My Aloha Adventures (life on the 9th Island)

Aloha. Pretty much every year, I make a resolution to learn a new language. I've attempted to learn Icelandic, Irish/Celtic, French, Spanish, Zwahili and Farsi. I also try to brush up on my German every year. This year, my language choice was made for me because we moved to Hawaii. I was surprised at how many Hawaiian words are in normal day-to-day language. So, in case you've ever had the desire to learn a little Hawaiian, I'm posting a few words, their pronunciation and the meaning. For those who have visited Hawaii, you might be surprised to find you've been mispronouncing a few things. We were. Here's my very short list of the words I've learned in our two months here (hopefully, I'm learning the right way to say them - if not, I'm sure someone will tell me 😂): HAWAII - ha-vy-ee - the state OAHU - eww-ah-who - the island ALOHA  - ah-low-ha - hello MAHALO  - ma-ha-low - thank you OHANA - oh-han-a - family KEIKI - cay-key - child KAPUNA - koo-poo-nah ...

When I was a month old, we moved to Germany. We lived there until I was about five. One of my favorite childhood memories is running through the sheets on the clothesline as my Tante (aunt) Miele hung up the clothes. When she was done, we would walk into town to the Farmers Market.  It was a weekly routine for us. If I close my eyes now, I can still remember the smell of the clothes on the line and I can still see all the different colored veggies in their stands. To this day, I still love hanging my clothes outside and I absolutely love Farmers Markets. One of the first thing we did when we moved here is to find local Farmers Markets. Oahu has a few markets but our favorite is Pearlridge. It's small but they have packed it with a lot of diverse local offerings and inexpensive local veg/fruit. We tend to do a walk around the different stalls before we buy anything. We like to talk to the vendors and find out about their products. Not going lie, we usually buy from the vendors that ...

 The house is quiet on this Aloha Friday. Lo is at her new job and the Toddler is napping. I have a few moments, lovely moments, to myself. I have a foreign movie playing in the background. Thankfully, no subtitles so I can mindlessly watch it while I relax. I hate that these movies always have the same format: girl is single, usually works as a writer/editor, she travels to a foreign country and meets the man of her dreams. This storyline just pisses me off because I've traveled alot -- some by myself -- and this has never happened to me! And, I went to a matchmaking festival. In Ireland.  By myself.  So...if life really does mirror art, I should be happily married to someone I met in a foreign land! 😂 Speaking of foreign lands...see that nice segway?  When people found out we were moving to Hawaii, I can't tell you how many people felt like we were moving overseas. We usually just smiled and mumbled that Hawaii is part of the USA.  However, once we got here, ...

Today is Fukubukuro in Hawaii. Fukubukuro is a Japanese event that happens on January 1st at some of the malls here.  Stores offer grab bags with assorted items for 50% or more off the retail price of the goods. You pick a bag based on the price you want to spend, contents sight unseen. I think it's so vendors can clear out old merchandise.  All of the more desirable bags were out of our price range today but it was still fun to see what everyone else was buying. It's definitely something that we'll save up for next year or do instead of Christmas gifts. Some places offer dancing and events during the day but the one we went to first charged $6/hour for parking so we pulled in and immediately pulled out.  We ended up going to another location. All they had there was a place set up for selfies/pictures: If you love shopping, this is definitely a way to purchase some nice "surprises" but I think you need to be sure you are getting your monies worth - a f...