Robert Bear's Blog: ALOHA!

Aloha Nick!

I finally arrived in Honolulu, HI, on the island of Oahu.....it was certainly a long trip (it's a 5 hour flight just from Los Angeles, CA, all over water!). The state of Hawaii is our 50th state and the island of Oahu is one of seven islands that make up the island chain and is the most populated; tourism is the main generator of activity with people coming from all over the world to see the beautiful beaches, feel the warm weather and eat the different types of food. Planes arrive from China, Korea, Japan, Australia, California, New York, Seattle, and many other places everyday. It hasn't taken me too long to thaw out since when I arrived the temperature was 82 degrees. Uncle Todd said it was very, very cold back in Connecticut.

Uncle Todd, Parker, Elle and Brandt let me sleep in a little since I was a bit jet lagged but we still managed to get out and get to the NFL Pro Bowl Ohana Day. As you may know, the NFL has this annual event and there were tons of All Star players to see; the players had to practice and prepare for the actual game but they were nice enough to sign autographs and take pictures with everyone. "Ohana" means family in Hawaiian and they had all these fun activities for kids to do as well. It was a lot of fun, and of course, the weather was perfect.

Uncle Todd said that they have recently been having "vog" which sort of looks like fog/smog but is actually volcanic ash and comes from the volcanoes from the Big Island of Hawaii (it's actually the biggest island within the whole island chain......good name for it, huh?!) On those days, the sky looks grey and it feels very humid. Not sure if we will be able to go see the volcanoes and lava that flows from it since the only active volcanoes are on the Big Island a (45 minute airplane flight from Oahu). Parker, Elle and Brandt told me that the Big Island also can get snow since Mauna Kea (this means "white mountain" in Hawaiian) is 13,000 feet above sea level; they even said that the mountain is 2x the size of Mt Everest but that most of it is under the water/in the ocean. I would have never imagined that a place so warm like Hawaii could get snow! That's pretty cool.