date flying home

soo i know i mentioned yesterday that i'll be home in less than 3 weeks, but i thought i'd let you know the exact date in case you're interested. i'm flying out of hawai'i on may 14, but i'll be getting into albany on may 15.

less than 3 weeks left?!

so we finished up our last class.. biogeochemistry.. and had a week long break, with one day of our cultural history class thrown in on wednesday. to start off the break, dan's mom and brother were here from long island so we decided to rent a car and join them on their trek out to see the lava in volcano again. according to most sources, there weren't any surface flows out, but we decided to venture out anyways. following the heat shimmers off the rocks, we came upon a series of skylights.. holes in the lava looking down to a lava tube. basically, the lava was flowing right under us. it was like watching an orange river below us.




needless to say.. it was pretty amazing. then we proceeded to get soaked that night in our tents. oh well..
the drive from volcano back to the SW part of the island was pretty nice. i drove for the first time here pretty much and it was great because there's beautiful long straight stretches of road to follow along the coast.
we headed up to this beach called ho'okena county park which is this little black sand beach with the clearest green-blue water ever that not too many people go to. we stayed there for the next two nights and camped. it's definitely my favorite beach on the island. and also very veryyyyy sunny, which, despite donning spf 50.. = some nice sunburn. as nice as the beach is, we headed up to nearby kona for the day and chilled out there. a few of us saw ice age 2, which i must say is a pretty hysterical movie. the next day we headed on home to drop some people off, and then went down to one of my other favorite beaches, beach 69. it's a quaint little beach near hapuna state park that has trees leaning down to give some shade and not too many people around.

plumeria.. probably the most beautiful flower ever


the next day, we all headed down to hilo for a day of the merrie monarch hula festival. the usually rainy hilo was beautiful and sunny for us. it was the opening night of the festival, and a bunch of groups were performing at night who weren't dancing competitively. all day there were vendors and craft fairs and groups performing in the big hotels. it was pretty awesome to watch the 'halaus' or dance troupes perform. so coordinated, and so strong.



for the rest of the week, we explored some other beaches and hit up kona. we found a great beach that you had to hike out to from the road called kiholo bay. it had a semi-freshwater lagoon, called queen's bath, that was so incredibly blue and had lots of green turtles chilling in it. and i got the crap scared out of me when i stepped on some kind of a flatfish walking over to the lagoon.
in kona the next day, we went in to return our car and saw another movie, american dreamz. it makes fun of our government and how shows like american idol are more popular than voting for the president, or paying attention to politics at all. kind of sad how true it was.
last night, i met up with mimi, aunt sue, and uncle al.. so that was pretty great:)
and today we're starting up our 3 week internship. a few people and i are working for NRCS (natural resource conservation service.. part of USDA) doing some work with the local watershed.
so, in less than 3 weeks we're leaving?! i hear continental has meal service on domestic flights now.. :-P
as great as it's been, i'm pretty excited to get back to ny and the mainland. this island is amazing, but i'm excited to see deciduous trees and be able to drive more than 2 hours without already getting to the other side of the island.

mmmmm mud

at the beginning of the week we finished up mapping the trail we were working on last week, but we were hindered some by torrential downpours... it feels like its been grey and rainy forever. but! now its actually starting to clear up and hopefully it'll stay that way for awhile. the night after the big rain, it actually cleared up and you could see the incredibly snowy tops of mauna kea and mauna loa, snowier than we've ever seen them because of all the precipitation.


for the end of the week, we had some of our biogeochemistry class with our professor Lou. we worked more on taking soil gas measurements on a different transect than before, and took a bunch of soil and water samples. instead of everybody going everyday, only half of us went at a time, and worked on different areas of the transect. we took the highest elevation forest part, and it was bascially like being in jurassic park (i mean actually jurassic park was filmed in kauai so its not too farfetched) the big tree ferns make you feel like you're in a time zone way long ago. it's pretty rainy up there so basically the 'trail' was all mud and peat, up to the middle of our shins.



during our digging of soil pits, there was some inevitable mud throwing. i'm pretty sure i have a sign on my head that says 'target' because i always end up the muddiest, but everybody else got their share too. when i leaned into the very peaty soil pit to take a look, i actually ended up in the pit because lou and suzanne picked up my legs and threw me in. needless to say, it took about a half hour to wash it all off when we got home :)



over the weekend, we headed down into waipio valley, one of the valleys on the northeastern coast of the island. the northern part of the island's the oldest part, so its the most weathered and green. down in the valley, traditional hawaiian farming practices are still used, as in with taro. we spent the two days working in taro patches, weeding and preparing new patches, and since taro is grown in about 8 in of water, we got muddy yet again. it was great though because we got to wash off in the river. at night, we took spears and went out to the river to find ourselves some prawn. we came back with some pretty nice catches, as well as some pretty sweet bruises and cuts. it's seriiously like an entirely different world down there. because its such a deep valley, its very wet and its much like a jungle environment. many waterfalls run down the valley's sides, and there's a black sand beach at the end of the valley. it was incredibly beautiful and so refreshing to work down there. since we only have 2 four wheel drive cars, all of us students got to walk everywhere in the valley, and walk back up the wonderful 25% grade to the top.



right now, we're just chilling out on our free day and planning out what to get at the grocery store for the week. it's pretty sweet because we're no longer eating at a huge 15 person group , and we've split into groups of four to eat. my group cooks iin the cottage, which is great because we dont have to fight for space in the house kitchen. and we get to eat what we want. and somehow, we do a lot better with the food we get for our budget. brownie sundaes included. mmmm