The Approach of the Approach of Splendor

We recently spent the better part of a week over on Maui.  Some highlights of the trip are a bit on-the-nose, like sunrise at the summit of a dormant volcano, or a lovely day spent lounging by the tranquil resort pool with smoothie service.  But my favorite moments of just about any trip are usually completely off the radar of anyone else.  Like the afternoon I spent roaming a Prague cemetery and took some of my most favorite photos.  You get some odd looks when you describe that your favorite moment of a four-country European vacation was a solitary sojurn, filled with ivy-covered gravestones.  

We took a hike to a spectacular waterfall, Pipwai Falls, way out in East Maui past Hana in the Kipahulu district of Haleakalā National Park.  A place that is simultaneously remote and yet well-touristed.  The hike was a 6-mile out-and-back along a stream we had to ford at one point, culminating at a small clearing surrounded on three sides by soaring vertical rock walls and a 400-foot-tall water cascade.  Stunning.  But it wasn't my favorite part of the hike, by far.  

No, it was this boardwalk section through a bamboo forest.  Anyone who knows me knows how much I love light.  A deeper metaphor, yes, but the photographer in me enjoys the changing nature of light, the play of light with objects, the qualities it possesses from one time and space to another.  It is fleeting and it is lovely and it is holy.  Anyhow, we stepped from jungly streamside forest into this other world.  The light filtering through the leafy canopy into the tall bamboo shafts.  The sound they made as the wind sifted through them - the largest bamboo wind chime on earth.  I lagged back from the group just to linger a while in it, to listen and to simply be.  I must have looked ridiculous, completely overjoyed to walk through a patch of overgrown grass, which wasn't even the hike's destination.

From Frederick Buechner's The Alphabet of Grace:

Two apple branches struck against each other with the limber clack of wood on wood.  That was all - a tick-tack rattle of branches - but then a fierce lurch of excitement at what was only daybreak, only the smell of summer coming, only starting back again for home, but oh Jesus, he thought, with a great lump is his throat and a crazy grin, it was an agony of gladness and beauty falling wild and soft like rain.  Just clack-clack, but praise him, he thought. Praise him.  Maybe all his journeying, he thought, had been only to bring him here to hear two branches hit each other twice like that, to see nothing cross the threshold but to see the threshold, to hear the dry clack-clack of the world's tongue at the approach of the approach of splendor.

And because the augenblick will not verweile, the return trip through the bamboo was completely different.  One, it was no longer a delightful surprise - it was now a known entity, the joy of discovery was finished.  Two, an hour later after a pause at the falls, and of course the light's angles had changed.  Others may keep their waterfall; I, however, will carry that bamboo around with me forever.  Clack clack.

A Good Day

I had a great day!  Not for any big reason - it was just full of little delights.

My morning bus driver remembers that I grabbed a newspaper once last week and now always saves me one and hands it to me when I board.  I take for granted that I might be rememberable, but I suppose I can't help but stick out in the ethnic and age mix of Hawaii bus riders.  I always like to think I can blend into a crowd, but I think I'm just kidding myself sometimes.

I got downtown with enough time to pop in to a cafe/roaster downtown and get a latte.  And mine had a heart in it today.

After those two shots of espresso, I was totally wired.  I described myself to a friend as "barely containable"... and was only half joking.

I had a handful of appointments today, including an easy graduation audit, a double-major advising, and a degree plan and general advice.  Most appointments are solo - not much shadowing any more.  I routinely think that I'm not ready for the training wheels to come off just yet, but my mentor advisors think I am, and they let me take the lead.  I find myself pleasantly surprised with what I am capable of, more often than I am confronted by the things I don't know.  I don't know when, exactly, that ratio turned around, but I'm glad it did.

