Aloha, Hawaii!!

This winter break we were blessed with the opportunity to travel to Hawaii with my (Megan) parents, brother (Tim), and sister-in-law (Lissel). While we missed having time at home in Upland and missed seeing SO MANY other family and friends, it was wonderful to be in a tropical climate while exploring more of God’s creation that we never thought we’d get to see in our lifetime.

To start our trip, we headed up to the Osan Air Force Base south of Seoul where Justin’s cousin is stationed. We spent a day and a half with them and their 3 boys. It was fun to see what a base is like since we have never been on one – it felt so much like an American town to us compared to what we’re used to. Even their apartment felt “American.” We enjoyed getting to know them better and playing with Jonathan and Caleb and Seth. Hopefully we’ll get to see them again soon!

Our travels to Hawaii were easy. We flew out of Incheon (near Seoul) and got a flight directly to Honolulu that was less than 8 hours – piece of cake compared to the 13+ we’ve done before! We purposefully planned a 6 hour layover in Honolulu so we could make a trip to Pearl Harbor and the Arizona Memorial. It was the perfect amount of time to do what we wanted and got a better, fuller knowledge of what happened on the “day which shall live in infamy.” We saw a 20 minute video about that day which included video footage of the Japanese – it was sobering. We then took a boat out to the Arizona Memorial where you can look down and see the ship still sunken with oil still leaking up to the surface. Sobering, indeed.

First glimpse of the Arizona Memorial

Pulling up to the Memorial

Part of the ship that is exposed

We then returned to the airport and took off for Lihue in Kauai where my parents were supposed to land 8 minutes after us. Key words: supposed to. Long story short, their flight from LA had mechanical problems and they had to return to the airport. We were finally able to get wifi and find out that they had gotten our car rental company to allow Justin and I to pick up the car instead of them. We had 6 hours to kill before their new flight came in, so we got to know the Walmart in Lihue VERY WELL. Let’s just say it’s a pain to not have American phones, and people give you weird looks when you’re American and you say that you don’t have a phone. As always, God’s timing is perfect and I think it made our reunion with my parents that much sweeter after a stressful evening. Tim and Lissel joined us a few days later with, thankfully, a very uneventful trip.

I am going to share our trip with you by telling and showing all of the ways in which we saw God’s creation throughout our ten days in Kauai – land, sea, sky, animals (and a few others which didn’t fit into these categories).