Labor Day

Tom keeps saying he'll write this entry, but every time I offer him the laptop he pulls a face and says he doesn't feel like it yet.

On Saturday evening we went to Kuhio Beach to swim and read a bit, but unfortunately as we were getting in the water, we saw a (used) sanitary pad floating around. Tom couldn't get it off his mind even though we swam pretty far away, and then he started getting paranoid that it was following him - sensibly enough, as it turned out, because it was! Obviously we had to get out of the water immediately =)

Then we went to see the Changing of the Guard at King's Village, which is one of the most insane ceremonies ever. Three Hawaiians dressed up as soldiers and doing lots of stamping and impressive rifle-twirling and less impressive flag-folding and so on. Weirdly, although I suppose predictably, it's far more amazing than the changing of the guard at Windsor, which is what it's based on. Did you know that the Hawaiian state flag has a Union Jack in the corner? It also has stripes. This was to honour both the UK and US back in the early nineteenth century.

After that we were going to go watch the sunset (as we had tried, and sadly failed, to watch the sunset in the morning) but were sidelined by a free Hawaiian culture ceremony by the Duke statue! It was fantastic - there was singing, and ukelele playing, and men doing the hula (there was one seventeen year old who was SERIOUSLY gyrating!), and a group of about twenty girls hula-ing as well. Watching them made it easier to understand why it used to be banned =) A lot of them were extremely talented, and it was fascinating to both watch and listen to the story behind the dance. Some of them, however, were a bit like Lilo and didn't really know the steps properly!

Yesterday we took the bus to Waimanalo Beach on the south-east coast, which is the longest beach in Oahu - 3 miles from end to end. The bus journey in itself was a bit strange, what with the bus driver jumping off at one point to get some lunch from his aunt's house! Tom got a home-made banana muffin off him, too. I still can't quite believe that Tom took food from a bus driver =P

The beach was absolutely stunning... at least in the photos we took. In reality it was extremely windy and the sea was terrifyingly powerful. Three steps in and the waves were practically lifting you off your feet and dragging you out. We did play in the sea for a bit, which was exciting in a kind of death-defying way (sorry to both our mums!), and then read for a while. The area we were was almost utterly abandoned, and other than us the entire three miles of sand looked devoid of tourists and non-locals. Despite hefty amounts of sunscreen, my forehead and cheeks are now burnt from sitting there for an hour or so; despite Tom's protestations that he never needs sunscreen, he is now bright pink all over! Sadly he will be brown by tomorrow, so I am enjoying it as much as I can in the meantime =D

Yesterday ended scarily with another attempt at watching the sunset from Waikiki Beach. Unfortunately the sky was so cloudy that you couldn't see the sun at all, so instead we just swam for a bit - I wished desperately for a waterproof camera so I could take a picture from the sea of Tom being practically indistinguishable from the Pink Palace due to their identical colouring. Then, as I swam out, Tom called to me to come back - he had seen a fin in the water. We watched from the shore for a while and were half-convinced that there was a shark pretty close to the beach. Obviously we would have told someone but most of the lifeguards (here called Aloha Ambassadors!) were preoccupied with a multiple arrest going on at the Pink Palace, and no one else was swimming around there anyway, so hopefully everything was safe and we were just overreacting.

Today is Labor Day (basically just a bank holiday) and we're going to go to Walmart soon to get some 25c notebooks. We had our latest lie-in this morning - 8.15 - and Tom still hasn't showered an hour and a half later, so we've missed one of the main events which is a rough-water swim across Waikiki Beach, starting at 9. Oh well. I can't seem to find any other Labor Day events in Honolulu online, but I'm sure once we go out we'll find stuff to do.

Classes start tomorrow! Argh!