last post from hawaii

well, i have to pack my laptop up, so this will be my last post from hawaii, but i will be posting more pictures up once i get back, because there are a ton more from the luau and from the stuff we will be doing today...
my flight leaves at 9:20 tonight hawaii time, and i will land around 5:30 LA time, so i have a long night ahead of me.

ALOOOOOOOHAAA!

a day exploring iao valley

last day of tennis...

Well, today was the last day with tennis in our schedule... i am really sad. It's been so much fun haveing 8 hour days of tennis (except for yesterday, which got completly rained out). Below are picks from our final day of match play. First i had a singles match, and then we played "world team tennis" where i played doubles and mixed doubles... me an my partner in mixed doubles (david) kicked some serious butt. There is also a pick of me and Coach Porter (actually, he is technically 'Dr. Porter'). This guy is THE tennis guy... internationally known, works with many many pros, coaches at BYU hawaii and leads them to multiple championships... and so on, and so on.... he coaches these chinese girls in doubles and they won australian open and wimbledom this year in doubles. Anyway, today was a great day, and it was beautiful (and windy) weather as well. Speaking of weather, let me just give a bit of a summary: every single day has been hot and humid, but everyday has also had at least 10 minutes of at least a mist (yesterday was pure rain). the mist is a welcome cool off. we have also had at least one incredible rainbow everyday. yup, its been great
i gotta go! hooroo

more!

Hip Hip Horray for Pictures!!!!

a few random things i forgot to mention...

to jenny:
the first song i heard in hawaii- "move along"... i was wondering where i had heard that song before
the street the hospital was on- main street... i bet you guessed that one

to mieke:
your comment about the ABC stores- true... "all blocks covered"

i do have more, but i really gotta go... we got rained out for the afternoon and we are going shopping... like, yay!

I heard a scream come from one of my villa-mate's bathroom...

and she came running out with a towel on saying that there was a cockroach in her shower. Me and my other room mate went and checked it out... sure enough, a cockroach and it's babies crawling around. while the gal (brittany) went off to shower in our bathroom while me and chelsea tried to figure out what to do... our solution?
dishwasher powder soap, palmolive liquid dish soap, shampoo, hairspray, lotion, shaving cream... all dumped on the cockroaches, trapping them and hopefully killing them. we don't know if it worked. the stuff is still on top of them, and we are too scared to see if they are alive.
that was last night's adventure...
today is the first day we have been rained out, at least temporarily... we will try to go back on the courts at 2:30. supposedly we are in the midst of hurican or typhoon daniel... it's crazy windy and rainy.

that's all for now

salt n pepper at hard rock cafe

i entertained people with blancing trick at hard rock last night... it was actually very intense. anyway, the food was great, and we walked around for a little bit after dinner and checked out the shops. there is this store called 'crazy shirts' where they have shirts dyed in different things, like volcano rock, beer, and (this was the greatest) chocolate. when i saw that a shirt could be died in chocolate, i was in schock... i asked the guy if i could see one. he told me to smell it, and so i did, i took a big sniff at it, and you know what? it smells like chocolate! i was tempted to taste it, but then i thought i would have to buy it, so i didn't. but yes, if you ever get the chance in your life, you have got to sniff a chocolate shirt... it smells delicious. besides that and a ton of tennis, not much else happened today. (the 'bubba' pic is for jenny...enjoy)

sunrise on Haleakala

after 8 hours of tennis yesterday, we woke up early enough this morning to leave at three... yes, 3:00 AM. Now, i am an early riser, but that is even too early for me. Anyway, we left at 3am so that we could make it to the top of the volcano haleakala so that we could catch the sunrise. After about 2 hours of driving, we made it to the top where it was stinking cold, considering no one packed clothes for that temperature... we were all layered and had blankets. It took a long time for the sun to start peeking above the clouds, but once it started to come up, it came fast... so here are some of the pictures from this morning!

