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.