…from somewhere cool this time! I spent most of last week with 6 med students (and 1 other non-med student) at Margie’s parents’ place in Kailua, on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. (Incidentally, I think that Margie is the only person I actually know to have a for reals Wikipedia entry.) Sweet.
So the thing I learned about vacationing with medical students is that, well, they suck at vacationing. We arrived Tuesday afternoon, and after settling in for a bit, we all headed to the beach. After no more than 30 minutes there, someone piped up with, “Hey, does anyone want to go on a run?” And the weird thing was, three people said yes! So within a couple of hours of arriving, we’d already lost half the group to exercise. This trend continued throughout the trip, and even I fell victim to its grip, and went running twice. The tendrils of healthy living even made their way into our mealtimes, and I witnessed a conversation that went almost verbatim like this: “Well, I could make a big salad for dinner.” “Oooh, a salad! That sounds so good.” “And some fruit!” The fat-free icing on the sugar-free cake was that the most popular cereal among the group was Fiber One. At least we all stayed regular.
Despite all this, the trip was a lot of fun, with most of the time taken up by hanging out at the beach and getting much more sun than my programmer/SF resident body is used to. We stayed mostly in Kailua, but did end up, at various times, in Waikiki, on the North Shore, and hiking along some really cool rocky shore whose name escapes me at the moment. There was also some shopping that happened, but I tend to fall into a mild coma at malls and outlet stores, so I can’t really comment on that. We also spent a lot of time with Margie’s really cute dog, Ruby, who is the only Chihuahua I’ve ever really liked, (sorry, every other Chihuahua I’ve ever met) and her parents’ dog, Lily, or Mildly Retarded Lily, as we took to calling her. It sounds mean, but if you met her, you’d understand. I also did a little reading and played some more Phantom Hourglass. On the last day, we tried snorkeling, but the wind churned up too much sand underwater, and I got freaked out by the sub-1 foot visibility.
It was an interesting experience to stay in a really residential place for the trip. While I mostly appreciated the lack of touristy things, I think I’d like to come back to Hawaii some time and see and do all the stereotypically Hawaiian things — sea turtles, shaved ice, snorkeling, surfing, lava flows, and para sailing. Hell, pass me a straw hat and a lei, and I’m there. Just be sure to leave the Fiber One at home.
