Hawaiiiiiii!

It's amazing how tired I get, and how fast. But it's this weird, outdoor, energized tired. I arrived
yesterday afternoon in a haze of sun and shock at being warm for once. Since then I've been in an exhausting whirlwind of adjusting and trying to hide my general wide-eyed-awkward terror. Everyone has been amazingly friendly, but of course there's a period of feeling like the new kid at summer camp. My tent, predictably, doesn't fit my tent area. We get an 8'x8' wooden platform with a 16'x16' carport-style awning over it...everyone else has some variation on your basic dome or room tents, but noooooo, I had to get the cool one that looks like a damn teepee...and... it's too tall. So I've McGyvered it together, tying the top to the awning poles and guy wiring it out, but it still looks like a menacing jellyfish perching in the grass, breathing in sinister billows. Ah well. Some of the volunteers stay in these tiny little A-frames...I admit I'm rampantly jealous. More reason to come back as a "seasoned veteran" I suppose.

I'm not sure how to begin to describe this place. It's so different from where I just left that it's overwhelming. All the buildings are "rustic", made largely of screen walls and windows. The stars are INSANE. It's darker than dark at night. It's SO INCREDIBLY WET. I've been warned that my clothes, even if I haven't worn them, are likely to mold. Nothing really dries, ever. It rains in violent, drenching bursts. The trees in the center areas are draped in lights and look like they are glowing from within. I thought California was fertile and covered in growing things, but this place puts it to shame. Agriculture is constantly fighting back the rampant growth, and everything is just walls of dense green pocked with swollen flowers. It is NEVER quiet. There are frogs that sing day and night. They sound like birds and crickets combined, but not frogs...They have several different songs, but they never, ever stop. It sounds grating, but isn't.

Today I woke up feeling overwhelmed. Overly overwhelmed, and I had to retreat into my jelly-tent and nap it off. But... this afternoon I made a bracelet woven of leaves. I couldn't tell you the name of the tree or the style of weaving because it all had fantastic Hawaiian names that careened in and out of my head as fast as most of the names of people I've been meeting. Anyway, I sat on a patio-couch with a few friendly people and listened to Auntie Lynda teach me to make something. Barefoot in cut-offs and a tank top and at perfect body temperature, watching a bright green gecko climb the wall, listening to the sound of waves smashing into black-lava cliffs right behind me. Then a yoga class in a huge, domed room: wood floors, lit by colored upshot lights, trees inside and out and open to the sea. I mean, come ON. That's pretty great. Maybe I don't want to go home yet.

This doesn't look like much, since it's, you know, dark, but I'm in a grove of lit-up trees.
Just LISTEN!

I tried to upload a picture of the beast-tent, but blogger doesn't want to play along. Maybe later, if you're good.