Hawaii
When I first got here, we stayed in the guest house. It took about a month, maybe longer to find a place to live. They wanted us to hurry up and get out of there. It was really hard. I could look at the ads but if I had no idea how far from base they were, I was lost. I had to either wait for him or learn my way around the island on my own.
Somebody was kind enough to explain the busses to me. I started by getting on the bus leaving post and riding it all the way to Ala Moana center where everybody got off, either to go into places there or to get on another bus. The driver explained to me that to get back to post, I would need another fifty cents and I should look for his bus. He pointed out the number or maybe it was just a route sign. I think it showed a circle with an arrow and water but I could be wrong.
I found out later you could catch this bus at the Ala Moana Center and for fifty cents you could go all around the island. I'd seen part of it on the way here so I wanted to see the rest.
First, I wanted to check out these stores. I couldn't afford to buy anything yet but it wouldn't hurt to look. Way upstairs was an Ikea. I'd never even heard of them before and I've never seen one since. (Tom says they have one near him somewhere and I see ads here so I know there is one here. Its not in our town.)
It didn't look like much of a store so I wandered back down or maybe over. I'm not too clear on what stores where in there at the time. I looked online today and nothing rang any bells. I think there was a small Woolworths on the second floor but it could have been another store that just reminded me of Woolworths. I bought post cards and color slides there of tourist sites. I may have bought them on a different visit though. I know I would always check whenever I was there to see if there were any new ones.
There was a fancy Japanese store there too but their prices I didn't understand and most of the stuff was unfamiliar to me.
One store I really liked was a gem store. I remember a display in the window of amethyst quartz. It was at least two feet high and maybe a foot and a half wide. It looked like they had just taken it out of the ground. It was so beautiful! I couldn't afford it and I couldn't have carried it but I stood there for awhile just soaking it in to my soul.
Eventually I got on the bus to go back to the base.
I studied the paper. I went down stairs in the guest house to buy ice cream sticks from a vending machine. That was a new one on me. I'd never seen ice cream sold that way. It was just enough to cool you off when you were overheated.
The weather is strange in Hawaii, or at least it was to me. I could be walking down a street and it would be lightly raining on my side but not on the other side. Sometimes you would get to the end of the block and the rain would be over. It didn't bother me much. I never got soaked and I always dried off fast.
There were some days when the heat would bother me if I was doing a lot outside or if I was at the beach. I think there it would reflect back up and feel hotter. It was nothing like the blistering sun that day back in Colorado and I never saw triple digits there like I do now in Texas.
There was a winter there and if you were high up you could even see snow but I only saw snow there once. I didn't see it myself but in a photo a friend took from a plane. He was looking down at a Navy plane on the surface near one of the volcanoes. The old ones, not being active are more of a tourist spot than Kilauea but of course if Kilauea is spouting lava it makes a much better sight but very dangerous.
That's the photo I was given. I don't know the name of the man I got it from. That is definitely snow.
To get back to apartment hunting. Tom came in one day with an address. A friend took us to look at it. It was very disgusting. It was tiny. There was a single bed of sorts that looked more like a couch. You shared a toilet with the next door neighbor. I just couldn't deal with that again.
The real kicker was the kitchen or what was supposed to be the kitchen. You could have sat on the "bed" and stirred what ever you were cooking if you dared to attempt to cook anything on that range. It was covered with crusted on food. Roaches scurried every where trying to get every crumb. They were not very successful.
Tom was almost gagging and he wasn't the neatest person in the world. We got out of there fast.
About a day later I was sitting there in our room checking out my paints. I wasn't intending on starting anything but I did have ideas. One of the tubes was stuck. I did something real dumb. I put it in my mouth and tried to open it with my teeth. I deserved the painful result.
My tooth cracked and splintered. It wasn't just any tooth. It was the one that back in NY two years before that I'd paid over a thousand dollars to have root canal done on it.
I was in a lot of pain. In the military, if you are not command sponsor and you choose to go live where your husband is you don't get eye care or dental care. In some areas you don't even get medical care. I went to the doctor on post because it was so painful.
He made a call and the dentist said he would take a look for free but there wasn't much he could do. Most of it had come out and he took out the last piece and didn't charge me for it.
He gave me a script for Tylox. I didn't know at the time that this had codeine in it. I'd never taken codeine. It made me loopy. I was imagining I was someone else and that I was in another place.
When Tom came in I was passed out on the floor. When he got me awake we decided I wasn't to take those pills anymore. He got me some extra strength Tylenol that didn't have anything added to it. I sucked it up and dealt with the pain that was left.