First week on Oahu!

We flew into the Honolulu airport late, last Friday night (Dec. 28, 2012) and have had a wonderful, exhausting and amazing time since!  To back up, we only found out 2 months ago that Geoff was accepted to the University of Hawaii at Manoa (Japanese language & linguistics PhD).  Our acceptance letter had gotten lost somehow and the school thought we knew but we didn't.  Needless to say, it's been a whirlwind since then to sell all of our possessions, move out of our house when we no longer had beds to sleep in (Thank you, thank you to Emily & Brandon for letting us stay with them for 3 weeks!), clean our house, list it with a realtor to sell, have Geoff defend and finish his thesis, celebrate Christmas (Thank you Mom & Dad for letting us spend a wonderful Christmas week with you!), pack the 4 suitcases we could take on our flight, fly here and get settled once we landed!  Phew!

Dad drove us to the Sanderson's home on his way to work with all our luggage & Emily very kindly drove us all to the airport in her van.  Kevin & Jared met us at the airport, hauled all of our luggage to baggage claim & then took our car home with them to sell for us on the classifieds since we hadn't been able to do that before we had to fly out!  I think it was at this point that Geoff turned to me and said "What in the world would we do with out all of these nice people helping us right now?!"  I totally agree, thank you so much to all of you who have helped us with all this craziness and really been there for us!

Our flight stopped in Seattle after a 2 hour flight  for a 3 hour lay over and then on to a 6 hour flight to Honolulu.  This was the first time either of the girls had been inside an airport or on a plane so they were really excited!  They did really well too.  We know that Heavenly Father was really blessing us and are thankful the girls were so well behaved!  The even slept the last 3 hours or so of the flight after I told them it was bedtime & got them "snuggled down." Miracles for sure!

The first thing the girls noticed about Hawaii is the gorgeous trees and plants we could see in the airport courtyards.  Hana asked if they were real and was amazed when we told her they were!

We arranged the day before to have Speedishuttle pick us up at the baggage claim, load our 4 huge suitcases and endless carryons and drive us to our hotel for the night.  Money well spent for sure!

The first night we decided to stay at a hotel closer to the airport since we were flying in so late and after searching for that for several days, the week before, I finally found what seemed to be the last available hotel room in Honolulu at the Hyatt Regency Waikiki hotel for $500 a night! We decided to take it and lived it up in luxury the few hours we were there.  The room had a balcony where we watched the sun come up over Waikiki beach!  We also enjoyed a great breakfast in one of the hotel restaurants over looking the ocean.  I loved the coconut syrup on the waffles and the miso soup (Japanese fermented soy bean soup-sounds gross, but is delicious!) We were surrounded by Japanese tourists and loved that.  I knew there were a lot of Japanese tourists in Hawaii but I had no idea that they were like 99.9% of the tourists there!  We felt right at home & loved how you could get really good Japanese food at the breakfast buffet or anywhere you went.  They all seemed to adore Hana & Aya, some of the few blondes in the hotel.

After breakfast we had to check out of our room so Geoff & the girls explored the amazing hotel lobby, shops & courtyards while I sat in the lobby with my lap top in order to track down the last rental car available in Honolulu (you see the pattern here?!) I found one, which was another miracle, and when we go to the car rental place there was actually a mini van available instead of the compact car we had booked so we had enough room for all of our luggage! Hurray! Once we had our nice, silver, new Nissan Quest mini van we were on our way to our first home and that brings me to the next story...

I had frantically been looking for a place to live since we found out we would be moving to Hawaii but with no luck.  The night before we flew out a little ad popped up on craigslist for an available vacation rental condo in Ko Olina, a place we really wanted to be, that was available immediately.  I emailed the person & told them we wanted the rental and heard back the next morning that we could have it! I know this was an answer to a prayer for sure and the lady who posted the ad actually said the same thing.  In her email she said "God is wonderful" and I completely agreed with her.

As we drove into Ko Olina we were amazed!  This place is gorgeous!  It's a beach resort where some people own homes and live here full time along with all of the tourists.  Disney & Marriott both have huge resorts here too.  Everything is landscaped  and made beautifully from the fountains to the black swans living on the golf course to the water falls & palm tree lined streets to the 4 perfectly made lagoon beaches on the shore!  We are renting a nice, newer 2 bedroom 3 bathroom condo until the end of January and have loved it.  We have a pool one street over and can walk to the amazing beaches.  We have been to the beach almost every day and to the pool twice, which I have loved!  We really want to enjoy those things while we're here.

We went to church last Sunday and today (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints http://mormon.org/)at the local building here and everyone was very friendly & welcoming to us. Most of the members of the congregation are Pacific Islanders but there are a handful families "from the mainland" and the all happen to be from Utah too!

Last Monday we drove to Geoff's new school, University of Hawaii at Manoa (UH) so he could meet with some faculty and such and so we got our first glimpse of the campus.  It is in Honolulu city in the very green & lush, Manoa valley.  It's amazing how different the two sides of the island are even though it only took us 35 minutes to drive there!  The side we live on,  is the desert side (though not nearly as dry and barren as Utah!) and the other side reminds us a lot of Japan with lots of rain, green hills, bamboo etc. The roads are also very narrow, crowded and sometimes very steep in the Manoa valley and that reminds us of Japan too.
The campus has some really cool buildings and some kind of run down looking buildings too but overall a pretty cool place.  Geoff says the faculty he has met are all very nice.  He starts classes this Tuesday.

We hoped to start Hana in her new school last Thursday when all the kids returned from Christmas break but were informed that she has to have a TB test that comes out negative before they will let her even step foot in the building.  Hawaii is very strict about immunizations and TB tests, we've found!  Geoff already had one done in Utah since he had to before he could start school but I decided the Aya and I should get ours done the same time as Hana since you can't really do anything here until that's taken care of.  We located the place we had to go to get them done and went on Friday and will have to go back tomorrow to show that we didn't react to the skin prick test.  Anyway, Hana will start school on Tuesday!  We drove by the school and were a little concerned because it is kind of run down looking but some people in the ward assured us that it's a good school and the teachers are great so I feel better about that.  A lot of things in Hawaii seem to be run down and people just don't seem to mind.  Part of that is from the sea air and humidity that rusts and corrodes everything very quickly from what I understand.

Well, this has gotten ridiculously long but it's been an eventful week!  We miss our family and friends back home very much and have had a few bad bouts of discouragement and homesickness but are feeling optimistic and happy to have this amazing opportunity for the most part.  Now to buy a car tomorrow and find a more permanent home to move to at the end of the month!

Happy 2013!  Love the Biesingers