Why it's harder to go backwards than forwards

Glorious springbreak is upon us. No homework for an entire week, means time to finally do something meaningful with my time. Pretty much everyone else has fled the island to visit either family on the mainland og some of the other Hawaiian islands that are supposed to be much more beautiful than Oahu. I have no money so Oahu will have to do for me. The beautiful thing is that Oahu seems a lot "lighter" now that everyone has left as Devon from my sustainability class put it. The beaches are less crowded, the lineup has room for even chumps like me and traffic congestion seems a little less prevalent than normal. I have been surfing like a crazy motherbiatch during the week, and gotten a little better. A have also sprained both my albows and seem to be pouring water out of my skull on a constant basis but it's all good! Mike has taught me how to do the turtle roll where you flip over and use the bottom of the board as a shield against the biggest waves. This particular technique appararently causes the "water coming out of your head syndrome". I have no surf pictures yet but I do have a shot of the surf-ready Buick. Sweet!



The title of this posting refers to a bit of community work that I have had time to do this week. Along with an American Kailua-girl named Becky and a french Kailua-girl named Cloe I went to do work on a ancient Hawaiian Heiau (meaning temple). To get to the site we hade to go through a cement quarry, and the site itself lay right under the H-3 highway. This slightly parculiar coincidence is due to the fact the the temple was discovered during the construction of the highway. The city council wanted to build on top of the ancient ruins but some locals chose to oppose the decision by camping out under the construction site for 3 (!) years. Eventually it was decided to run the H-3 just next to the ruins rather than through them. Our particular job for the day was to clear the road leading to the temple because a funeral service was to be held there during the weekend. The old caretaker of the ground had just passed away and his dying whish was to be buried in the temple of his forfathers. So we did prison work basically, stading in a long line clearing bushes and rocks off the road. The grandson of the caretaker worked along side of us so everyone was happy to help. In the end we ate lunch a the temple site, and got a tour of the grounds which was lush with Papaya, Coconut, Avocado, Chili, Sugarcane and whatnot. I have never seen that sort of abundance in my life. The site is home to both the male and female heiau. Back in the day the women hung out in their temple (there was different places for playing, workig and giving birth) and the men fought and chilled in their penthouse heiau from which they could keep an eye on the women down below. Both temples are almost completely destroyed though and the restoration is going to take many year to complete if it ever happens. The people working on the highway ruined the remnants of the temples in a matter of months and it's gonna take forever to rebuild. Sometimes it really is a lot easier to move forwards than to go backwards.

In the pictures you can see our tourguide, Lelei (I think it was...), the grandson of the deceased caretaker.