Hawai'i!

Things of note:

• It's amazing - obviously
• The weather fascinates me: it rains about every 20-30 minutes, just wee sun showers, and sometimes it's quite puzzling as you can feel rain, but looking up, see no clouds. You could tell those who ran for cover at the beach were unexperienced with such weather. Other than that, the sun shines! -- even when it rains
• WIND - it is sooo windy here, but apparently it's not the norm, according to a strange man I talked to at the bus stop (he was very normal at first though). So basically the weather almost reminds me of Edinburgh - except the sky-high temps and sun.
• I flew first class from Chicago to LA! Very good experience (how could it not be?) but probably wouldn't spend an extra $1,000 just to get the experience.
• We got a free upgrade at our hotel - we have a corner room. At first they upgraded us to a room that, uh, already had people in it. Awkward. I walked in the room and saw stuff on the bed and floor and we booted it out of there. Our view is good on the east side, but amazing on the south side. East is the Nike store across the street, south is Fort DeRussy Park and the beach, and a kazillion palm trees.
• Jet lag is a big difficult, I have woke up at 5:30am both days so far. It's nice though, in a way, it's 8:10am now and Erin and I both ready to tackle the day. On the down side, we were planning on heading out on the town (so I live my grade 12 dream of marrying a surfer) but she was snoozing at about 9:00 and I didn't last past 10:00.
• Free brekkie at the hotel! They have "tona" toast - and it's goooood. It's a blueish-purple colour and taste like amazing would taste like, if packaged in bread format.
• So many tacky gift shops and I want it ALL. So far I have bought a bracelet and a journal. And band-aids, but that is unrelated. And beer. Also unrelated.
• I have blisters already! I decided the Chicago airport would be an excellent place to break in my new flip flops, and my feet were roasting in my boots. So I decided I would walk the entire Chicago airport in my new flip-flops with a crapload of weight on my back. Hey - you know what is massive? The Chicago Airport. I seriously walked for kilometres and kilometres. I got blisters between my toes a wee bit and they just won't heal. Luckily I have other sandals, but I also have not worn them in months and walked a lot in them yesterday so now have a wee blistert on the top of each foot. How did I become such an amateur?
• Am paranoid that we are trying to do too much and won't receive amazing tan that I desire so badly. Need to schedule in more beach time.

Must hop off now as we are going to Pearl Habor (specially the MS Arizona Memorial) for the morning. Hopefully only the morning, it is known for having very long wait times. Then we explore Honolulu and China Town and, fingers crossed, if sunlight time remains I change into my bathing suit and nap on the beach.

I need to figure out how to live here.