Getting Lei'd at the Block

I am in the space between.

The space between the fall and spring semester. The space between Corpus and Austin. The space between lack of focus and too much of it. The space between being here and not being.

Somehow I think people arrange their lives into nifty blocks. Block 1, my childhood. Block 2, rebellious teenager. Block 3, ignorant freshman. Block 4, ? But more specifically, we cordon little sections of these blocks into parts that we can handle. The section I was in before was the "get your work out of the way, get some play, and get some ass." It was a time of caring about school, but not too much, of loving deadlines but not the assignments. It was a time of having a good time (in moderation) so that only a few Saturdays and Sundays I woke up wanting to be dead. It was a time of fooling around with love and hormones, dancing between the pieces as they fell. It was a time of finally meeting myself.

The next block I am about to enter: I will rededicate myself to school to prevent my near academic downfall this past semester. I will look for and hopefully find and create a stable relationship with a person as happy to be lost as I am. I will get out more, see Austin, meet people. I will stay in touch and genuinely connect with those around me.

But where does that leave me for the next couple of days? Well, here in my room, using my computer monitor for ambient light while I type Carrie Bradshaw-like on my Macbook. I really regret not writing more about my life. I always feel that I write too much in my blogs (which many of you have argued), but when it's your life, that's all you will have. For what are our experiences to us if we lose them to time?

Now, this has been rather melancholy. Let's reboot.

Although I still can't hear properly out of either of my ears (as proven by my dad's iPhone application, which told me I have much worse hearing right now than my 50 year old parents), I'll try to write a little about Hawaii.

And since I told Josh I would make him a list of all the awesome things I did, here it goes:

1. Went snorkeling in a coral reef. Not as cool as the Great Barrier, from what my parents and sister told me (how uncool is it that I'm the only one in my family never to have gone to Australia?), but it was pretty neat-o. Really weird fish live under the sea (unda' the sea, down where it's...)
2. Went on a whale-watching cruise. Awesome part - saw humpback whales breathe, dive, and breach. Sucky part - got seasick with an accompanying migraine that made me puke as we were docking. Then I accidently put toilet paper in their no-toilet-paper-or-else-you-die toilet, so I had to fish it out with my bare (then barfy) fingers.
3. Saw Hawaii from a helicopter. Yeah, that was awesome. Although this is when my ear troubles began, it was quite worth it. I hadn't been in a helicopter before, so the experience was awwwwwesome. We saw a beached military ship that has since rusted, some wicked waterfalls, and chased deer with it. Dude, they really do have deer and we really did get to chase them with the helicopter. Righteous.
4. Biked down a volcano. Minus the ear pain, it was sweet. We went up to about 10,000 feet (in a van, of course) and looked out at the volcano's crater, and then went back down to 6,000 feet and rode downhill. It's crazy how much speed you pick up going downhill on a 40-pound bike - I swear we just about wore out the brakes on the bikes. And although I had much more to think about on the bike, I appreciated the scenery much, much more than in the car. It was a sense of oneness with everything around you - the wind was in your ears (or, in my case, one of my ears) and on your skin, the sun touched you just as it touched everything else, and the sound of rubber on the pavement, speeding and turning, felt oddly powerful. Good stuff.
5. Ziplined around the island. Yeah, I'm totally a natural at it...not to brag. But they told me there's a zipline around Austin, so I've gotta try it now. Any takers?
6. Sat on a beach all day, without getting a sunburn.
7. Drove on a road with 517 turns, 100-something bridges (about half of them one-lane), where the speed limit was 15 miles per hour and which had some breathtaking scenery. It was also breathtaking in that my mom, sister, and I were scared out of our whits that we were about to plummet to our gruesome deaths as a result of my father's driving techniques.
   
8. Oh, and got a lei put around my neck by a nice Hawaiian man. (Okay, okay, it was the concierge, but who's counting?)

So yes, my trip was very satisfying. Oddly enough, it made me think about Corpus and what my town could be. We've barely tapped into the whole surfing/kayaking/kiteboarding/paddleboarding culture and instead focus on cheap strip malls and cheesy festivals. But Corpus will never be a Hawaii...figure that.

Oh, and one of my New Years Resolutions is to start being more punctual about returning calls/texts/posts/etc. I'm quite the bitch about that. But actually, I guess you can't call it a resolution for the new year since it's already halfway into January. I also agree with Josh, that you can change any time you want, so why make it the first? Ohhhh....here's my resolution - to keep making resolutions as the year goes on!

Oh, you're a slick one.