Aloha Oi

First layover: Honolulu, Hawaii. We had just one night here but we spent it wonderfully! Jason has a cousin who lives here and is a pharmacist in the army. He and his family let us crash at their cozy bungalo for the night. They have 3 children. They were all adorably outgoing when they discovered us there in the morning. The eldest immediately recruited Jason to play. We had a wonderful breakfast and then it was off to the airport!

Next was a 9 hour long ride to Japan. It wasn't that bad of a flight though. We were in a comfortable plane and Continental Airlines is still very service oriented. We didn't order vegetarian meals so we were worried about eating. The flight attendant told us that they had all made it their personal mission to find things for us to eat. They kept bringing us random food items. We even got a delicious fruit plate that they stole from first class. Neither of us had ever been to Japan so even though our layover was only 1 hour, we made the most of it by people watching and buying a kind of candy we had never eaten before. The candy turned out to be great! We would tell you the name but it was written in Japanese characters.

We had a night in Guam that was quite intersting. We were really tired when we got in at 1 am so Jason called the cheapest hotel and they picked us up at the airport. We were ready to plop right into bed, until we saw the bed that is. Not only did it have dirty, hairy sheets, but there was a cockroach living on the dust ruffle. Luckily Jason's best man, Adam, works at REI and got us some sweet deals on travel sheets. So we slept in our own clean sheets on top of the dirty ones.

The rest of the day we hauled around our baggage to a mall, a scenic overlook (called two lovers point), and a movie until we were finally able to leave on the plane to Palau about 8:00pm. Here is a picture of Larissa at Two Lover's Point:


We stopped over in Yap, a tiny little island, but only for a few minutes for the security to search the plane while we grabbed our stuff and waited outside. The landing strip at the airport had just fractured so the pilot had to turn off the enginges right as we landed so gravel wouldn't get sucked up into our engines. We were towed to the teeniest airport we have ever seen. It was about 2 rooms big and open air except bars like in a prison cell.

We were then off to Palau and a very nice Pastor and student missionary met us with shell lei's and smiles. Our apartment here is awesome. It is the guest house for the Seventh Day adventist church. He get to stay here for about 3 weeks and during that time, we have a two story, three bedroom, one and half bath house all to ourselves. It is a little old and musty (Larissa spent a couple hours scrubbing things when we first got there) but perfectly perfect! We have our own kitchen and have enjoyed running down to the store a couple blocks away to get little food items that we need. Surprisingly, this store has almost anything you could ever need! We even found Big Franks and Postum!! Today we bought some artichokes. We also have our own washer and dryer. Which has been using a lot since it is so humid here that all we do is sweat all day.

Hopefully soon we will be able to post pictures on here so you guys can have eye witness of everything we are talking about.