So we've been "home" for about two weeks now (staying in a hotel for the first ten days doesn't count), and we just about have everything situated in the house. The kitchen was the first room to be settled. The guest bedroom is all set up! (Book your vacations now!) The office is almost ready. The bathrooms done. Our closet still needs some organizing, and everything could use a good vacuuming. Pretty much everything has found its space Even though it's remarkably foreign - more than one might expect - it's becoming more like home every day. Now that the house is more or less under control, it's time to get out and start exploring. Because until I find a job, my world is incredibly tiny!
We've been to O'ahu several times, but upon arrival, nothing seemed terrifically familiar. Partly because my husband usually does the driving when we're here, partly because this has never been my favorite island and we usually just connected here before dashing off to a different island, partly because the roads here are pretty confusing (to say nothing of the street names in a foreign language!), and partly because it's all colored by the we-live-here-now filter. We're not vacationers, we're residents. And that changes everything.
A couple people told me, before we left, to beware of island fever - when you just have to get off the island and start to go a little stir crazy. We spent seven years in central FL, roughly the same land mass and population as here, and I feel like I barely scratched the surface of all the things to do and see there. Never even made it to Sea World or Gator Land (gasp!). So, to the island-fever folks, if you have run out of things to do on a gorgeous tropical island of a million people, clearly you are not looking hard enough.
When I'm not arranging the house1, I've been doing loads of comparison-shopping. Trying to figure out what reasonable prices are for things around here (e.g. where milk does not cost $7 a gallon or other confiscatory pricing), and I'm surprised to see that gas pricing is virtually uniform throughout the island, even right at the airport. I meant to take a photo of "what $100 buys in Hawaii" upon return from shopping yesterday afternoon, but already put the perishables in the fridge before I thought to - and didn't want to pull it back out. So, some other time.
Our neighborhood is nice - loads of families, which means we probably don't have enough candy for tonight! We have air-conditioning in some rooms, but the trade winds and our elevation (right at 1000 feet) make for nice circulation through the house if we throw open our windows. Especially our front door, which has a separate screen door in front for just that thing. Haven't had a screened front door since my parents' house! Anyhow, since I throw open the windows every morning, I find that there's so much sound! Cars driving down the street, dogs barking, people's conversations - I have to be careful about singing along to my ipod. :) Such a difference from Florida, where one goes from a sealed air-conditioned house to a sealed air-conditioned car. It's amazing how much goes on that you hear when your windows are open! I know that's sort of a captain-obvious observation, but it just shows how insulated our FL existence was. I suppose it's largely good - I sometimes get easily freaked-out by unidentifiable noises, but leaving the windows open and spending so much time in our house (again, a strange benefit of not having a job) as well as a much smaller house, I feel a lot more secure here than I have in previous homes. Maybe that's just a function of my own growth in general. Another topic for another time.
Other topics for other times: the process of finding a church, what it's like to be "on sabbatical" for the first time in my life, and what new things we've learned through each of our moves.
Not sure what I will wind up doing for work, but am patiently waiting on submitted resumes and sending new ones out when I see something interesting. What I want to do is tackle my projects list and get to reading. In time.
I love that we have both mountains and ocean again.
And because we're just on the other side of the Ko'olau mountain range and the wet windward side, we get brief little showers virtually every day, as well as rainbows virtually every day. But the rain is so gentle, and it spares us from running the sprinklers on the yard.
1 I distinctly remember being peeved four years ago when we moved into the home we built and lamenting that all my school load was robbing me of the ability to enjoy the setting-up-the-house time. That's been redeemed - I don't have anything to do now besides that here!
