Hawaiian adventure!

So I'm writing this up from an amazingly charming house we've rented two rooms in for last night. It was built in 1912 and is overflowing with cute and charm and amazing. There are three floors to it, ours on the bottom consists of three rooms connected to an open area and all sharing one bathroom. It's... interesting, to say the least, to share a bathroom with at least other person we haven't even SEEN yet. I really have to pee, but I'm a little uncomfortable venturing out bra-less (again) to see if the bathroom is open.

The second floor has one bedroom, a huge main room turned into a kitchen-dining area, and a small parlor with an old piano you can't really play because the cover over the keys only opens halfway. If you don't want to use any black keys, I guess you could play it...

That same parlor area, with an incredibly cute bed/sitting area, has a narrow staircase that leads to two rooms in the attic and their bathroom. Of the cuteness just kills me; I'll have to get some pictures of it all before I leave, because words cannot do it justice.

As for the other parts of Hawaii-- it's been amazing. I've taken pictures but haven't put them on my computer yet, so I'll just bore you with words for now. But we've been staying at a condo about a 7-minute walk from a beach that is supposed to have the best snorkeling in all of Hawaii. Have we snorkeled there? No. :p But we DID pay a large amount of money to take an awesome boat ride to two OTHER beaches to snorkel. It was a blast, and the start of my killer sunburn, haha.

Other exciting adventures include:
+took surfing lessons! I ate a lot of seawater, become exhausted from paddling out into the waves (hey, in my defense I never use my upper body for anything! I just study and eat food all the time!!) Surfed with Sea turtles; that was exciting.
+Visited a beautiful beach and bay ("A"-bay. I forget what the full name is) Walked along the sandy beach, walked along a rocky "salt-and-pepper" beach. We're actually on the BIG ISLAND Hawaii, which is the newest of the hawaiian islands. Most of the beaches are still pretty rocky with lava rocks. The waves wash up coral from the Ocean, which turn bright white and create a simply breathtaking sight against the black lava rocks and the insanely blue ocean.
+Oh, speaking of coral and lava rocks, alongside the roads, there are lots of places where it's rolling lava plains. At theres places, there are a ton of messages people have written out use white coral. It's really beautiful and cute.
+Visited an ancient "place of refuge." In olden Hawaii, this was a place someone could flee to if they'd broken a law. If they arrived there, they could avoid death and be cleansed by the holy man who lived there. It was really a very interesting place. We learned a bunch about ancient Hawaiian traditions
+Went to a luau, where we ate lots of good food, and we sat by a group of Japanese tourists who didn't know any English. SO I got to talk to them and that made me really happy. The luau also came with a perfooormance that included and amazzzing musical number. Click here to partake of the awesome!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbJWyXt0hjg
+Went to Hapuna beach, which has been acclaimed by several magazines as the world's most beautiful beach. It was gorgeous, lots of soft white sand, blue water, cute boys... oh wait, did I say that out loud? :p We boogie boarded on the waves, Melinda and I almost DIED in some of these surprise HUGE ones. Sarah and I also got sooooooooooooooooooooooooo burned. Because we were a little bit burned before, we had use aloe, which prevented any of our sunscreen from soaking in. Yeah, it all washed off. And we're at the equator. In full sunlight. PAIN.
+Sunburns: the back of my thighs are sunburned. The top of my thighs are sunburned. My knees are sunburned. My back is sunburned. My shoulders are sunburned. My lips are sunburned. My cheeks are sunburned. My nose is sunburned. My hairline is sunburned. even my EYELIDS are sunburned. Yes, you read that correctly. It looks like I am wearing weird red eyeliner. And I have BLONDE eyelashes. I look SCARY D:
+Went to Black Sands beach. It's just as the name suggests: no coral reef off the coast here, so the sand is made entirely of black sand from lava rocks. It was very very beautiful
+Visited the southern most tip of the United States!! :D it was cliffy and windy and scary, but also very lovely. The ocean was beautiful blue.
+Stood 15 feet away from a live lava flow!! Okay, so it was ALMOST dead. The Ocean Viewpoint area was where all the action was, but they closed that off because lava was flowing over it and trees were catching on fire or some lame reason like that.
+Hiked Kilauea Iki trail. This trail took us around the volcano crater and down into the hardened lava-lake. We walked across it. It was awesome.
+Walked inside a lava tube. Yeah, that was pretty awesome, too.
+Ate lunch at an amazing little bakery. Has guava and mango and taro breads and doughnuts. And really tasty chicken fajita wraps. We're on our way there now on the trip back to Kona. Maybe I'll order one ;D
+Talked to a bird. I couldn't see it, but we tweeted back and forth for quite some time.

I'll have to upload pictures later-- when I actually get them onto my computer haha C: