Life in Kona, Again

Living in Kona, Hawaii is so interesting. Interesting because it isn't just the paradise that you think of if you are a casual vacationer or a daydreamer...it is real life for about 35,000 people. It also some form of real life for me, not filled with scuba-diving and dolphin or whale watching, but filled with the realities of proliferate poverty/homelessness, underpaid jobs and overpriced goods and services, being sensitive to the community and doing my job here on campus. Of course it is beautiful and tropical, and the aura around here is 'aloha' and 'ohana'-a slow paced easy-does-it lifestyle. Of course I am grateful and delight in my surroundings nearly everyday (I do my best to remind myself of how much I have to be thankful on a daily basis, wherever I am). My heart feels estranged in the realistic alternative to paradise, but at the same time, I am so comfortable here I call it my home, feeling like I never left it last September. The friends are different, the schools are different, but as they say 'the more things change the more they stay the same...'

My mommasita visited me last week and it was so great to have her here! (Hi Mom!) It was just as confusing though to hang out with her around dinner time during the work week, like she was visiting me at college or I was back living at home working and we were unwinding from a day of work. Saturday and Sunday we did errands and had Panda Express for lunch--everything but the ocean views and Hawaiian Shirts was completely normal to a weekend in Fresno. But...how cool to have my mom pick me up from a long day of serving God and leading students in helping me with projects in the garden & technologies area? Too cool! Also, the best motivation to put on cute clothes (for going out to dinner), as in not my gardening clothes. I foresee all my shorts to have dirt-stained-butts in the rear future :)

It was quite a bummer that the weather was overcast-y and cool the week my mom was here, not that that wasn't a relief from Central Cali high temps, but because she didn't get to see a delightful Hawaiian sunset...that is, until the last night.

Guava!

The things I do here have added up to being pretty random. I measure the oxygen level in a fish pool amidst the garden, I have harvested guava, moringa and cotton, yes COTTON! all from the same garden. I have seen a fish be gutted and cleaned out and had a coconut harvested and chopped at the end to drink out of.

Dragging away a hefty branch!

A false/decorative Pineapple, & mutated at that!