Aloha everybody! We promised you a post about paddleboarding in Hilo
Bay, so (drum-roll!) here it is. On Sunday, February 10th, we went to downtown Hilo,
which is where we live, to the bay. There's a beach down there and the
water is fairly calm. We all got paddleboards and tried to learn how to
make it work. What is a paddleboard? It's basically a surfboard,
and you stand on it and use a canoe oar to paddle through the water. It's
like kayaking but standing up. After
learning how to stand up and keep your balance, which is hard, we paddled out
to a small island called Coconut Island, which is probably a quarter-mile away
from the beach. On the way out, we weren’t
really paying attention to the shore, and almost ran into fishing lines that
people had cast out a long ways from the shore.
All the fishermen yelled at us and we did our best to navigate out of
there, but the damage had been done. :/ We
got to Coconut Island and sat for a bit and headed back. It felt like quite the accomplishment! On our way back, we had to deal with the
fishing lines again, go figure, and finally made it back to shore. We sat out for a bit and then grabbed one of
the boards that wasn’t being used to try to get some photo-ops. We were having fun until Jon dropped his
iPhone in the ocean. Luckily, he has a
Lifeproof case that is waterproof.
Thanks to Kate Sennert’s quick eye, we found it pretty quick. We took some pictures and some video and then
the day was over. It was really cool and a great workout!
The next blog post will be about out trip to the summit of Mauna Kea, which
has an elevation of 13,803 feet. We
drove to the top, watched the sun set at the summit, then came back down to
about 9,000 feet and did a little star gazing.
It was really fun and we both recommend that you read that post and look
at the pictures. It was really
interesting and we loved that trip. :)
To view pictures from this trip, go to jlaudnersphotos.shutterfly.com
There's tons of pictures from all our trips. Feel free to leave a comment in the guestbook to let us know you're keeping tabs on us!!
Mahalo for reading!
Jon & Ashley
Monday, March 11, 2013
Monday, March 4, 2013
We've got Pictures!!!
Aloha Everybody!!!
We finally have a way for you all to view our photos!!! If you go to this link, you should be able to look through our albums. We're probably going to be uploading pictures to the various albums throughout the semester, but we'll try to have all the pictures uploaded that correspond with the story we post that weekend. Here's the link: http://jlaudnersphotos.shutterfly.com/
Let us know if that link doesn't work or if you're not seeing pictures. We'll try to fix it.
Mahalo!!!
We finally have a way for you all to view our photos!!! If you go to this link, you should be able to look through our albums. We're probably going to be uploading pictures to the various albums throughout the semester, but we'll try to have all the pictures uploaded that correspond with the story we post that weekend. Here's the link: http://jlaudnersphotos.shutterfly.com/
Let us know if that link doesn't work or if you're not seeing pictures. We'll try to fix it.
Mahalo!!!
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Sorry for the wait. We'll try to get better at this.
Hello everyone!
Sorry it’s been so long since we last posted. We really dropped the ball on that one. But, here’s a new story for all of you! The trip we took on Saturday, January 19 was
down to the southern point of the island to a beach called Green Sands. The southern tip of the Big Island is the
southern-most point in the US. We
stopped at a bakery in Punalu`u that was very good and was advertised as the “Southern-Most
Bakery in the USA.” They have the best Passion Fruit glazed donuts ever!! And quite possibly the only ones...? Anyways, after the bakery, we
continued down to South Point. We took
some small roads and it made both Ashley and I think of Iowa. It was a junk road and had farms on both
sides. They graze cattle down there,
rather than grow corn, but it was still very similar to Iowa. Only with a huge ocean to look at. :) We parked the vans, and had to make a
2.5-mile hike to the beach. The reason
you have to hike, is because the terrain is too tough to cross with
vehicles. So, as you can imagine, it’s
not that easy on foot. It’s very rocky,
and there’s no cover from the sun.
Needless to say, we both got a little sunburnt.
We finally made it to the beach and had to go down a really steep
incline. Here’s a little science behind
this beach. The beach is now on the
shore, but many years ago, it was a caldera for the volcano. The magma came into contact with the mineral
Olivine, and when the magma came out of the volcano, it laid down black lava
rock, with a hint of this green gem. So
after thousands of years of erosion, this beach has formed, and there are
little specs of green olivine gems throughout the black lava rock sand. This makes it one of two green sand beaches in the world! Very cool. We made the climb down into the caldera,
where the beach now is, and swam down there for a few hours, then had to hike
all the way back to the vans. It was a
long day, and we’re both glad we went, but don’t ask us to go there again. It was a pretty draining day and we both got
pretty burnt and were tired of walking.
