Falling Down a Rabbit Hole

I honestly feel like Alice when she fell down the rabbit hole! But instead of landing in Wonderland…I landed in Paradise. Everything's strange…different...new. I feel completely and utterly lost…and I think I like it. We catch a bus to find our rental car and I start to think that I have tons of stuff with me. Hopefully when I come home I'll be lucky enough to be like Tess from 27 Dresses and meet "the nicest people on planes". We get our car and load up. It's a cute, blue, Mazda CX-9 and I think I want to keep it. It becomes apparent very quickly, that Mom and Dad hate this car. Good thing it's just a rental. We ask some guy for directions and he lies to us and we have to figure out where to go ourselves. We drive around and while it's only 2 in Hawaii I feel like it's 6. I missed my nap and I'm hungry. That pretty much equals cranky in my book. We drive around and get caught in traffic that would make New Yorkers envious. There's one solitary highway and it seems like every car on the island is on it at this point in time. I stare out the window and see a thriving metropolis which isn't exactly what I was expecting, but we're not really on the right part of the island. We inch along like snails in traffic and I decide to read some more. I get a few more pages in before I accidentally fall asleep. By the time I wake up I feel like my stomach is eating itself and I feel like I'm about to die unless I get food right away. We continued to drive and I finally get a good look at the scenery. Everything is so very green except the grass…which is weird to me. The mountains are humongous and the ocean is even bigger. It's the perfect color of aqua closest to the beaches which are the perfect color of tan. The further I look the ocean turns to a light blue, and then, what I assume is the drop off, the ocean goes a dark blue. It's breathtaking. We drive around a corner and it's like a perfect scene from a movie or something. There's a stretch of beach leading up to another strip of lava rocks that leads to the ocean which is sparkling because of the sunlight. The waves come in and crash on the rocks and you can smell the salt in the air. There are all different types of trees and greenery around the area to top it all off. I want to take a picture but I kind of want food more. While it's not right away, I get food eventually. We stop at this place called Cholo's. It's a Hawaiian/Mexican restaurant that my uncle recommended. Inside is very exciting. There's a football game going on the TV right above the bar which is surrounded by people cheering and taking shots of whatever like crazy. I can't decide if they're cheering for the game or because of how many drinks they've all had. There's a guy with dreadlocks behind the bar making drinks like he's been doing it since he was born. There's a lot of pretty waitresses running around and one guy who looks like a less attractive version of Christian Bale. The walls are filled with creepy decorations each with a little white paper on it. I come to find out the papers are price tags. Haha. Tourist towns. They'll sell you anything. I take forever ordering because I don't know what I want because I secretly want the whole menu. Dad and I decide to split some stuff and I continue to scarf down chips…no salsa though, it's too spicy. The food comes and I eat until I feel like I'm going to explode. We continue driving to our condo and hopefully to find Foodland so we can buy something for breakfast. As we're driving we come around a curve and I look out at the ocean. It's blue as far as the eye can see, and I begin to realize that I don't know where the ocean ends, and the sky begins. It's all one big mass of blue and it's absolutely the most beautiful thing I've seen so far. We're driving close to the beaches so there are cars, people, and surfers everywhere. We see yet another absolutely breathtaking scene at Shark's Cove and another while driving along sunset beach. The only problem, we can't find Foodland anywhere. We drive and drive until we come to the Foodland by the BYU-Hawaii campus. So we just decide to stop there. We drive by the temple which is all lit up and glowing. It's the prettiest thing around by far. We check into the condo and I finally get to sleep. With some fussing over bed situations I end up the floor on a mattress like pad which is surprisingly more comfortable than my alternative on the couch. With the fan on to control the heat, I go to sleep because I know tomorrow's going to be a very long and exciting day. Tomorrow is really the first day of the rest of my life.