the top ten of hawaii

A delayed update, but here it is nonetheless.

10) Hearing and seeing "Mahalo" everywhere. Everywhere.

9) The service is not the greatest because

8) Everpresent tourists (like me) have made people jaded and

7) Everyone is slow. The pace in Hawaii is amazingly slow, even compared to California standards. The speed limit on the freeway is 45 mph, for example. My brother: "People here live like they have a hundred more years to go."

6) Mark Twain is quoted everywhere. Everywhere. Apparently Twain spent a lot of time traveling in Hawaii and he loved it. Everything he's ever written about it is publicized somewhere in the state. Kind of odd to imagine the author of Huck Finn and Connecticut Yankee soaking his toes in the Pacific.

5) Guavas. My parents came across a guava somewhere, and it was the most delicious smelling fruit ever. You could smell it from across the room. Later my parents came across guava trees and made my brother climb them to get some. The bag full of fruit left our rental car forever guava-scented.

4) Paradise is not immune to family arguments.

3) Heat + humidity + hiking = ice cream practically every day. Ice cream is the best food ever.

2) Locals like to share their life stories. A woman sitting next to my dad on the airplane told him how she and her husband honeymooned in Maui and wound up spending the rest of their lives there. At a farmer's market on the Big Island, the woman from whom my mom wanted to buy a jackfruit told us about her seven brothers and sisters, and her various moves from island to island, and her life before and after "the war" (she didn't specify). Another time my brother and I were just standing around when a lady came up to us and asked us where we were from. We said Northern California and she said her daughter went to college there. She told us that her daughter, who's mixed, had chosen her school based on location, and proceeded to tell us how every other place in the US is racist. Complete with anecdotes.

1) Enough pure blue to last a lifetime.

Now in Boston, all of it seems pretty distant. Busy, hectic, a little worried, pretty excited, very tired. The days have been incredibly long. Despite missing the amenities of Clav, our Adams room is awesome. I need more time to settle in before I can even think back to the fun-frenzied craziness of the past week. It feels really nice to be back. But why is it so cold?! It's as if nature's making sure my body knows that it's in Boston, not Fremont, to encourage my mind to make the same distinction. It's working.