Starting to settle in

We've now been in Honolulu a week and our lives are taking on some semblance of normalcy and routine. A big part of that is that Sophie started school yesterday! (The Honolulu public schools are on a year-round schedule.) She seems to enjoy it; her teacher, Miss Choy, is very young and enthusiastic and actually likes children, which makes a big turnaround from our experience in NYC last year. Sophie is most excited by the fact that there are TWO recesses, neither of which involves sitting in a packed auditorium between two kids who are mean to her, without even being allowed to read a book.

When we first got here, we spent several days cleaning our new house. Every corner of the living room, china cabinet, and kitchen was filled with our landlord's stuff, some of it beautiful, some of it decrepit, and some of it strange. We put some of it in storage under the house - the wooden fertility god with the indicative anatomy was among the first to go - and packed some of it high in cabinets where we won't be able to hurt it. We met the landlord, a sweet Japanese old timer, and he really wants us to use everything in the house (he even bought new bed linens before we arrived), but there are just some things we are too scared to touch. Two rambunctious kids playing racquetball in the hallway do not mix with an entire set of Tiffany gold-edged china.

As it turns out, the landlord doesn't have any "regular" dishes, so we are eating off of the least intimidating set of china we could find - and our silverware is SILVER. We might be most spoiled by the icemaker in the freezer, and the fact that you can now run water in the kitchen and flush the toilet without scalding or freezing the person in the shower.

Sunday was our first day at The City Church, although Ryan doesn't officially start work until next week. Everyone welcomed us very warmly and we were received as new members. We have been spending as much time with church folks as possible. Someone gave us a grill, so we even had our first barbeque, with our friends and mentor couple, Harvey and Kathleen, and it went great until we realized we had forgotten to buy any matches. Then we couldn't find the bottle opener for the beer.


We also had a fun dinner with my family: Cousins Jan and Ron, Guy and Kristy, and Aunty Debbie and Uncle Karl and sons Kyle and Kellan. We went to an all-you-can eat Japanese restaurant here in town, and Sophie had us in stitches when she went back for her second helping of shrimp tempura, and didn't bother to bring a plate. No sooner had I run up and put a plate under all the shrimp stacked in her hands, than Daniel ran under the plate and jumped up, upsetting the plate and knocking the shrimp to the floor. Later, he refused to get measured so our waiter could see how much to charge him for his dinner (they bill kids according to height). They must've been glad to see us leave at the end of the night.


Every day we are realizing how blessed we are to live in this house. Besides being open and airy, light-filled, centrally-located and completely furnished (minus the fertility dude), it has gorgeous views of the lush green mountains. Yesterday Sophie saw a rainbow from our driveway, and our visitor, who lives further up in the valley said, "Oh, you'll see those all the time."

Tonight, we are going to a birthday party for another New York transplant and former Redeemer member, Kip Wilborn. Between him, the Higas, Mandy Watanabe, and a few other former New Yorkers who attend the church, I think Pastor Andy is worried that we might attempt some sort of a coup. You know, start singing hymns with Long Island accents and staging traffic jams in the church parking lot, just so we can remember what it's like to scream and honk and make rude gestures.

We Made It!!!

Aloha from Honolulu!

We arrived safe and sound here in Hawaii on Tuesday, the 22nd. We do not have internet access at our house, so I (Ryan) am at a coffee shop putting up a quick posting while Carrie as at the beach with the kids. Sorry, it's just me, so it won't be a funny, witty, or interesting post. Just some pictures and a thanks to everyone who has prayed for us.

Our house is great! It's a gigantic three-bedroom place in Manoa valley. It's cool and breezy in our neighborhood, the house is perfect for having people over, the pastor lives right around the corner, and it's minutes to downtown and to the beach. God has really blessed us with this place! We can't thank you enough for your prayer or Him enough for answering them!










Anyway, here are some photos of our last day in NY, our trip to CA with Carrie's mom and Iron Kim's family, and some of the kids wiped out on our first night here. We'll give you a more thorough update and some photos of the house as soon as we get our internet access middle of next week.

