Maui: Four Months In

Full disclosure: I am hungry and waiting on lunch to cook so I may be a little cranky.

Maui is a pretty cool place. You have beaches everywhere, natural beauty all around you, and the weather is pretty fantastic. On the other side there are ignorant tourists here all the time, the people who live here have no patience, and there are not many interesting businesses to support.

Working in the urban center of Maui(nearly 25,000 people), everything is go go go. There is no time to reflect, relax, or think. Everyone who comes to Kahului just wants to get things done and get back to the pretty parts of the island. I know I harp on this, but it really is the worst place to be on the island and I have to spend the vast majority of my time there. To tell the truth I have had daydreams of working at the crappy supermarket halfway up the mountain just so I don't have to venture down into the big city. I know it wouldn't be any better, but just the fact that I dream about being somewhere else while I am on Maui is a testament to how bad it really is.

Something I did not know I missed so much was taking road trips. Maui is not that big; there is no I-35 you can drive on for hours at a time to go see someone or something. I drive 25 miles a day to work, but that is just a commute; not much fun to be had there. One of the greatest days I have had on Maui so far was a spontaneous trip Candace and I decided to make after having coffee upcountry. We wanted to explore the back way to Hana, which is all the way across the island from us. Needless to say, it is usually a day long trip. We just decided to go in that direction as long as we wanted to and it was amazing. We saw windswept cliffs with the ocean below, huge wind farms on the side of the mountain, and a massive amount of cows on the road. It was fresh, fun, and exhausting. But now that we have been that way, there is nothing new that way. It will be the same until the end of time.

There are plenty of things to explore in Maui and I can get a little excited about seeing a new waterfall or beach or whatever, but to be completely honest natural attractions have never been my favorite. It hurts to say that because I thought of myself as a big nature buff but it just isn't true. I would much rather talk to my friends in a dark little pub drinking craft beer. I have not found the people or places to do that yet, but I am going to try. And if there aren't any here, we'll just have to move to Oahu where they have everything under the sun.

I have hope for Maui, but at this particular moment in time I am completely defeated so I have decided to put my energy into becoming a domestic god. I am making slow cooker chicken, cleaning the house, and writing blogs for y'all. I hope you are enjoying this and please feel free to comment here or on Facebook or even send me a private message letting me know what you think. Knowing that people are still out there caring about what I am doing keeps me going.

Have a good weekend!

Regional Idiosyncrasies

A new blog post? Huzzah!

I have a short post for you all today about interesting regional oddities I have found here in Hawaii and how they compare to other places I have been.

Do you ever notice that there are certain names that small businesses always have where you live? Let me give you an example: In Texas, there are a huge amount of small business named "Lone Star (Thing)". Lone Star Title Loan, Lone Star Used Car Dealers, Lone Star Cafe, Lone Star Gun Range, Lone Star Dishwasher Repairs, whatever. I do not know if they are just unoriginal or if they are trying to invoke some kind of regional pride, but I do know there are a ton of them around.

In Hawaii, the offender in this case is "Ohana". There is Ohana Everything. Gas stations, grocery stores, lawyers, plumbers, you name it, it is named Ohana somewhere. Ohana means "family" in Hawaiian. However, they aren't just talking about blood relations. It is deeper than that. Ohana means anyone you call your family. It can be blood relations, sure, but it can just as easily be your adoptive family. Or your neighbors. It is the reason I saw a little girl on the beach back in this blog talk about her "uncle". They aren't related by blood but these people see each other as ohana, which is bigger than the traditional definition of family. It is an interesting idiosyncrasy and just a little endearing to a haole like myself.

Are there any weird regional terms that have come to be on every business you know? Let me know what they are because I have found thinking about this intensely interesting. Happy Friday and have a good day!