Hawaii...

Our Trip to Hawaii with the students was great but it was exhausting...it started out with a 6am flight (which meant we had to be up at 3:00am to be at the airport by 4:00am) so we were pretty wiped out by the time we finally got there. Our first night we had a pizza party and just spent time getting to know everyone and waiting for all the stragglers to arrive. On Sunday we went to the flea market at the pro bowl stadium. Its a GREAT place to get your Hawaiian gear!! Then we went to Kailua Beach...it was a fun day but it was overcast and cloudy and a bit on the cool side. Sunday night we played Bunco and had a BBQ....On Tuesday it was still overcast and cloudy but a cloudy day in Hawaii is still Hawaii Right? so we headed out in the morning and did the light house hike (you can go back in my blog to last years trip and see the pictures of that..its really very pretty) after the hike we went to Wiamonolo beach and had a picnic and spent the day there. It sprinkled off and on and the sun never really showed itself so we just pretty much spent most of the time in the water. It was the best beach for body boarding and I even caught a few waves all the way in which I have never done and it was WAY cool....good thing we brought Christoph along to show us how its REALLY done!

On Tuesday we went to Waikiki and hiked Diamond head...It was the initiation for our new chaperons so us "has beens" got the luxury of hanging out with the cars in the parking lot LOL...did not miss those 100+ stairs at the top of the trail....but i did forget the lunch money and had to drive all the way back to camp to get it and race back before the kids got done with the hike. After that we went to Waikiki beach and went out on the Catamaran...this is a highlight of the trip and one of our very favorite things to do...usually the waves are pretty big and the kids get soaked who sit up here in the net (pictured above) and its so fun to watch their faces when that first unsuspecting wave crashes over them but this year the water was like glass....which was also nice because then we got to stop and jump off the boat and swim out in the open ocean!

here is Emanuel coming back up the stairs after jumping off the side into the water

Here is Christoph taking a dive....or maybe a belly flop! LOL

Pavel getting ready for his dive.

Here is one of our Chaperons, Eufaun doing a back dive...brave girl!

who are these people anyways???

Our fearless leader, Kim

Here is Christoph, after he got out of the water...we were so happy to have Christoph on the trip with us. Christoph was our first exchange student 15 years ago and he and his family now live in San Diego. It was good to get reacquainted with him. The day we left his family came into town and the lucky dog got to stay another week with them! We sure love them and wish they lived closer but San Diego is a heck of alot closer then Switzerland!!!!

Pavel, funny funny kid! the life of the party! He lives with my sister Lynn

On our way back in we get that rare view of surfers from the back side...

Here is a group shot (although i seemed to have cut someone off??)