We'll have Skype access then as well - my username is ryantmyers. If you want to call us, our cell phone #s are still the same, but we ask that you call no earlier than noon Eastern time - that's 6am here! In return, we'll promise not to call after 4pm local time - which would be 10pm Eastern.

Blessings to you all. Pray for our things to arrive safely and soon. Pray for us to begin to make some good relational connections with Carrie's family here, folks from the church, and our neighbors.

Halfway there!

After many tearful goodbyes, we have finally left New York. Many things about our departure seem surreal, not the least of which was seeing everything we own packed into 60 boxes (30 of those containing only books) and not even filling half a postal truck. We owe thanks to many people for helping us leave in relative sanity: Shanan, Dennis, Darcy & Brad helped load our boxes; Annie, Silvie, Grace, and Livy swooped in for last-minute cleaning; Darcy and Cris provided breakfast and a ride to the airport; and many many people helped us by taking stuff that we would have had to throw away otherwise!

We mailed our packages out on Tuesday so we could spend our last day in NY with our closest friends and family, doing some classic NY things. First, Aunty Cris and Uncle Darcy joined us for a day in the city. With Ryan and Darcy's Hawaiian shirts, Daniel's Mets hat, and Darcy's large camera, we looked very much like tourists. People kept asking us where we were from, and we kept answering, "Astoria" and watching the look of disbelief flicker across their faces. We started at Joe's Shanghai for soup dumplings; for dessert, Sophie tried to drink a whole coconut, and Darcy had a dubious introduction to bubble tea. After a forty minute search for a public restroom in Chinatown -- the Starbuck's bathroom was out of order, Burger King tried to charge a dollar, and the person in one of the only two McDonald's stalls was either dead or doing an extremely difficult Sudoku puzzle -- we finally made it down to the Staten Island Ferry, where we watched the Manhattan skyline recede into the distance, then loom up again on our return trip. Aunty Tara, Uncle John and the Hicklins joined us for dinner back in Queens at Tierras Colombiana, where both the plates and the gastric consequences are huge. (Ask Darcy how he liked the blood sausage.) Later in the evening everyone from dinner, plus Janelle, Jeanette, and Lucinda, came over for birthday cake with Cristina, some final Wii bowling, and goodbyes.


Since arriving in California, we have been at my mom's house in Anaheim. Yesterday Grammy (as the kids call her) and her husband, Mark, took us to the Downtown Disney area to brunch with bears and chipmunks at the Storybook Cafe, and Sophie got her face painted. Daniel got the bejeebers scared out of him by the animatronic gorillas at the Rainforest cafe. Afterwards, we stopped by the Orange County Fair for kiddie rides and the strange, smelly world of 4H competitions. Ryan was expecting a West Coast Coney Island, and was rather dazzled by the fair's size, cleanliness, safety, and lack of freaky people. The selection of deep fried food included not only twinkies, oreos, funnel cakes, frog legs and spam, but also White Castles! It was a statin-manufacturer's dream.

Since we left our two photomasters, Darcy and Janellie, behind in NY, Ryan "had" to go out yesterday and buy a decent camera to take pictures of the kids. (I'm smug about this arrangement only because Ryan now owes me an equally nice anniversary present next month.) Keep an eye out for more photo updates; before we left, Janellie gave us a CD containing over 4 GBs of photos that Ryan has yet to go through.

Tonight we have dinner with friends and some extended family, and tomorrow Ryan plans to visit Iron Kim's church, Trinity Presbyterian, while the kids and I head back to the church I grew up in, Anaheim First Church of the Nazarene. We head to Honolulu on Tuesday the 22nd.

Pray for us, please. Right now Ryan is feeling emotionally drained. He slept for 7 hours last night, got up, ate breakfast, took a short nap, went shopping, had lunch and napped again. We are both exhausted from several weeks of nonstop packing, planning, and emotional ups and downs.

Pray for the kids, too. Sophie cried herself to sleep the night before we left and kept asking why we had to move. We're filling their time here with activities, and they love being with Grammy, so it's hard to tell how they will handle the transition when we settle into "normal" life in Honolulu. Please pray that we get into a good routine soon in Honolulu and that they find some friends their age right away.

