Hawaiian Preview for Maggie

I found out last week that my new job will be flying me out to Honolulu on two occasions in June for clinical trainings. This means that I will be flying to Hawaii twice in one month, all expenses paid! This is exciting news on top of exciting news, and I am really looking forward to getting a preview of the work I will be doing and the place where we will be living.

We are also hoping that this way I can take some of our stuff and store it there to lessen our load in August. Everything is working out so well, it is almost hard to believe. I feel like all my hard work is paying off and I am so grateful for these opportunities.

One-Way Tickets

Last night, Tommy and I purchase one-way tickets to Oahu. For whatever reason, I was a little overwhelmed by this. My fingered hovered over the mouse for a good 20 seconds before pressing the "Purchase" button on the ticketing screen. This is not to say that I have any doubts about this decision...it just felt almost surreal to be buying a one-way ticket to an island in the South Pacific. Tommy was unaffected, and forced my finger to the button manually as he did the morning I received my internship match email and could not bring myself to open it.

So there you go. It's on. We are offically flying from San Francisco to Honolulu on September 1st, 2007 at 8:30 in the morning. It will take us 5 hours and 10 minutes in flight time, though with the filght difference it will only be 10:30 or something weird when we arrive.

Every step of this journey is providing a little thrill in the mundane exhaustion of my daily life here in Carrboro. The next step will be signing our lease on the apartment we found (see last post), which should occur by Monday.

Our Hawai`ian Apartment?

For the past few months, we have been browsing the Craigslist boards in Oahu in a preliminary investigation of housing options. As many of you may know, real estate is insanely expensive in Hawai`i and good quality rentals are also relatively scarce. On the day that I received confirmation of my job, I saw a posting for an apartment in Kaneohe Bay with a September start date. This was highly unusual, as most of the postings are offering leases starting next month. I contacted the woman who owns the apartment, which began a week long dialogue via phone and email. The woman is a sociologist, and the apartment is IDEAL for us in many ways. First of all, LOCATION. (See the photo above with the arrow.) It is not directly "in town" (i.e. in Honolulu), so it is less expensive and away from the hustle and bustle. Also, it is fully (and tastefully) furnished, so we wouldn't need to bring or buy much of anything other than our clothes and personal items. There are two parking spots, it is a 5 minute walk to the Bay and a 10 minute drive to Kailua Beach, which is supposedly one of the most beautiful in the world. There are tropical fruit trees in the back yard, as well as a large vegetable garden with eggplants and tomatoes and herbs. (Nathan is VERY pumped about this detail). My friend and colleague Aukahi graciously visited the apartment for us last week, and gave it a resoundingly positive review. We put in an application, and are anxiously awaiting to hear whether we have been selected for the apartment.....please send your prayers and thoughts in our direction!

I have included some pictures of the apartment. Imagine us, lounging on the lanai in that hammock. How cool!

For more description, see www.hawaiiwindward.com

Love,

Maggie