Habitat for Humanity/Valentine's Day

Fruit from the Hilo Arboritum (i just tried 14 diff spellings and none look right!)
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On Friday afternoon, I got out of class and my neighbor/good friend Steve and his buddy Tyler took me fruit picking at the arbortoreum down the street. It was a lot of fun- the boys are like the lost boys in Peter Pan, who make any experience an adventure. They gave me an adventure hat to wear, and Steve brought along a machete. Neither of them wore shoes. The arbortoreum is a gated area down the street from campus. At its entrance is a city admin building, where we had to give our names. We were given free fruit pickers permits and set loose to pick whatever was ripe outside. Steve hurled his machete around as we went from tree to tree, and we were able to gather lemons, oranges, coconuts, limes, and nectarines (I missed my nectarine-addict sister at that point). I also ran around picking flowers from the flowering trees. The boys took a break to provide me with a lesson on Coconut 101 I learned how to test a coconut for freshness, how to husk a coconut and break open the shell, how to eat a coconut... and then I learned that I don't especially like coconut. It makes your hiccups taste weird. But it's so much fun to eat.

The newest beach in Hawaii, created by a 1994 lava flow on the Puna coast (this is right next to the nude beach!!!)
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On Saturday morning, I awoke bright and early with my roommate Desiree. We changed into junky clothes and trudged out to our student van. Students from the rotary club in Hilo had organized a habitat for humanity day, and we drove about 30 min to Puna to work on 2 houses. First we moved sheets of drywall into the houses from piles in the yard and on the truck. Then one of the carpenter volunteers handed me a power drill to affix the drywall to the studs and until lunch, I was busy with that. I was working in one room for most of the time, and a teenage girl who was helping out onsite came in and we talked for awhile- it turned out, I was helping to create her bedroom!

layers of lava
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I made a lot of new friends that day. I got to know a very involved girl named Mel, who had organized the trip. I befriended 2 international students as well, one from Korea and one from France. It's amazing how varied we are here in America!

For lunch, our hosts prepared a lavish meal, with rice and shrimp and beef and cookies and other stuff I wouldn't touch.

After we were done at the habitat site, we headed down to the Big Island's newest beach where a lava flow occurred in 1994. I'm at the point where I no longer find lava rock to be all that interesting, but seeing how black and shiny some of the lava was 13 years after emerging from the earth renewed some of my respect for the stuff.

A frond!
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On Monday, I got out of class early and as I was crossing campus, my phone rang. It was my suitemate Tara. "Hey Stef, want to go to the beach?" An hour later, we were lying on a patch of black sand with my roommate Desiree at Richardson's Park in Hilo. Richardson's is beautiful and fun- the park has several parts- open water for swimming, tidal pools to snorkel in, rocks to climb. I posted pics of a baby turtle at Richardson's a few weeks ago. I looked for more on Monday but didn't see any... it was ok though. I was on a beach on a Monday afternoon! And I got back to campus in time for my evening class. A perfect day at the University of Hawaii.

Richardson's Cove- on a clearer day you can see the observatories atop Kea.
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Monday night, Steve came over to share a coconut with me and before you know it, we were engaged in a coconut eating contest. Not long after that, I started feeling tired and crampy and sick... turns out coconut's a natural laxative. Great news for me!! I woke up the next morning still feeling sick, and a nursing student at the university clinic said that new students often have extreme reactions to eating lots of coconut because their bodies aren't used to it. Steve felt terrible and blamed himself. That night, while I was doing hw, he dropped off an adorable valentine which he made with his left hand in an effort to make it look like something a cute little kid would do.

A mommy (with dredlocks haha) and her adorable kids at Richardson's
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Wednesday, I woke up feeling like I'd just eaten another coconut, with headaches to boot, and Thursday I still felt sick. So Friday morning, I trudged back to the clinic thinking I had some sort of psychosomatic coconut complex, and instead the nurse practitioner told me I had a gastrointestinal bug that students are catching this semester. At least one student comes in with the bug during every one of her shifts since christmas break ended! She gave me immodium and sent me home, and I felt better within a day.

Steven's valentine to me, with purposeful errors (he's actually very smart) to make it cuter and more "forgivable"
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I think it was all worth it though, because I got a valentine out of the deal.