You can make it to the beach in 4-wheel drive vehicles so if we ever go
again, we’ll be renting a Jeep to get there.
In other news, I’m trying to get a site figured out to share pictures with all of you
and I think I’m going to use Shutterfly so hopefully that works out for
us! We're excited to give you an actual look at what we've been up to. I’ll get you all the link in our
next post, which I’m going to do very soon on our trip we took paddleboarding
in Hilo Bay.
Until then, Much Aloha!
-Jon and Ashley
Monday, January 14, 2013
Did You Miss Us?
Aloha everybody!
As promised, here's the latest installment of our blog! Sorry its been a while, we've been pretty busy with classes and meeting people. But this will be a good post, scout's honor!
I would like to start off by saying that I am a survivor. We had a 4.4 magnitude earthquake the first night we were here, and I was awake for all 10 seconds of it! It kind of sounded/felt like a really large plane flying overhead. But don't let that deter you guys from the shock and awe of it. :) It definitely was a reality check that we're not in Iowa anymore!
So.. our classes are amazing so far! The instructor for our Hawaiian Language in Action is awesome! He is super crazy and loves to teach. And do high kicks. We're going to learn how to chant and how to hula (Jon is not looking forward to that). Our next class is Hawaiian `Ohana, where we're learning about traditions and beliefs, through the Hawaiian family structure. We're also learning chanting in that class too...super hard. The best class is definitely Marine Science, though. We get to go snorkeling every week to identify different plants and animals! The lecture might be a bit difficult, but its all worth it to be in the water every week. Needless to say the academic side of things is going good down here. :)
We've also spent a lot of time trying to get our apartments in living order. Public transportation is pretty difficult to use and can be very frustrating at times, especially when you have both hands full of bags, it's raining, and the bus decides to show up an hour late. We will both think twice when complaining about CyRide being a few minutes late after experiencing this! But shopping here in Hilo isn't bad. Everything is pretty close; there's a Walmart, Target, Safeway, Macy's, Office Max, and a bunch of other stuff right in the same area. We are both trying to make time to get to the farmer's market here. Everyone we talk to says that it's the best and everything is super cheap but with Jon and I having drawn-out schedules during the day, it's hard to get there by 4 when it closes. But we're looking forward to checking that out soon. (I'm going to buy out all of their pineapple!!) There's a lot of places to shop here and we can't wait to further our explorations!
Good news on the noteworthy front! Saturday we went to Kona, which is about a two hour drive around the island on the other side with the Student Life Center to a submarine ride! We went down to about 100 ft. under the surface and saw some corals, fish, and even two small shipwrecks! It was really cool and we're both glad we did it. Jon had never touched salt water in his life so we went to a beach that was really small and was made from sand that had been brought in, not natural sand. Jon and I stepped in the water and walked around a little bit and then headed to do some shopping. We found a lot of cool tourist-y shops and walked through a few. They had some cool trinkets and crafts. Jon shaved his head the night before so we found a straw hat so his head wouldn't burn to a crisp, which was successful. Kona was absolutely amazing and we're definitely going to have to make a trip back in the future!
Yesterday we went to Hapuna Beach with the Student Life Center. It was absolutely gorgeous, and we brought our snorkeling equipment to try it out. The waves were HUGE though and we both got taken out pretty bad at the beginning, but it was so fun when we got the hang of it! Jon was barely out of the water for the 4 hours that we were there and I find it really hard to believe that that was his first real beach experience. He dominated those waves! I got fried to a little crisp, of course, but it was totally worth it. I would say the highlight was when we made Jon into a sand mermaid (suuper attractive. :)
This is all followed by more classes today and a good week of trying to see more stuff. We're going to try to keep this blog updated once a week at the least, but feel free to comment or email either one of us if you want more. If you have anything you want to say, leave a comment. If you want more details about one of the things we did or if you have any suggestions, leave a comment. Please comment, it helps us get a feel of what you all want from us in our writing. I know a few people have told us that they are traveling Hawaii through us so if that's you, let us know how we're doing and if we need to give more info. We aim to please, people!
Mahalo (thank you) for reading and we'll talk to you all later!
Aloha from Ashley and Jon!
As promised, here's the latest installment of our blog! Sorry its been a while, we've been pretty busy with classes and meeting people. But this will be a good post, scout's honor!
I would like to start off by saying that I am a survivor. We had a 4.4 magnitude earthquake the first night we were here, and I was awake for all 10 seconds of it! It kind of sounded/felt like a really large plane flying overhead. But don't let that deter you guys from the shock and awe of it. :) It definitely was a reality check that we're not in Iowa anymore!