i don't even know what to title this... but it's long

so many different things happened on monday, that there isn't a single title that could cover all of it; i will start from the beginning.
first of all, breakfast was awesome. we pretty much can have whatever we want... eggs, pancakes, waffles, sausage, bacon, cereal... it's all there. i had eggs and hashbrowns. it was delicious.
after breakfast, we stopped by the villas to grb our tennis stuff, and then we were off to the courts--the courts are like 2 minutes away (they are actually in kapalua villas). So we started playing tennis... we spent two hours warming up, and then had lunch around 2:00. we had packed our own lunches earlier at breakfast. After lunch we started playing out some points, and then the clouds rolled in. it was crazy because it was pretty much like a mist-storm... it wasn't really rainining, there was just water flying around in the air. the wind picked up a little bit, but not that much. while we were waiting out the mist/rain on the side of the courts, we found that all of maui's land lines were down... all of them. that meant there was no phone, no internet, no credit card machine, no service on the cell, nothing. no one knew why, but the whole island of maui was like that.
after the rain kind of stopped, we got back on the courts... there was a huge, awesome rainbow that appeared (look for a pic).
but now is when the crazy part of my day began...
remember those bug bites i wrote about yesterday morning... well, they had gotten pretty big. i had three bites, one on the back of my ankle, one on the inside of my calf, and one on my quad (all on my right leg). they looked pretty swollen, but as the day went on, they began to swell more. they even began to hurt... after lunch, i pretty much couldn't walk because each step on my right leg hurt my entire leg... especially my ankle. My ankle swelled up so much, that by looking at it, you would have thought i sprained it really bad. it was more swollen tan when i sprained my ankle a few months ago. so we tried icing it, bt it wasn't working. in fact, while i was icing it, we took it off the ice to feel my ankle, and it was hot... so we knew something was up.
and so, my next adventure began... at the time i wouldn't have refered to it as an adventure, though. we (the director kristi) went down the street from the courts to a Doctor on call (DOC for short). we got there at 5:30, but they closed at 5. there was a phonenumber to call, but remember, all the phone lines are out. so we stopped at another place to find where another DOC was at... there was one at the Hyatt, about 15 minutes away from where we were. We get to the area, but could not find the hotel for the life of us... after about an extra 10 minutes of wandering, we found it. we get inside to the DOC, and it turns out that they don't accept my insurance. So it would be $78 up front, plus $40 surcharge for it being after 6 pm. well, we couldn't do that. but they were nice enough to have a nurse come out and take a look and give us advice...
her advice: go to the hospital to the ER because she figured it was infected by the size of the swelling. Did you know there is only one hospital on the island of maui...one. well, it was 45 minutes away, and we were off. after getting in the area, we discovered our directions were terrible, and it took us about 20 minutes extra to find the hospital that was 5 minutes away.
so after i get in, (of course it took forever) the doctor says that i need to be hooked up to an IV that'll put some antibiotic stuff into my body. The IV took about an hour. Oh, and they also took a blood test... gross. The doctor decided to also give me some anti-biotic pills that i need to take 4 times a day because infection was found in my blood test.
after finally leaving the ER (which was about 10:30 pm) kristi and i were starving, and the only thing open at that time... McDonalds. yup, a girl will accept any thing, even McDs, after a day like that.
I got back a little after 11pm and all the tennis girls had made a big sign with a bunch of stuff for me and a 'get well' balloon. the gal in charge of us girls has nicknamed me "puffer." :) these gals are really cool.
well, the day ends there... that's gotta be one of my longest posts.
hooroo

Aloha from Hawai'i (could I be any more cliche?)

I am sitting in the villa in Kapalua Maui right now (i am staying with three other girls). As far as people go for tennis, there are a total of 7 girls and 7 boys. Golf is here at the same time, and there are about 5 girls and maybe 20 boys.
The weather is great so far--it rained a little last night, but it felt good. By the end of the first night, i had already been bit in three places on my leg by some hawaiian biting bug. I am guessing its a spider (gross) because it itches and hurts.
Anyway, I'll be leaving for breakfast soon, and we'll be starting tennis sometime before noon.
As you can see, i do have free internet access in the villa, so i will probably post nightly.
See ya!