Saved!

Woohoo! so I'm absolutely saved from boredom, at least for the weekend! Kar Hai invited me to go to dinner with some of his friends, Walter will do my Duke's shop with me tomorrow night, and Kari Hai said we can go party on Sunday night or Monday night - YES!!!

I am so grateful for old H.S. friends. I don't know why it is that we are all so tight - Stuyvesant just really made us all really close - I have no idea, it's not like it was a small school and we were all huge urbanites. My best friends are still from H.S. Holy moly I just realized my 10 year H.S. reunion is this year! I won't be going, but I will send a lot of love out east.

Man I haven't seen Kar Hai in 10 years, it'll be so good to catch up!

And now I will leave you with a line from a Barry Manilow song: "The hottest spot north of Havana. Music and passion were always the fashion at the Copa Cabana!"

I realize the next week of travelblog entries are going to be excruciatingly boring to read because I have all this time to myself. So I've decided to make summaries/lists up top so that you don't have to read the actual blog =)

Victories of the day:

• Joyce promising me that she owes me a big one. She offered to help me set up my living situation if I get the U.N. job in Port of Spain, Trinidad
• Getting Maui Onion salad dressing at the market
• Remembering how to cook after 2 long years of not touching a stove

Defeats of the day:

• Spending $130 on groceries for 1 person
• Not understanding if the H1 is the 93 in reverse?!
• Not finding Maui Onion potato chips

I made it to Safeway and back in one piece! And managed to spend $130 on grocery items.

Yeah. I'm crazy. I could probably live off this food for 1 solid month. Stuff is kind of expensive in Hawaii though, so it's not all me! The same items would have probably cos tme $100 in L.A.

I can't believe I'm driving around without a map. I think Africa has made me somewhat fearless. I look at it like "hey, at least there aren't cows running in the middle of the street and I'm driving on the right side of the road, yah?"

Luckily, the Ko Olina exit off the H-1 is really easy to find and literally takes you right to the resorts, it's incredible. The last time I was here I was with Serwah and Joyce, and Serwah - excellent navigator that she is, drove us to the lagoons.

I'm sleepy already =) Probably from driving around, getting a bit lost (whatever you do, do NOT use google maps to navigate around hawaii!) and then putting away $130 worth of groceries and then making Mexican omelettes and onion dip for later.

I think I'll be staying in today to write those reports and finish watching Benny and Joon. I wish Johnny Depp had decided to stay in the U.S. I think he could have done a lot of good for this country, instead of running off to France. He just strikes me as someone that people would listen to, and someone whose opinions would be respected here. Not necessarily a moral compass, but just a quirky sort of alternative role model. But he also strikes me as someone who doesn't care what other people think of him and would rather pursue his own personal happiness. And that's a brave thing, no matter what.

It's nice having the unit to myself. I feel free and in control for the first time in a very long while. I can now see why some adults like to take trips where they are completely unreachable from the rest of the world. There's a clarity that comes when you have no one else to answer to, impress or consider. It's you and the world and it's really uninhibiting. Wow, if that isn't the clearest indication of my forever-single-ness, I don't know what is =)