Roadtrip on an island???... Possible!

Yesterday I literally worked all day long!! 11.5 hours to be precise. Both the men and women's soccer teams traveled to the Big Island and back in one day. So in the morning I had to make two trips to the airport taking both teams, and then at night I had to go pick them up from the airport! I was working for 5.5 hours in the morning and 6 in the evening. It was a crazy day driving from one end of the island to the other end 4 times haha. I think I have it memorized by now. But its a good thing the scenery wasn't boring. Half of the drive is right between the shore and the huge green mountains! So pretty :)
In the middle of the day, I had a few hours break so Kellie and I carved pumpkins for Halloween. It was really fun but lets not pretend that we are master carvers. Our pumpkins struggled a little bit. Kellie carved a pirate but wasn't satisfied how it looked so she carved a dinosaur on the back haha. And I carved Squidward from Spongebob. Creative or what? You don't have to tell me twice :)

Squidward (left) and Pirate (right)

On my evening drive when I was driving the guys team back to campus, we all stopped for dinner at this new place called Surfin' Tacos. Its basically CAFE RIO - Hawaiian style!!! Best meal I have had in a long time, plus it was paid for by the school, and I was also getting paid while eating it on the job :) That right there completed the whole day! I had a long day and was tired by the end but it actually turned out to be a pretty good day. This just goes to prove that road trips are possible on an island..... if you drive to the other side and back 4 times :)

House of the Lord!

As you all probably know, the Laie Hawaii Temple is open to the public for the open house. Each night they need volunteers to come clean inside and out of the temple to keep everything perfect due to the thousands of people that go through everyday. My ward was assigned a night to clean it and people were asked to volunteer and to come at 9:30pm - 11:30pm. I was one of 30 people that volunteered to go. When we got there, we got a personal tour through the temple and got to see the remodeled inside, learn about all the symbolism, and hear some stories that aren't normally told to the public. It was a very cool experience, especially since there were only about 30 of us in the entire temple. I felt the spirit so strong and it was an awesome experience to be a part of. After the tour, we were all assigned areas to clean and I was assigned to wipe down the light posts and railings outside the entrance of the temple. The temple is so pretty and its cool how it is the highest point in Laie so we could look out and see everything. Since Laie is a small city with hardly any city lights, I can always see the temple just glowing in the night sky on the hill from wherever I am. I love being so close to the temple. I can't wait to go do baptisms in it around Thanksgiving!

school, beach, and much much more

Well school has been in session for about a month now and it is going great. This semester has probably been my easiest semester so far class wise, not to mention I have no class Tuesdays and Thursdays! So I have a lot of free time on my hands. This can be good and bad in many ways but I am figuring out how to keep myself busy :) One thing that has kept me somewhat busy is a program that I volunteered for through one of my classes. It is a program at the local elementary school working with fifth graders in their fitness room. There are a few students, including me, from BYUH that are helpers with this program. Each fifth grade class is split into two groups and they come in for 15 minutes at a time. We assign one child to each station such as treadmill, aerobic resistance bands, push ups, wall sit, stationary bike, triceps, Bosu balance ball, etc. They are at each station for 1 minute and we are there to just assist them and make sure they are doing the stations correctly. One time I was monitoring the Bosu balance ball, which is just a rubber ball cut in half but on the top is a hard plastic surface where you stand and balance on the rubber round part. One boy was on it and he was having no problem balancing. I was pretty impressed so I said, "Wow you have really good balance!" And he just replied, "Yeah, I am a surfer. I go surfing with my dad." It was pretty cute, but you would only hear that kind of thing in Hawaii. It is pretty fun to see and work with these cute kids twice a week. They work really hard and are usually pretty sweaty by the time the 15 minutes is over!

I also recently got a job as a driver for the athletic teams. Haha. I drive the athletic teams to and from the airport when needed. It is a pretty easy and chill job so its pretty fun. The Laie Temple open house starts on October 22 and goes through November 13. We are going to get tickets to attend that and then have the privilege of being here over Thanksgiving when the temple is rededicated! We are so excited about that. There are also volunteering positions that I will be involved in for the temple such as night cleaning inside the temple, cleaning and taking care of the grounds, and possibly being an usher for the open house. It is going to be fun to be a part of this event.

To have fun around here, me and my roommates have done a few different things including crabbing and going to the Haunted Lagoon at the PCC. Kellie came up with the idea of catching crabs at the beach because she had previously done it in Texas. So we went to Foodland, got some raw chicken legs, tied string to the chicken legs and hucked them out into the ocean just like fishing haha. It was pretty fantastic! We went out at sunset so of course there were couples on the beach trying to have a romantic evening but don't mind us... we are just crabbing! Haha we got some pretty strange looks but we didn't care. Unfortunately we didn't catch any crabs that night, but we will be back! Last week, my roommates and I went to the Haunted Lagoon. It is similar to a Haunted forest but on canoes. There were about 20 people in each canoe and the canoe pusher pushed us down a lazy river with creepy music, zombies, and various characters/scenes happening on the banks of the river. There were also zombies in the water that would creep up to the canoe and jump in and scare everyone. It was loads of fun and also pretty dang scary!! Here are a few pictures from the past month:

The entrance to Bikini Beach

Bikini Beach! Although we were not wearing bikinis... unfortunately ;)

Tying the string to the chicken leg for our crabbing bait

here we are trying to catch our crabs haha

Me, Kellie, and Bri

So... Kellie accidentally let go of her string in the water. A few minutes later I thought I caught something but come to find out, I had just caught Kellie's chicken leg string... haha we laughed pretty hard

One of many geckos living in our house! This was a pretty one

And we caught him!

All these birds always follow the lawn mowers on campus to eat the insects that are stirred up from the freshly cut grass. It is so funny to watch. I think they are going to get run over because they are always in the way!