Working on settling in

We're slowing settling into life in Hawaii, though we are still in a slightly temporary situation.  We plan on living on Hickam due to the extremely high cost of living and heavy traffic in Honolulu.  Unfortunately, the only available house won't be open until early February.  Luckily, we were able to do a month-to-month rental of a Navy privatized house, so we are living in a house instead of a hotel!  It's still a place full of borrowed furniture, dishes, and even linens, but it is still so much better than hotel life.

Our home until Feb.  It's a duplex.  (Picture taken from the park across the street)

Brendan has started back to school.  He is attending Nimitz Elementary, which is located right outside Hickam AFB.  This is the school he will be attending when we move to Hickam.  His teacher seems very nice-her family is Okinawan, though she has never been there.  We've gotten a crash course in budget cuts.  Brendan has art and PE, but no music-there just isn't money to have all three.  Art and PE are only once every other week, as the teacher has to be shared by the whole school (K-6).  Ms. Iramina (Brendan's teacher) told me that some schools have music teachers, but no PE teachers, or perhaps foreign language teachers, but of course, that replaces on of the other options.  We were very spoiled with DoDDS.  Brendan began kindergarten in Okinawa with having classes in art, music, PE, Spanish and Japanese culture, along with the regular kindergarten curriculum.  In any case, I have hopes that school will go well here and that budget cuts will not get worse.  It's truly sad that so many cuts are made in programs that benefit children.  How can we expect them to become good, productive citizens of society if we refuse to give them the resources they need and deserve?


Since we've been to Hawaii before, we've not done as much exploring as you'd expect, though we have done some.  We took the kids to one of Brendan's favorite places, the Pacific Aviation Museum and got yearly membership.  I expect Jason and Brendan will spend quite a bit of time there. 

We've ventured up to the North Shore a few times to watch the surfers.  The winter months are when the big waves come and it's almost comical seeing all the surfers out at once.  I don't know how they don't all run into each other! 

Not too many surfers out this time.

Today we went up to the Pali Lookout to see the jungle chickens and look at the windward coast below.  It was surprisingly not too windy up there-so very different from last time.

We then headed to Kailua Bay to walk along the beach and look for seashells for Brendan's 100 days of school project.  While we did find stunningly blue water, soft sand and beautiful views, we did not find seashells.  So different from the coral and shells on the beaches of Okinawa!

We finished off our day today with dinner from Coco's-an Okinawa favorite.  It is a little different here.  The pork cutlet tastes different and they don't have naan bread.  But...it's that same Coco's sauce and that's the important part!

I realized I didn't post anything from Christmas, so that's next time.