Life on the island has been a little trying this week. Work has been ok—I was put in charge of a project and finished it early so that made everyone at work happy, and therefore me happy. On Friday we only worked half a day and had a company picnic. They fed us well—I had lau lau which is a leaf of some sort wrapped around meat and long rice which is noodles made of rice. We went through a corn maze (which was actually sorghum), had a scavenger hunt, and a water fight. It was really a good way to get to meet people at work. Kinda hokey, but still fun.

Saturday I was pretty down because I wasn’t having any luck finding a place to live and had no car. I only have another 2 weeks in the apartment and Rick and Nicole both have their places all lined up. I’ve called every place that I can afford in the paper so I got in my car and drove around looking for “for rent” signs. Turns out no luck. I looked at a Jeep on Saturday as well and felt pretty good about it but didn’t make an offer until I had someone who actually knew something about cars look at it. And it rained and rained here all day yesterday. Turns out that it doesn’t sprinkle here, it monsoons...

Sunday morning I was awoken by the earthquake. I’ve never been in one before, but somehow I knew that’s exactly what it was. I was a little freaked out and thought at first that I had made it up, but I was soon flooded by calls making sure that I was ok. Turns out there were three earthquakes and I only felt the first one, a 6.6 on the Richter scale. Kind of amazing I felt it since it was on the Big Island, hundreds of miles away. Oahu (70 miles east of here where Honolulu is) lost power for most of the day and there was some damage on the Big Island, but we were fine here. No change in our everyday life besides patchy cell phone service. I guess the biggest problems occurred at the airport in Honolulu as people were stranded and flights weren’t going anywhere… There were no fatalities or tsunamis, so we’re all ok.

On to the exciting news of the day… I bought a car!! I looked at the Jeep on Saturday and the guy called me Sunday to say that someone else had made an offer so I took Nicole (my roommate who turns out to know quite a bit about cars) and went to look at it again and ended up buying it. It’s a ’98 Jeep Laredo with 89,000 miles, nothing spectacular and not as nice as Jewel, but I think that I got a good deal at $3500. I’m going to try to go to Lihue to get the registration and insurance and the title switched to my name. Hopefully I can do that early this week so I can actually drive my car and take the rental back.

I also had a ray of light in the living situation. Saturday night I got a call to go and look at a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom in Eleele (which, by the way, would be a great place to live—east of the hot west coast and closer to Lihue so I’m not on the end of the road). I went to look at it on Sunday and I loved it. One of the big problems here is that I can’t find a place with an oven. I like to bake and somehow that has been a problem. Anyway, this place was the bottom floor of a house and had a living room with a couch and a chair and it was a full kitchen with a dining table and chairs and one of the bedrooms had a bed. And a washer. Yeah, all that for $975 a month (which includes water). Might sound steep, but a 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom around here with a partial kitchen is $800 a month. Turns out that a lot of people have been by to see it and there have been a lot of applications picked up. And the owner lives in Oregon so that doesn’t really help—wonder if I could fax the form. I tried to call the woman back today so I could maybe get the upper hand, but there was no answer. I really want this place and hope that it works out. I just wish she’d call me back.

So anyway, in conclusion, it’s been a rollercoaster week and half of the battle is over. I now have wheels even if I don’t have a bed. Hey, I can always sleep in the back of the Jeep, right? Still hoping I’ll end up in Eleele, but I guess I’ll have to keep looking for now.