I was very busy. And LJ was blocked from the office (for like a week, isn't that odd?). And then we went to Hawai`i.


It managed to quite perfectly fulfill my idea of a cultural beach vacation. I was worried, cause a lot of people warned me that the other islands (we went to Oahu) were more beautiful, less cheesy. But it was actually some of that cheese that made for a more interesting experience.

Like, the mall food court. I kid you not. It was a place where locals and tourists congregated at mealtimes, whether they were shopping or no. And they had really good food - all sorts of different ethnicities with a local (read "containing fresh fruit") flair. The mall, like most of the city of Honolulu, is more international than anywhere I've been in the US.

Or the Polynesian Cultural Center, which is, on a certain level, Mormon Polynesia Busch Gardens. But was also home to some of the coolest folkloric dance ever (er, and some really attractive Tahitian women) and some quality editorializing in the museumy area about how Fijian cannibals did less to "consume the native flesh" than Spanish colonialism. I like Mormons.

It rains all the time in Oahu, but I'd still describe the weather as beautiful. It's sunny and rainy at the same time.

I learned a tiny bit about the language (both the pidgin/creole English the locals speak and the native language) and in doing so understood a little better why Hawaiians have every right to be pissed off over annexation to the US. I discovered a really neat local island press and bought a couple of their chapbooks. I became (or maybe always was) a hula snob, disdaining the tacky stuff done for tourists from the... meaningful, traditional stuff done for tourists.

There are scratches all up and down my legs from snorkelling over lava rock. Ow! But also fun. I'm so used to east coast US beaches that the existence of rocks in my beach was pretty unsettling. And ow. Did I mention ow?

And I had a ton of fun shopping for silly stuff and gifts, visited a Buddhist temple, drove all over the island, saw several rainbows, ate a load of pineapple, walked through the world's longest-hottest-most-boring maze, ate a lot of sushi, visited other museums, saw a lot of dance, and yes, tanned and swam in the Pacific.

If any of you are in bookclubs looking for reading recommendations, I suggest Paul Campos' "Obesity Myth" and Jonathan Rauch's "Gay Marriage". The former is something everyone should read and talk about. The latter really bothered me, but would make for interesting discussions about what marriage is meant to be (as a social institution). His theory that gay marriage is good for everyone, because it's so stabilizing, ended up convincing me that marriage isn't good at all.