Thanks so much for all your prayers and help in moving us and saying goodbye! We love you all.

Love,
Carrie, Ryan, Sophie Joy and Daniel

our new house!

Here is a first look at our new home in Hawaii!

It is a three-bedroom, 1 1/2 bath house in Manoa, very close to Pastor Andy's house, to the University of Hawaii, and to the best public elementary school on the island. It comes furnished - very convenient since we had already decided to bring none of our furniture with us. It has a good-sized kitchen, a living room and family room, a laundry room, and ample space for hosting fellowship groups as well as everyone who will be visiting us this year (hint, hint!). It has only a pocket hanky yard, but is equipped with solar water heating, which will keep our energy costs down. Best of all, we can get off the plane in Honolulu and move right in.

Everything happened very quickly. Our friend DeShannon found the house on Craig's list two weeks ago and forwarded info to Ryan. Tuesday night, three people from City Church attended the open house. We spoke to them on the phone while they walked through the house, emailed us pictures (gotta love those iPhones), and filled out an application on our behalf. Wednesday afternoon, just as we were about to ask all our friends to pray that our application would be accepted, the realtor called us to offer us the house. She is sending us our rental agreement as we speak.

(The photo above shows the house from the street; the one at left shows the living room area. The random people in the picture were there for the open house. I'm sure they're very nice, and we'll be proud to share the island with them.)

We are extremely grateful to the City Church folks who helped us out, and to God for providing something so perfectly suited to our needs. Please pray with us that the rental agreement will go through without a hitch and that our move will go well.

We are spending these last weeks (well, we're packing all the time, but besides that) in some of our favorite New York activities. Typically, our adventures in Manhattan have been exactly that, filled with the city's joys, frustrations and eccentricities. We took the kids to the Natural History Museum, where Sophie completely ignored the Early Human room on her way to the collection containing her ruling passion in life: gemstones. Which I suppose saved us a few awkward conversations. ("Why is that guy's head so big? And how come he's so short and hairy?") Today we went to the MOMA, where the painting we went specifically to see - "Starry Night" - is away on tour. Instead, Sophie got to see some Seurats and Monets, and Daniel counted Matisse goldfish and picked out shapes in the Miro paintings. Neither of the kids fell in the reflecting pool in the sculpture garden, though they both tried really hard.

Last week, Ryan and I spent an afternoon in the Met. I was completely creeped out by the unblinking eyes of the mummy cases (that wing of the museum is a horror movie waiting to happen) and bemused by the high-fashion interpretations of superhero costumes. I've always wanted to wear a neon spider-web dress with a sky-high chartreuse wig; who knew that Dolce and Gabbana would design one just for me? If only I were two feet taller! We stopped by the Guggenheim, which turned out to be not only closed for the day, but completely shrouded in scaffolding. We then left one restaurant due to non-existent service (another persistent NY phenomenon), and ended up in a charming pub with an authentically Irish waitress and its own brew on tap. Ryan was in heaven.

Yesterday, Aunty Tara and Uncle John took us to Central Park Zoo, which has penguins and polar bears as its main attractions, but is somewhat lacking in its temperate zone species. Apparently the only animals that thrive in moderate climates are turtles. We overheard that the rest of the animals were off-limits because of a private party. That's how you know when you've made it in New York - when you can invite all the fancy animals to your shindig and leave the turtles at home. Friday night, we are going to our last Mets game with Tara, Darcy, Cris and Janellie, and if Sophie wants to eat a nasty ballpark dirty water dog and a cotton candy AND a dippin' dots I suppose I will not object (too much). Ryan and I are trying to eat lots of falafel and farofa and pernil, and refusing any more thai and sushi until we get to Honolulu.

So that's the latest! Please continue to pray for our move, especially in this last week of packing up, shipping our stuff, and saying goodbye. Thank you again for all your prayers and support - especially those of you who prayed specifically that we would find a three bedroom house with lots of room for visitors! We expect to see you soon!

Love,
Carrie, Ryan, Sophie Joy and Daniel