The Journey Begins!

A few months ago, Josh and I ended up in positions where we were both employed but our employment didn't require us to be in any particular location. After a lot of discussion about how to best make use of this opportunity, we decided to embrace our homelessness and become digital nomads.  This means we can live absolutely anywhere as long as it has a good internet connection and is included in my nationwide long distance plan.  We're actually working on a phone solution that would allow us to travel outside of the U.S. but, a person could do a whole lot worse than 50 states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The first thing we discovered is that when you can go ANYWHERE, it's really hard to settle on one specific place.  The United States is thousands of miles of awesome sauce.

However, amongst all that awesomeness, there's a tiny jewel sitting by itself in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  Hawaii, baby!  We both really loved our time in Hawaii on vacation in December of 2011 and we both agreed that we wanted to go back. 

 10,000 hours of looking at Craigslist postings (no luck!), the discovery of Air BnB, another 10,000 hours of looking at listings on Air BnB (did I mention that my husband was a planner?) and a sorry episode where not once, not twice, but three times we delayed buying our tickets when they were the right price just to discover the price had double the next day and we were finally on our way.

Is that a mountain in your Island or are you just  happy to see me?

Shakira's hips have nothing on the hips of these hula dancers.

The airport on Kona side of the Big Island is a really cool, outdoor facility.  Of course, I was not at all used to the heat or the humidity so I may have had a few moments where I wished it were an indoor facility instead.

When I saw the hula statue, I asked Josh to take my picture in front of it.  He scoffed and said, "We're not tourists."  As you can see, I didn't find his argument about non-tourist-approved activities to be very convincing. :)

Cathy, the lady whose 'ohana we're renting for our first month in Hawaii, offered to pick us up from the airport free of charge.  Like most of the people we've run across here she's full of "Aloha spirit".  That's Hawaiian for extremely good customer service and all around niceness.  Some people warned us that as "haole" (white people, foreigners, 'the other') we were going to have a tough time in Hawaii.  Now, I'm not claiming that I'm an expert after 3 weeks, but, we've had nothing but good experiences.

There's a chirping gecko somewhere in this photo

We're in a good-sized studio 4 miles south of Kailua-Kona.  It works well for me because I want to start running more and we're a 3.5 mile round trip from the grocery store, a 7 mile round trip from town, an 8 mile round trip from Walmart and a 9.5 mile round trip from church.  Speaking of that 9.5 mile trip - I'm pretty sure I've earned extra heaven points for the past couple of Sundays.  Of course, the people that have to sit next to me as my sweat soaks into the pew at church are probably thinking the same things.  Long hikes in dresses on tropical islands are not for the weak.

Crashing waves send me into a deep, drool-filled sleep nightly

Then, of course, there's the amazing view.  This is a picture of the view from my office (a.k.a. my bedroom, my kitchen, my dining room, etc). 
It makes the 12-14 hour days a little easier to handle.

The best part is that we're close enough that we can hear the waves crashing.  We like to sit on the lanai (balcony for those of you that aren't hip to the island lingo), watch the sun set and listen to the ocean.  As a bonus, there are Hawaiian green geckos all over the place and we frequently see them scurrying by.  They make the most adorable chirping sound and always give themselves away when they sneak into the apartment.  They can't seem to help but be happy and sing.  I'm happy to have them inside as well as they help control the insect populations.