So.. our classes are amazing so far! The instructor for our Hawaiian Language in Action is awesome! He is super crazy and loves to teach. And do high kicks. We're going to learn how to chant and how to hula (Jon is not looking forward to that). Our next class is Hawaiian `Ohana, where we're learning about traditions and beliefs, through the Hawaiian family structure. We're also learning chanting in that class too...super hard. The best class is definitely Marine Science, though. We get to go snorkeling every week to identify different plants and animals! The lecture might be a bit difficult, but its all worth it to be in the water every week. Needless to say the academic side of things is going good down here. :)
We've also spent a lot of time trying to get our apartments in living order. Public transportation is pretty difficult to use and can be very frustrating at times, especially when you have both hands full of bags, it's raining, and the bus decides to show up an hour late. We will both think twice when complaining about CyRide being a few minutes late after experiencing this! But shopping here in Hilo isn't bad. Everything is pretty close; there's a Walmart, Target, Safeway, Macy's, Office Max, and a bunch of other stuff right in the same area. We are both trying to make time to get to the farmer's market here. Everyone we talk to says that it's the best and everything is super cheap but with Jon and I having drawn-out schedules during the day, it's hard to get there by 4 when it closes. But we're looking forward to checking that out soon. (I'm going to buy out all of their pineapple!!) There's a lot of places to shop here and we can't wait to further our explorations!
Good news on the noteworthy front! Saturday we went to Kona, which is about a two hour drive around the island on the other side with the Student Life Center to a submarine ride! We went down to about 100 ft. under the surface and saw some corals, fish, and even two small shipwrecks! It was really cool and we're both glad we did it. Jon had never touched salt water in his life so we went to a beach that was really small and was made from sand that had been brought in, not natural sand. Jon and I stepped in the water and walked around a little bit and then headed to do some shopping. We found a lot of cool tourist-y shops and walked through a few. They had some cool trinkets and crafts. Jon shaved his head the night before so we found a straw hat so his head wouldn't burn to a crisp, which was successful. Kona was absolutely amazing and we're definitely going to have to make a trip back in the future!
Yesterday we went to Hapuna Beach with the Student Life Center. It was absolutely gorgeous, and we brought our snorkeling equipment to try it out. The waves were HUGE though and we both got taken out pretty bad at the beginning, but it was so fun when we got the hang of it! Jon was barely out of the water for the 4 hours that we were there and I find it really hard to believe that that was his first real beach experience. He dominated those waves! I got fried to a little crisp, of course, but it was totally worth it. I would say the highlight was when we made Jon into a sand mermaid (suuper attractive. :)
This is all followed by more classes today and a good week of trying to see more stuff. We're going to try to keep this blog updated once a week at the least, but feel free to comment or email either one of us if you want more. If you have anything you want to say, leave a comment. If you want more details about one of the things we did or if you have any suggestions, leave a comment. Please comment, it helps us get a feel of what you all want from us in our writing. I know a few people have told us that they are traveling Hawaii through us so if that's you, let us know how we're doing and if we need to give more info. We aim to please, people!
Mahalo (thank you) for reading and we'll talk to you all later!
Aloha from Ashley and Jon!
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Hawaii bound!
We're finally on our way. We just boarded the plane and let me tell you, it is crowded. Ashley and I are super excited and can't wait to see Hawaii! Ashley just told me she can't wait to lay out on the beach. I can't wait to sleep after this long day of flying. Well, we'll write more later. Wish us luck on our flight!
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Jon's first post - I need to go to sleep...
Hello all,
It's Jon here. It's about 3:00 AM on January 2nd and I'm thinking about going to bed. I have almost everything packed and my room is cleaned up for it's 5-month vacancy. I put my beloved car "Sweet Dee" in storage today and it was sad to say goodbye. It really hit me today. I said goodbye to some really good friends and that was what made it click. I talked to Ashley and she thinks it won't hit her until we get to the airport and I though the same about myself but it really sunk in today.
Even though it finally hit me that I'm gonna be on an island in the middle of an ocean for five months, I am super excited. I don't have anything to be nervous or scared about. I'm really anxious and excited to finally land in Hilo and get a bit of sleep before starting to explore town and hopefully meet some friends.
It's going to be a great journey and I can't wait for it to start, but for right now it's bittersweet. Saying goodbye to Sweet Dee and a bunch of my good friends was tough, but hey... I'm going to Hawaii; I can't complain. I didn't mention, but this might be a good time - it's 7 degrees outside right now in Rockford, Iowa where I live and it's 65 degrees in Hilo. :) And one more thing, my writing is not very good - you'll all get used to it soon.
Talk to you all again soon!
Thanks!
