Adjusting to Island Living

Today Josh made a joke in church, saying that this is the first time he's ever lived out of a suitcase and not been on vacation! We have been here for almost two weeks and are still living at the Pastor's house with his wife and another "roommate" named Wilkie, who is in and out and spends most of her day internet surfing or real surfing. We had another possible roommate earlier...its shown on the left...Josh picked it up and moved it away from the shoes on the front porch. Tiffany was the one that first found it, and it really scared her...but then, like she does with most furry animals, she fell in love with it and wanted to keep it...oh dear. Josh had to let it go though...

Last Friday, the 16th, we got our boxes in that we had shipped in. It was wonderous that it only took a day...THANKS PETE!!!! It arrived in time for Tiffany to take out her Thanksgiving decorations and add them to Pastor Ron and Judy's decorations at their house for Thanksgiving.

We led worship at the church on Sunday for the first time since our visit in August. The people were really appreciative to have worship at the church and they had a welcoming potluck for us and everyone was eager to get to know us. They brought in a Big Island Pizza which was the biggest pizza we had ever seen! It was as big as the table!

Josh started his job on Monday and had a short week...work til Wednesday then off for Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Our Thanksgiving was really nice because we were invited to Josh's office secretary's house for appetizers where we got to know some local people. When we say local, we mean people that live here, but only moved here within the past 5 years or so. Most of the Mainlanders we have met have only recently moved here. The host of the party is an astronomical engineer who works on the Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea. Their house was really nice!

From there we left and went back to Ron and Judy's and proceeded to prepare for our Thanksgiving feast. There wasn't much Hawaiian about it - lots of good ole Thanksgiving food. Tiffany made green bean bundles that would make Mama Mitchell proud and apple dumplings that would make Mama Wise proud! Josh brought some sparkling cider...hooray!

On Black Friday we bought a Christmas Tree! Yes, that's it tied to the top of Ron and Judy's Suzuki...Josh felt it was quite an accomplishment getting it back to the house in one piece. Its temporary home is on the front porch until we find a place to live. Hopefully it will be happy there. It was crazy at Walmart and Sears and Macy's so we decided not to shop. We went car shopping and checked out a couple more places to live.

On Saturday we went to the Hilo Christmas Parade. It was about 20 minutes long but it was exciting...and different. Mostly it was high school bands, community groups, and the fire department with Santa Clause. The greatest thing to watch was all the Hawaiian kids and how excited they were. Tiffany fell in love with one in particular. She was a little girl who was really excited to be there and kept clapping her hands.

After the parade we went to the beach. It was really nice and Josh got to swim with the turtles.

We finally made a decision on a car and will be getting it tomorrow, a nice little 5-speed Toyota Corolla. We will show pictures on our next blog. We will continue house hunting this week and we are hoping to be in something by December 1st.

white boy in the ocean!

Mahalo (thank you) for reading our blog...



A hui ho (goodbye for now),



Josh and Tiffany Mitchell