I'm so glad to be into advising now - it was so much of what I did on any given day that it's nice to make it my primary job description.  But recently I've been ... concerned about what I've been brought here to do.    I know it's still early - it hasn't even been two months at my job yet! - but most of my appointments have been very quick graduation audits.  I just make sure students, who are in their last semester, have completed their degree requirements - and it's not surprising that it's difficult (if not impossible) to forge relationships with them.  It's not the point, really.  I haven't yet had many degree-planning meetings with students, in which I will actually start to get to know them.  I understand that relationships need time to be cultivated.  But I've been concerned with the change in rhythm from teaching and the comparative ease with which I could speak into students' lives.  You can't help but forge those relationships when students barrel into your classroom on a daily basis. And how would that ever happen when I don't teach now?  But I also know that all I have to do is be available; ministry can't help but happen (1).  So I've been struggling with thoughts I know better than to dwell on - I just need to trust and be patient.

My last appointment of the day was counseling a student about finishing her undergrad degree, getting into education and teaching high school.  PERFECT.  She had a bundle of questions and was really personable.  She'll be back for several more appointments concerning graduation and her grad program.  It was exactly the glimpse of my career to come that was the exact antidote to all the prior concern.

Midway through the morning, an email arrived in my inbox, inviting me to this year's AP Reading!  And it's in the midwest, where I have family and friends.  I LOVED the reading I attended a couple years ago.  Completely unlike any conference I've ever attended (plus the stipend isn't shabby).  So, a nice professional-development opportunity, a good excuse to return to the mainland - even if briefly - this summer, and it might overlap with some of my former colleagues!

I had a lovely online conversation with a friend in which I quoted one of my favorite passages from one of my favorite books.  Last night, the very excerpt popped into my head while I was sorting laundry.  The Holy Spirit knew we'd need it the next day.

A midday appointment cancelled, so I decided to push lunch back so I could attend a weekly campus chapel service in the building next door.  We're still looking for a church home, still trying to figure out what the search should even look like (that deserves its own post later), so I thought a mid-week service on a college campus might be worthwhile.  Particularly since it's the beginning of the reflective Lenten season.  But lunch today, instead, brought a phone call from a dear friend, and I decided to stay at my desk and converse with him . I like to think I chose the better part.  I'll aim for chapel next week.

All these joys kept me in a great mood right up through closing time.  At the end of the day, I walked out to catch the bus, only to catch this rainbow first.  The rainy season weather has returned, with fresh trade winds and mauka showers that bring gentle rain and subsequent afternoon rainbows.  I can't believe I get to live here.

(1) Thank you, Frederick Buechner

President's Day

Brian and I both had the day off today, which was good, because he managed to get tickets to a taping of "Live With Kelly" (formerly Regis & Kelly).  Yeah yeah, I know, a taping of a live show...?  But if they were to actually show it live from Hawaii, it would have to start at 4am.  Anyhow, it was at the new Disney resort over at Ko Olina, which we've driven past but never been to.  It was windy and sunny day - and I forgot the sunscreen I specifically put out on the kitchen counter... I don't seem too burned, at least yet.  The episode airs Wednesday, with Carrie-Ann Inaba, Patricia Heaton, and Carson Kressly.  And a couple who won a wedding here in Hawaii with 30 friends and family - and quite possibly the least enthused to have won such a prize.  Very curious.  Anyhow.

 Aulani resort

 Paddle dancers

 Kelly and Carrie-Ann

 With Patricia

With Carson

We got home and I did some cooking, including some Butter Mochi.  The reviews of a recipe suggested making it in cupcake pans because the outside part is the best part.  And so I made miniature mochi bites!   

Mochi requires rice flour like this Mochiko:

I took about half the mixture and blended a few spoonsful of cocoa for cocoa-haupia-style mochi.

Half the recipe made four pans of mini-muffin-shaped mochi bites. 

They're reasonably good - they have that unique mochi chewiness, but with the richness of eggs and butter. I've been told they will taste better on day 2.  So, I'll try to report back. :)

Hawaii Delights

Had a good grocery outing today.  I think I've become completely desensitized to Hawaii food prices.  The numbers that used to give me pause no longer do.  I passed up some local lilikoi butter - but I might wait until I make some headway on my apricot jam, with some scones I hope to make later this week.  I'd like to go to the Whole Foods here and see if they have double cream.  Maybe I should reserve judgment on grocery prices until I see what that stuff commands!