Jon Laudner
It's Jon here. It's about 3:00 AM on January 2nd and I'm thinking about going to bed. I have almost everything packed and my room is cleaned up for it's 5-month vacancy. I put my beloved car "Sweet Dee" in storage today and it was sad to say goodbye. It really hit me today. I said goodbye to some really good friends and that was what made it click. I talked to Ashley and she thinks it won't hit her until we get to the airport and I though the same about myself but it really sunk in today.
Even though it finally hit me that I'm gonna be on an island in the middle of an ocean for five months, I am super excited. I don't have anything to be nervous or scared about. I'm really anxious and excited to finally land in Hilo and get a bit of sleep before starting to explore town and hopefully meet some friends.
It's going to be a great journey and I can't wait for it to start, but for right now it's bittersweet. Saying goodbye to Sweet Dee and a bunch of my good friends was tough, but hey... I'm going to Hawaii; I can't complain. I didn't mention, but this might be a good time - it's 7 degrees outside right now in Rockford, Iowa where I live and it's 65 degrees in Hilo. :) And one more thing, my writing is not very good - you'll all get used to it soon.
Talk to you all again soon!
Thanks!
Jon Laudner
Monday, December 31, 2012
The Time is Drawing Near!
Hello family, friends, and loved ones! :)
Jon and I are starting our Maika'i (excellent) adventure soon, and we're glad you can join us!
This is the official blog of our trip to Hawaii. Why don't I give you a little background before we get into everything...
We are both students at Iowa State University in a program called National Student Exchange. Through NSE, you can go to a wide variety of universities in the US and Canada, and not have to pay out-of-state tuition to your host university. Essentially, study abroad on a smaller scale. After much consideration, we decided Hawaii was a perfect fit for both of us! We fly out of Minneapolis on January 3rd (3 days!!) and have a two hour layover in Seattle and an 8 hour layover in Honolulu before making the final jump over to Hilo.
We have our classes all ligned up and it's not looking to be a tough semester. We're both taking a Marine Biology class- Intro to Hawaiian Coral Reefs- where we get to explore the marine life of the local equatic ecosystem via snorkeling every Tuesday! I think it's safe to say this is the class we are most looking forward to. Other Hawaiian- related classes are Hawaiian Ohana and Hawaiian Language in Action where we will be learning about culture and language. The last class we're taking together is Choir. In addition, Jon is taking a couple computer classes and I'm taking intro to Social Work.
I think we're both getting pretty anxious as it gets closer to our departure. I for one, being the procrastinator that I am, have waited until last night to start packing. Jon is a little ahead of me on that one (As a side note, Space Bags are God's gift to traveling.) 5 months is a long time to be away from friends and family, but I think we're ready for the challenge!
Well, that's all I have for now! We will be periodically alternating between post-writing so I'm sure you'll hear from Jon soon! Also, we're fairly new to the blog-world so don't judge our housekeeping too harshly, we'll get it looking professional. :)
Aloha,
-Ashley
Jon and I are starting our Maika'i (excellent) adventure soon, and we're glad you can join us!
This is the official blog of our trip to Hawaii. Why don't I give you a little background before we get into everything...
We are both students at Iowa State University in a program called National Student Exchange. Through NSE, you can go to a wide variety of universities in the US and Canada, and not have to pay out-of-state tuition to your host university. Essentially, study abroad on a smaller scale. After much consideration, we decided Hawaii was a perfect fit for both of us! We fly out of Minneapolis on January 3rd (3 days!!) and have a two hour layover in Seattle and an 8 hour layover in Honolulu before making the final jump over to Hilo.
We have our classes all ligned up and it's not looking to be a tough semester. We're both taking a Marine Biology class- Intro to Hawaiian Coral Reefs- where we get to explore the marine life of the local equatic ecosystem via snorkeling every Tuesday! I think it's safe to say this is the class we are most looking forward to. Other Hawaiian- related classes are Hawaiian Ohana and Hawaiian Language in Action where we will be learning about culture and language. The last class we're taking together is Choir. In addition, Jon is taking a couple computer classes and I'm taking intro to Social Work.
I think we're both getting pretty anxious as it gets closer to our departure. I for one, being the procrastinator that I am, have waited until last night to start packing. Jon is a little ahead of me on that one (As a side note, Space Bags are God's gift to traveling.) 5 months is a long time to be away from friends and family, but I think we're ready for the challenge!
Well, that's all I have for now! We will be periodically alternating between post-writing so I'm sure you'll hear from Jon soon! Also, we're fairly new to the blog-world so don't judge our housekeeping too harshly, we'll get it looking professional. :)
Aloha,
-Ashley
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)