Aloha Hawaii

Well after weeks of preparation and sad good bye’s (including a rather pathetic one on my part when I dropped Sage off to my sister’s).  Watch out Hawaii.  Here I come.  Welcome to my blog.  I hope this will be a good medium to keep in touch a little better back home.  I hope you enjoy reading and I’ll try to post something weekly.  Intermittent pictures are possible too (still figuring that out, so stay tuned).  

I have received many text/email/calls wondering how my trip went, so that’s what my first post is going to be about. 

Dad took me to the Dayton airport at 4:30 AM Tuesday morning (Thanks Daddio).  From there it was a short jaunt over to Minneapolis/St. Paul.  Upon arriving they were asking for volunteers to take a later flight to my next layover, Seattle.  I had a 6 hour layover in Seattle anyway, so I volunteered.  Delta gave me $400.  Now I only paid $350 out of pocket, and once I include my baggage fees and food for the trip (totaling $80), the grand total for my trip here will essentially be 30 bucks.  Not to shabby, right?  Well, it got better because Delta put me in first class out to Seattle; a pleasant surprise.  I complain about Delta’s stronghold over Cincinnati/NKY airport all the time, but currently I am singing Delta’s praises.  God has sent me so many signs that I have made the right decisions (albeit crazy ones!) about coming here, so I just took this as one more blessing.  I guess I’ll keep following His path and see where it leads.

Unfortunately, for my 6.5 hour flight (Seattle to Honolulu) I was back in peasant-county, and I learned (in case you were curious) that it is actually possible for a toddler to cry for about 5.5 hours straight.  I guess God needed to keep me humbled.  On the flight to Honolulu, I changed seats since there was a 3 seat row with only one person, so I joined him instead of my crammed seat.  Turns out my 'row-partner' is a surf instructor and owns a surf shop (yeah, this only happens to me, right?).  He was great.  He was a transplant from Kansas 8 years ago, so he gave me all kinds of great tips.  I have decided he will be my newest Hawaii friend.  He has brought this on himself since he gave me his information and encouraged me to email.  He has no idea what is coming.

Finally landing at 9 PM Hawaii time (that’s 3 AM KY time) I had completed my journey 23 hours after waking up for the day.  It was off to baggage claim, then a shuttle to the rental car company.  I stopped at my a friend’s house.  We had tuna poke.  Poke (pron: poo-kei; is raw fish usually served as an appetizer in Hawaiian cuisine) tasted awesome and was a great first thing to eat here.  While it wasn't technically sushi, all you sushi-lovers out there would love it!  Then I headed across the island to stay with a different friend (Thanks for having me so far K!).  

Bed at 1 AM Hawaii time and then I woke at 6 AM to a beautiful symphony of birds, breeze and geckos.   One interview down (I had two job offers at that place!) and a few more interviews to go for the rest of the day.  

Send up some more prayers for me that the job/place to live aspects go well.

Mahalo!

Hawaii-Topher