One thing I see in the store often is this stuff called Butter Mochi.  I have been tempted on the last few outings, but can't quite justify the price for something I'm not sure I'll like.  I think I will.  I like regular mochi, which some think has a wonky texture, so the addition of butter can't be much more than gilding the lily.  But, still.  Anyhow, the rice flour that's used to make mochi is not so pricey, so I bought a box and came home and researched some recipes.  Found one that I'm looking forward to trying this week!  I might make half as directed and the other half with a little cocoa blended in for a bit of a Ted's chocolate-haupia pie riff. I shall report back!

The rainy season seems to have returned.  Right after we arrived, it seemed like we had gentle rain showers every evening and morning, sometimes intermittently throughout the day. Rainbows too!  But that seemed to stop in January.  We've been getting more showers again in the evenings - including a heavy one right now.  Friday morning, I left the house in a dreary rain, and halfway on the way into town, the sun broke free of the clouds, as if summoned by the David Crowder song that was on my ipod at the time.  It was one of those mornings in which I just couldn't believe I get to live here.  Unspeakably beautiful.  And I get to experience it. Every. Day.  I am so incredibly grateful to get to be a part of it, even as merely a witness - to be a participant in the glory of God's creation here.  It would go on being spectacular, even if nobody is here to see it.  But surely it's all magnified somehow, by someone who notices it.  

And, you know, maybe that can be said of people, too.  Something is catalyzed when another takes notice of someone's magnificence.  May we all have such a catalyst, or else be that catalyst.

Peace and love, friends.

Chex Mix, Hawaii-Style

So I passed by some Crispix mix in a store a few weeks ago that had furikake in it. (a Japanese seasoning for steamed rice that has sugar, salt, sesame, and seaweed in it - don't turn up your nose until you try it, it's good!)  I love love love a good chex Mix, but was unwilling to pay the confiscatory price they were asking, so I started searching for recipes and found this and this.

I adapted the recipes to what I had and scaled it down to one pan (and the popcorn, while I'm always game for popcorn, just seemed to be too much of a textural contrast with the cereals - maybe on its own, it could be good).  Also, I just can't see dumping an entire bottle of furikake in.  Maybe it's my mainlander tastes, but I think that much furikake would make it taste very one-note.  I put in less than half and I thought that was plenty.  You could still get the sweet/savory/salty thing without any one flavor domineering.  I didn't have Tabasco, so I substituted in a few shakes of cayenne pepper - and could probably have used a little more.  I don't like nuts in my chex mix, so I swapped in more cereal for them.  And when I poured the sugar goo into the pan, it seemed like way too much, so I wound up adding at least another cup of (combined) cereal and pretzels.  I also think it wound up a little greasy, so I cut back on the oil just a bit.  And don't use the furikake that has bonito flakes in it.  Unless you like fishy chex mix.

Furikake Chex Mix

6 c. cereal: Corn Chex, Rice Chex, Honeycomb 

(I like 3c. Rice Chex, 1c. Corn Chex, and 2c. Honeycomb)

1 c. pretzels (I used pretzel goldfish, because, hey, they're cute)

0.5 c. butter

1/4 c. + 2 T. sugar

1/4 c. + 2 T. corn syrup

1.5 T. soy sauce (shoyu here in the islands)

1 T. worcestershire sauce

1/4 c. oil

Dash red pepper

2-3 T. furikake

Line a large roasting pan with foil.  You'll be glad you did this, because the syrup gets super-sticky as it bakes.  Heat oven to 250 degF.  Pour cereals and pretzels into pan.

In a small saucepan, melt butter over medium-low heat and stir in sugar until it dissolves.  Add corn syrup, soy sauce, worcestershire sauce, oil, and pepper.  Pour syrup over cereal in pan and stir well to coat.

Bake for about an hour - maybe longer - until it is crunchy.  Stir every 10 minutes.  Stir in the furikake after 20 minutes.  If you don't have furikake, you can do what others have suggested and use a mix of toasted sesame seeds and a little salt.

Make sure you store this quickly in an airtight container or bag because it sucks up moisture and gets sticky quickly, even if you don't live in the middle of an ocean.

Very ono.  And remarkably addictive.

