For most of our first two days, we’ve been focused on recovering from our two flights and laying in supplies for the month we’ll be here.  Although we do plan to eat out from time to time, restaurants can be a bit pricey here in Maui.  Actually, the groceries are very pricey, too.  Nevertheless, we plan to use our condo kitchen extensively and hope to cook up some good local food.

Thursday morning, we had breakfast at the Kihei Cafe, just down the road from our condo.  One reason I chose this restaurant is that they open at 5:30 am and I knew we’d be up at that hour due to our brains and bodies still being on Toronto time.  After eating enormous plates of food in the dark on the outdoor patio, we headed out for groceries.

One food item I’ve really looked forward to is POG, a juice blend of Passion fruit, Orange and Guava.  Hilary and I drank gallons of it when we were here in 2006 and I’ve thought about it often since then.  We bought a gallon jug at Safeway our first day (after choking at the price) along with a small variety of other essential food items (choking at those prices, too).  Then we headed back to the condo for rest and orientation.

We’re staying at the Castle Kamaole Sands resort.  (For those interested, we’ve rented from a private owner and are in Building 5.)  From the balcony — oops, excuse me, the lanai — we have a beautiful view down the gardens of the property to the ocean across the road.

Here is the view from our balcony at Kamaole Sands. We have a small view of the ocean across the street and have actually been able to see whales from this distance! The gardens are spectacular and the pool area is fabulous (behind the vegetation on the left half of the photo). We’re very happy with our choice of this resort.

Our last task for the day, was to visit the pool and hot tub!  Then to nap, because Dad and I have plans for this evening!

Here’s Dad in the hot tub at our resort. Actually, there are two hot tubs — one for family use and one very hot one for adults only. This is the hot one!

My hope has been to purchase a ukulele while here in Hawaii and to learn to play it well enough to use with our worship team or at our summer camp.  As I’ve talked about it over the months, Dad has caught my excitement and is now interested in this project as well.

I my research I discovered that there are free ukulele lessons offered here in Kihei every Thursday evening.  So, I arranged for us to use two free loaner ukes for the evening and we headed up South Kihei Road to Keolahou Church where we expected to find a few people gathering for the evening.  We drove up the church 10 minutes before the start time, only to find the parking lot was packed.  We hustled up to the door of the small church and found almost the last seats in the house.  The church probably seats a maximum of about 125 people.  There were fewer people than that in the building, but many were playing ukes — which take up extra space.  Dad thought there were at least 50 ukes in play.

What a great evening!  We learned a little about Hawaiian culture and were blown away by some of the great uke players we heard around us.  We can’t wait to go back again next week!  We are definitely getting ukuleles as soon as we can!

After this great end to the day, we headed back to the condo and slept soundly — at east until all woke at about 3 am — 8 am Toronto time.  Adjusting to Hawaii time is not going to be easy!

Until later, Aloha!