shave ice & gelato

One morning while up on the North Shore, Katia and I were hanging out on the beach reading our books, while Guido went for a walk. When Guido came back, he said started talking to Katia in Italian. I heard the words "la foca" and knew right away that he must have seen a seal! He said while he was walking, he thought he saw a big rock on the beach, but when he got closer, he realized that it was a seal! So off we went to check out this amazing creature. I have heard of Hawaiian Monk Seals coming up on the beach every now and then but it is a pretty rare sight to see and something I have never experienced in person. The lifeguard was pretty sure it was a girl seal. Isn't she cute?

Laniakea Beach, more commonly now known as "turtle beach", which is located on the North Shore of Oahu, is known for the Hawaiian green sea turtles that hang out on the beach on most days. They have been hanging out there during the afternoon and early evenings for about 10 years now that I am aware of. At first, only a few people knew of the turtles. Then the massive tour groups started to arrive. Now tour buses stop at the beach and the traffic near this beach is often almost as bad as a high surf day.

The first time I saw the turtles, I was pretty alarmed with how some of the visitors were treating the turtles. They were touching them, crowding them, and some were even trying to sit on their shells. Now thankfully there are daily volunteers that keep the crowds under control and try to educate the visitors so that the turtles are able to have some peace.

I have been lucky to be at this beach a few times when there were only a few other people hanging out. It is pretty amazing watching the turtles "just be" on the beach. If you are ever visiting Oahu, I would definitely recommend a visit to this beach, but go on a weekday to avoid the larger crowds.

Here are some of my favorite turtle pictures:

One of my favorite trees here in Hawaii is the Golden Shower Tree. I was surprised to see that it had already bloomed when driving home last week. I always thought it bloomed in March or April as I remember it blooming around Easter time. I went home, grabbed my camera, and then drove back to take a few photos of the tree. Lucky thing that I did because today already half of the flowers have fallen to the ground.

The botanical name of this tree is Cassia fistula. I have known it for years as just the shower tree or the yellow shower tree. Only since researching this tree on my favorite encyclopedia, google, did I find out that the real name of this tree is the Golden Shower Tree. There are a few varieties of this tree here in Hawaii (golden, pink, & rainbow).

While researching, I found an interesting article in the Honolulu Advertiser that talks about some of the beautiful trees in Hawaii, including the Golden Shower Tree.

To finish out my tree mini series, the first time I saw the Rainbow Eucalyptus, also known as the Mindanao Gum, was a few years ago while I was on the University of Hawaii campus hanging out before my photography class began. I was immediately drawn to the beautiful colors of the bark of this tree.

The Rainbow Eucalyptus is originally from Papua New Guinea. It is grown nearly exclusively for it's amazingly colored trunk.The botanical name of this tree is Eucalyptus deglupta.

I went to have blood drawn this morning (had to go first thing before I ate) and decided to stop at White Plains beach on my way home to hang out and read my book for a while. White Plains beach used to be a private military beach. It is now open to the public and is about 4 or 5 miles from my house. I parked my car, set up my chair, and started to notice a few people with cameras walking towards a spot a little bit to the left of my chair. I walked over to see what was going on. There, below a little mound of sand was a cute Hawaiian monk seal. I was so happy I remembered to bring my camera. I moved here 25 years ago and this is only the second time I have ever seen a seal on the beach (post on my first seal sighting). I talked to the lifeguard to find out if this was the first sighting of this seal. He said there have been 4 seals hanging out in the area for a while now.

After about an hour or so at the beach, I headed on home. I made a major change regarding my trip...no more Switzerland, and then checked the progress of the "where oh where my new camera could be". After clicking on 4 links to get to the progress of the shipment page, I was thrilled to see that my camera was finally delivered to my school. I jumped in my car and went to pick it up. I am really happy I chose this camera! Of course I just finished charging up the battery and have only taken a few practice shots in my house so far. I am thinking of going back to the same beach tomorrow to see if the seal returns to try out my new camera.

Anyways, here are a few cute photos of the seal on the beach. He or she was inching his/her way up and finally rolled over to snooze for the day.

A mystery but a beautiful one as beach goers and park users noticed a beautiful sight...four black swans at Ala Moana Beach Park. I saw this entertaining story on KITV news last night. Unfortunately the this news site does not have links to embed videos. If you want to see these magnificent creatures and this interesting video about them, click on the black swans link above to view the 1:49 minute video. My favorite part of the video is when the news reporter tries to interview one of the black swans.

I was fortunate to see a few beautiful black swans at the Byodo-In Temple last summer. I have never seen black swans at the beach. In case you have not seen a black swan before and do not have time to watch the video, I am re-posting one of the black swan photos I posted last year.

I was amazed at how many yellow photos I have. Yellow buildings, yellow Smart Cars, yellow foods, yellow vehicles, yellow hats, yellow chairs, yellow trees, etc. etc.