Adventures in Shave Ice II

Went back up to Hale'iwa today and tried Aoki's Shave Ice - which was not-crowded and right across a gravel lot from the always-crowded Matsumoto.  

First, they weren't crowded with tourists.  Which we aren't any more. :)

Second, they had more pleasant seating out front.  And just seemed cleaner than Matsumoto.

Third, they had some interesting flavors - including Blue Hawaii, which might be one of my top-5s now: coconut, pineapple, vanilla, and blue.  That and the ubiquitous lilikoi, the standard by which I will judge the island's shave ice.  I am also looking forward to trying the coffee, cream soda, and butterscotch syrups.

They were a little weak on the syrup, which is sometimes fine - because the sugar crash after Matsumoto can be rather unpleasant.  And they have a darling little antique cash register on the back counter.  And a penny-squisher.  Word.

Thoughts on Arriving

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!

Adventures in Shave Ice

So I think my newest goal is to make a thorough investigation of the island’s shave ice and determine which one, truly, serves the best. 

Made a visit to Matsumoto’s up in Haleiwa with a friend earlier this week, and while it’s popular and very tasty, it’s also always crowded with tourists, the benches outside smell like garbage, and the staff is hit-or-miss on friendliness.  I ordered a combination of lilikoi (passionfruit – always present on my shave ice), coconut cream, and white cake.  The last two flavors were virtually indistinguishable. 

At Matsumoto’s, you can get regular ol’ shave ice (not a snowcone – it’s much finer, like real snow, and are almost always formed into grapefruit-sized portions.  But you can also have them put ice cream under your ice.  Or sweet azuki beans under your ice.  Or both ice cream and beans.  I tried the beans once.  Once was plenty.  No beans in my shave ice any more – no ice cream, either.  Just pure ice.  Almost everyone in line was getting sweetened condensed milk poured on top.  Not only does it look weird, I’m just dubious about the fruity-ice-dairy combo.  I don’t adore sherbet, barely tolerate ice cream sodas, and am pretty sure I don’t want ice cream at the bottom of my shave ice.  But, others have told me it’s delicious, so perhaps I need to give it a try, if nothing else but to say I have (see also: beans).

There are many other shave ice purveyors on O’ahu, however, and it’s time to start discovering them.

Meanwhile, I am rediscovering my home ice-shaver!  This is one of those gifts I wasn’t too sure I really needed or wanted, but turned out to be pleasant surprises (see also: yogurt-maker).  Anyhow, with milk fetching confiscatory prices in Hawai’i, I might not be using my ice cream maker as much as I would like.  Ice, however, is cheap and plentiful.  The syrups, however, can get a little pricey.  I did find a store in Pearl City that sells them for $1.99, but they’re full of high-fructose corn syrup and preservatives (something I’m not too Michael-Pollan about, but if I can avoid them, super).  Surely I can make my own. So I got on the google-box and started looking for snow-cone syrup recipes.  With pennies for the cost of the sugar and Kool-Aid on sale for 10 cents a packet, this beats the supermarket syrups by a long shot!  And it’s crazy-easy.  I cranked out 5 batches in just under 20 minutes, all for less than the price of one commercial syrup bottle.  I’ve been a fan of crushed and shaved ice from the days of my Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine (which produced just a Dixie cup of shaved ice after minutes of hand-cranking), so I’m easily satisfied by a dessert of a bowl of snow flavored with a little sugar syrup.

Shave Ice Syrup

¾ c. water

¾ c. sugar

1 packet Kool-Aid (unsweetened); 1 t. extract; half a dram bottle of flavoring

Boil the water and sugar until the sugar dissolves. Remove from heat.  Add flavoring and stir.  Cool your syrups in the refrigerator, then pour over shaved ice. Store in the refrigerator. (Chilled syrups don’t melt the ice so quickly, anyhow.)

It’s essentially just flavored simple syrup.  And this stuff is sweet and flavorful – which it needs to be, so the ice doesn’t water it down too much.

For this go-round, I made Grape, Strawberry, and Pink Lemonade with Kool-Aid; Vanilla and Coconut with extracts.  I used my clear vanilla for this, but added a drop of neon blue food coloring to distinguish it from coconut, which I tinted bright yellow-green.

