Aloha!

I have been having a fantastic time in Hawaii so far. This is truly an amazing experience and I'm so glad I got to be a part of this course.

Friday I finished up my psychiatry shelf around 4pm, pack up a bunch of stuff in the cities and then headed home to pack. Once I finished packing, it was 1230-1ish in the morning. The alarm at 4am came way too soon. We left the house at 5 and made it to the airport a little after 6. Our flight left for Chicago (note to self, this was not a good flight pattern to pick, ugh) on time at 8. We had a short lay over in Chicago and then were on our way to Honolulu. This was the longest.....flight....ever - mostly due to the fact that I was exhausted and I couldn't sleep which seemed to make everything worse. After we took off, I was able to snooze for a little bit but the overhead announcements were SO loud. I slept for about 20 minutes before I was woken up with a loud, blaring message from the caption. We had reach cruising altitude. Thanks - now I'm awake. I read a little bit of my book, read to smut (people) magazine and then tried to sleep again. Once again the super loud overhead announcement startled me awake. It was time for beverages. Ugh - thanks for the update. This was a 9 house flight and not to mention that there was no food on this flight for us. They had 24 sandwiches available for purchase {10 buckaroos each!}. Yes, you read that right, only 24, and the flight was full - over 200 people. Good thing we brought some snacks!

I took this picture with my cellphone as we were flying over Oahu. It was so nice to see tropical landscape instead of the frozen tundra of the midwest!

Once we landed in Honolulu we made our way to the next flight headed to Kona. We were going to grab some fast food from Burger King, but after seeing that the burgers were 7-8 dollars, we refrained (even though we wanted something other than snack food and we were all hungry starving). Once we landed in Kona, we hopped the shuttle to the rental car place. We had signed up to rent a mid-size vehicle but once we got to the lot, there were no cars in sight. So we got a *free* upgrade to a minivan!!! (I should have asked if we could have gotten a four wheel drive vehicle. Oh well, I think a lack of sleep and being hungry were impinging on my mental capabilities - ha!) Everyone, I'd like to introduce you to K'hol - our minivan! {look mom and dad - it's white!! hehe! Just as a side note, a majority of the vehicles seem to be white down here.}

Sorry this post isn't that interesting so far, but I've got to run and get ready for Earl Bakken's house. Yes, Earl Bakken the pace maker inventor/medtronics guy!! I hear his house here in Hawaii is fabulous! {more to come}

~Ashley