It feels odd to be back on US soil, although one of the wonderful discoveries about Hawaii is that it's a foreign country. Our last two days were particularly meaningful; more below.
The sunset on the eve of arrival in Honolulu suggested good things to come, and of course Ohau is as beautiful as the tourist brochures claim it is. We made the obligatory trek to the moving Pearl Harbor Memorial and sunned with students on Waikiki Beach, but the most fun was seeing Arantxa, our former PhD student who now teaches at U Hawaii, for dinner and late-night drinks on the beach (here with Fernando and Carrie).
After two days on Ohau, we sailed over to Hawaii, the Big Island, where we were treated to two intense days of Hawaiian culture organized by Kaipo Dye, one of the students on board who is passionately into the preservation of native culture and environmental sustainability. He organized a visit for a small group of us to the major monuments, national parks and botanical gardens, tribal sites, macademia nut production facility, black sand beaches, and of course, a luau. I will spare you endless gorgeous shots of Hawaii, which looks exactly as you think it does.
The most extraordinary moment came up in the sacred Waipio Valley (northwest corner), when a native friend of Kaipo's -a "kumu" (teacher) recounted the history of the area, then followed his talk with a chanted/sung prayer/blessing in Hawaiian. One got the sense of another place in the universe where magnetic fields align and energy is produced (something similar to the feeling one gets at Machu Picchu in Peru).
One final faculty meeting, final exams, grading, commencement, meetings, alumni ball, packing, and, alas, San Diego.
It will be difficult to get off the ship. Thanks for coming along on this glorious ride with us.
It feels odd to be back on US soil, although one of the wonderful discoveries about Hawaii is that it's a foreign country. Our last two days were particularly meaningful; more below.
The sunset on the eve of arrival in Honolulu suggested good things to come, and of course Ohau is as beautiful as the tourist brochures claim it is. We made the obligatory trek to the moving Pearl Harbor Memorial and sunned with students on Waikiki Beach, but the most fun was seeing Arantxa, our former PhD student who now teaches at U Hawaii, for dinner and late-night drinks on the beach (here with Fernando and Carrie).
After two days on Ohau, we sailed over to Hawaii, the Big Island, where we were treated to two intense days of Hawaiian culture organized by Kaipo Dye, one of the students on board who is passionately into the preservation of native culture and environmental sustainability. He organized a visit for a small group of us to the major monuments, national parks and botanical gardens, tribal sites, macademia nut production facility, black sand beaches, and of course, a luau. I will spare you endless gorgeous shots of Hawaii, which looks exactly as you think it does.
The most extraordinary moment came up in the sacred Waipio Valley (northwest corner), when a native friend of Kaipo's -a "kumu" (teacher) recounted the history of the area, then followed his talk with a chanted/sung prayer/blessing in Hawaiian. One got the sense of another place in the universe where magnetic fields align and energy is produced (something similar to the feeling one gets at Machu Picchu in Peru).
One final faculty meeting, final exams, grading, commencement, meetings, alumni ball, packing, and, alas, San Diego.
It will be difficult to get off the ship. Thanks for coming along on this glorious ride with us.