Since I have been blogging so much about Italy lately, I decided to share something from Hawaii. I have been walking by this gorgeous yellow hibiscus flower all week at school. The bush is located between my class and the Kindergarten class. I grabbed the camera in my classroom one day and took a few photos as our class headed to the bathroom, a place we visit frequently. I often joke that my desk should be located in that bathroom.

Most of the hibiscus bushes at our school produce red hibiscus flowers. We also have a few bushes with orange and white or light pink flowers. The bush with the yellow hibiscus flowers at our school is my favorite.

One more view...

This yellow hibiscus flower is not the native yellow hibiscus (Hibiscus brackenridgei A. Gray) which is the Hawaii State Flower. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page of this link, you will see a close up of the native yellow hibiscus.

This morning I had an appointment in town (Honolulu). I ended up getting into town much earlier than I anticipated due to very little traffic. I had about thirty minutes to kill. I decided to head up to the Makiki Forest Recreation Area or as many know it, the Hawaii Nature Center. It is only a 5 minute drive from the craziness of traffic, high rises, and noise of the city.

I am always amazed at how peaceful this place can be. I haven't been up there in a quite a while. The gravel parking lot has moved down to the bottom of the road. They have knocked down the old Nature Center (a great place to go on a field trip or to take kids to on the weekends) and built a new one. There are two hiking trails I used to hike quite a bit that start by the Nature Center.

I love walking around in this forest area. The smell of eucalyptus is in the air. Birds are chirping, the brook is babbling ( the Kanealole Stream), and the leaves of the trees are rustling in the wind. Oh and every once and a while you will hear a few chickens and roosters and if you are lucky, you will see a few hanging out.

Here are some of the photos I took today. The photos are of my walk from the parking lot to the beginning of the trail head. I did not hike today but hope to go back next week with a friend if the weather cooperates and do the Makiki Valley Loop Trail - the Kanealole Trail, the Makiki Valley Trail, and the Maunalaha Trail (all of which connect at one point to make the loop).

I took these photos while hiking in the Makiki Forest Recreation Area on Thursday.

I have been sitting in a state of paralysis looking at my list of things to do for my trip. This year for once, I have time between the end of the school year and the start of my trip. If I don't get started on my list soon, I will be running around with my head cut off the day I leave like I usually do.

I finally broke down my to do list into things to do each day this afternoon. That certainly helped a little. I still have a few more things to accomplish for today's list but there are a few more hours left in the day. I have decided that I am going to abandon my blog and try not to do more than peek at everyone's blogs until I get everything done. It is so much easier for me to sit and read blogs than to attack my list. I need to get focused and stop procrastinating so I will still have my head when I leave for Italy next week.

Since I don't have any photos of a chicken running around with its head cut off, I thought I would leave you with some photos of various types of pineapples. that way this won't be such a boring post and besides, this gives me a little more time to procrastinate before getting back to the list.

I took these photos with Candi & Bill up at the Dole Pineapple place. I should have taken photos of the names of each type of pineapple plant but I didn't.

(There's more pinepples on the next page...)

I had a fun day on Friday taking Kim and Chris (her husband) on a tour of part of the North Shore. We had lunch at Kua Aina burgers and then hit a few of the beaches. The highlight was our stop at Laniakea Beach ("turtle beach"). We saw a few turtles swimming in the water. As we walked down the beach, we saw two more turtles hanging out on land. While we were there, On our way back to town, we stopped for some shave ice at Aoki's Shave Ice.

As far as packing is going, I am moving as slow as a turtle although I am finally making a good dent in my list. Packing and flying are the two things I hate about traveling. I don't know why packing is so difficult. It really should be an easy task. I have my list. I take similar things every year. Instead it is usual at least a 3-day event. I equate packing to a turtle moving on land. He moves a bit, rests, moves a bit more, and then rests some more. I get my suitcases out, sit and stare at them, grab my list, sit and stare at my stuff, pack a bit, sit and stare (and get distracted), and then pack a bit more.

Below are a few more photos of the turtles we saw hanging out on the beach:

First turtle we saw...

Second turtle...

Third turtle (the one that came out of the water while we were there and moved slowly up onto the beach, same turtle from the video above)...

Friday was a nice distraction from my list and from the tragic, heartbreaking, and inspirational stories and scenes from Iran. For a chronological order of events (from June 13-20), check out this link. Video 9: Wounded Girl Dying is the video of Neda. Her name means call, calling, or voice. She was watching the protests with her father when she was shot in the heart by the Basiji. She was not even participating in the protests. A blog, Neda's Voice, has been created in her memory.

I have changed my sunflower to green in solidarity with Iran. If you are on Twitter, change your profile location to Tehran and change your time zone to GMT+3:30. This will help confuse the Iranian government from finding, attacking, and arresting those sending information out of Iran so the world can witness to what is happening there.

Thanks for all of your recent comments. I will try to reply to some of them before I leave. Heading over to my dad's in a bit and then back to packing...

Sending a special Happy Father's Day wish to my dad and to my brother as well as to all the other fathers out there :)