell
65-1692 Kohala Mountain Road
Kamuela, HI 96743

Soooo, after our plans got changed on friday, we ended up going kayaking in Kealakekua Bay on Saturday. it's a bay on the kona coast of the island that's protected by the state so the snorkelling was beyond words. we had tandem kayaks, so of course that was fun.. tess and i snagged the green one :) ive seriously never seen water so blue. we basically spent the afternoon snorkelling around and exploring, but in usual fashion we have to identify everything we see and write about it in our field notebooks. because the water was so clear, we saw incredible fish. it was almost freaky to be so close to all these creatures. some of the cooler ones were the trumpetfish, black triggerfish (humu humu 'ele 'ele), and yellow tangs. it was awesome just to lay there and pretend like i wasnt there and just watch them. oh yeah, and we happened upon this huuge moray eel that made scary mouth motions at us.
here's a few random pics from earlier...

tess and i

dan climbing a coconut palm

yesterday we headed out to volcano national park again in hopes of seeing some active lava flows...
right now, active flows happen to be about 4 miles away from the end of the road, so it took us about 3 hours to hike over the old flows... buttttt then we happened upon a skylight, which is where you can see down to the lava rivers below. aaaahh soooo coooooooooool! it was one of the most breathtaking things i've ever seen. here in hawaii, pele, goddess of fire and the creator of the isles, is incredibly respected and you can feel why people have such a strong belief in her when you see something like this.

getting near the skylight

WOOOOOOOOOO

andrew getting run over by lava

dusky sunshine on old flows

after that we actually found some surface lava flows and watched it creep over the ground.. and haha roasted marshmallows and made s'mores near it (thanks to our having snuck our marshmallow sticks past the rangers...). it was quite a humbling experience to watch that red hot orange molten rock flow straight out of the earth.
haha, then walking back in the dark for over 3 hours over old flows was fun.. but soo worth it. and quite an awesome 21st bday for suzie!
on a random note, we made a mud wrestling pit in our back yard... i mean um.. we were hard at work 'testing soil texture'...

even though our days are long, i feel like ive learned more in the last 2 weeks than in an entire normal semester. haha i dont even know what day it is because i dont really need to. it's really awesome getting tight with everybody. after living together 24/7 for 2 weeks we already know way too much about each other... ;) we have such a neat mix of people though and everybody meshes really well in weird and interesting ways. its funny the ways we find to entertain ourselves being in such a different setting.. and haha all the dumb camp songs we've gotten stuck in all our heads..
ok that's all for now... peace out and aloha:)