Chemistry? No, sugar syrup!

Next up: Almond, Cherry, Pineapple, and my favorite, Lilikoi (as soon as I can figure out the proportions with my pre-sweetened passionfruit drink mix).  Later: Maple, Banana, Lime, maybe a vanilla-peppermint or an Earl Grey syrup?  Lemon-elderflower would be awesome, if only we had an Ikea here for the elderflower.  Maybe someday I can move behind the candy-like esters of artificial flavoring and try reducing fruit juices into syrups, but – oddly – that has an air of the inauthentic.   Plus, those would surely taste cooked.  All the more reason to keep with the Kool-Aid and the extracts. :)

My most recent combo: vanilla-coconut

Thoughts on Leaving

Well, have I been woefully negligent in posting, or what?  I started a bunch of posts over the summer and never finished them.  Until now... so, apologies for the newsreader bomb, subscribers.  

Anyhow, the big news this summer, if you don't already know it, is that we are moving! To Hawaii!  Mr. Jenspin got a promotion, and that promotion is on Oahu.  It hasn't felt real. It gets a little more real as days pass, but I still can't believe it, even though all our household belongings (that which we didn't give away or sell - which was a lot) is in a shipping container somewhere between Florida and Honolulu, our car gets picked up and shipped tomorrow, I quit jobs I loved and don't have anything lined up in Hawaii yet, and we had to say a lot of goodbyes to a community we specifically moved to seven years ago.  

We had to do a lot of figuring-out about what to do with our belongings. We purged a lot in some typical summer-cleaning, but we had to decide what really made the cut, as we had a finite volume of a shipping container to constrain us.  What comes with us? What sells? What stores?  And since it was summer, I spent a lot of time in the lovely home we built and continually improved. I have been sad to leave my gorgeous kitchen, my big screened patio, the luxurious bathtub. And I had to ask myself, Do I love Jesus more than my stuff? And, if I'm honest with myself, sometimes the answer is no.  But then, isn't that a fundamental question? "Stuff" isn't just stuff. Could be "spouse". Or "job". Lots of little gods, all competing for our allegiance. Which we so readily surrender.

So, believing that the opportunity was from God, we pursued it, willing to shed things like belongings, like houses, which I've discovered often cause people hesitation in decisions to follow after God's desires.  Come, follow Me.  Sell your belongings, give the money to the poor. Don't look back.  The invitation is deceptively simple.

As we decided to move over the summer, that meant my last day of school - a lot of lasts, really - had already happened. And I was grateful for that, because I think if I'd known I'd been experiencing my last whatever, along with my seniors, I'd have been miserable. And instead, it was a season of such joy.  Unlike any other.  And that joy, along with a natural sense of completion in graduating off my seniors, made the decision feel fairly natural. I actually went back to campus this fall, to help out with the new teacher's transition the first week of classes. I was glad for the opportunity to see students one more time. But the lasts I thought I'd been spared, I had to confront them. A little. It's a new school every year, but this time it's different.  The increment of change seems much larger. It's familiar, but a lot of the students are new, a lot of the faculty is new. New programs, new classes, new people; it didn't feel quite like mine any more.

I keep saying it's not goodbye, it's really see-you-later - and I really do trust that's more than lip service.  With modern methods of communication and personal broadcasting, I'm in contact with hundreds of people all across the globe that I otherwise never would have seen again.  Plus, our lives have gone in such a crazy path I never would have predicted, I can't discount seeing people again.  It's not like we are moving to a beautiful vacation destination or anything.  It's just so weird, I keep getting fleeting thoughts like "we are moving to Hawaii.  Do you hear yourself??" I don't know when it will really sink in.  Or stop feeling like vacation.

If there's one thing that I've learned, moving to college, to grad school, to California, to Florida, it's that I always find my people.  And there's always room for more favorites.

Anyhow, we're currently en route, stopping in Indiana to visit family before heading to the middle of the ocean.  I'll continue to post updates as conditions warrant.  It's exciting, having the prospect of a new place to explore, a new culture to navigate, even a language to learn.  It's decidedly foreign, but doesn't require a passport.  Aloha!