KOSC – SarahRuthSeeks

Coconut Island

June 2, 2022 No Comments

The officer spouse group I am apart of took an adventure to Coconut Island which is a restricted access research island used by the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology (all beaches in Hawaii are free to access by anyone, there’s a small beach you can use on Coconut Island pictured above but can’t go past that). It is also the island featured in the opening song of Giligan’s Island . It got its coconut trees when a Hawaiian Queen wanted to host a luau on it but didn’t think it was pretty enough, so she shipped a bunch of coconut trees over. We were told to always be situationally aware because falling coconuts kill more people than sharks do every year.

We were provided a guided tour of the island which took maybe 15 minutes to walk around. We learned about some of the projects like this pontoon turned vacuum boat which suctioned up invasive algae and was so successful it’s now retired.

We could see some of the research facilities

And touch sea life in their touch tank.

Our tour guide was a retired veteran who wanted to keep his mask on, which was fine, but it made it difficult to hear. We heard a lot about the history, and at times in a little scatter brained manner, and not much about the research. I was a little disappointed by the tour guide… but it was still a worthwhile adventure.

The last fun fact I really remember is that one of the prince’s who lived on the island kept all kinds of exciting animals like gorillas and elephants which eventually became the beginning of the Honolulu Zoo. The elephant, Empress, could’ve been the longest living captive elephant at her death in 1986.

P.S. It’s mango season in Hawaii if you couldn’t tell.

If given the opportunity, I might go again, but I won’t go out of my way.

The mountains were showing off that day.

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“Talk Story” with a Pearl Harbor Survivor

December 13, 2021 No Comments

The lady in red Hawaiian shirt is a 92 year old survivor of the attacks on Pearl Harbor. She lived on MCBH during the attacks and told her story of her experiences on that day. Her name is Joedy Adams, she was 12 at the time. You can hear a rendition of her full story here. Her dad told her and her mom to escape to Honolulu. When they got to Honolulu, they crashed their car trying to avoid a bus driving on the wrong side of the road (reportedly driven by a Japanese man). They knocked on the door of the house where they crashed, and it was a Navy officer’s house. He had no idea it was happening, so he ran out the door to drive to Pearl. Crazy how they couldn’t hear it happening in Honolulu. At one point on the ride over, they pulled over because of a plane flying overhead and hid. The plane was shooting down the middle of the road. It took her dad five days to be able to communicate with them. When they finally got to go home, they drove at night without headlights to stay hidden. Her mom had to sit out the passenger side hanging her hand over the side driving around the cliffs to make sure they were still on the road.

It was cool to hear her talk. She was still very with it!

She also told a story about a spy living in her house. A friend told him this was discredited, but she still tells it like it’s true, and that no one really corrects her because it was her rendition of the day.

Oh, “Talk Story” is a common phrase in Hawaii, and it basically means to “shoot the shit” most of the time, or times like this a more specific “chat” gathering.

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KOSC Ornament Exchange

December 13, 2021 No Comments

KOSC had a Holiday party and they advised us to dress “festive”. Well, knowing this group I thought it’d be a little more casual, so I wore my favorite Christmas onesie (which, for the record, is a bit warm for Hawaii). Anyway, it’s like 60% people dressed really nice, and 39% dressed in ugly sweater-ish type attire, and I was like… the most outlandish. But I received so many compliments! And everyone enjoyed my festive-ness.

Anyway, I brought a cool ornament from Micromahalo . The blue pieces are micro plastic from the beach.

The host was the base CO and his wife, so you can imagine their house is huge. They live in the house that Eisenhower stayed in after WWII. Apparently it’s called the “Kane’ohe Bay White House” but I can’t find much about it online beside this. You can see it has a massive open space for hosting.

It also has a gorgeous view of the ocean as you can imagine. The husbands were our bartenders. It was a truly fantastic night. We had what we call “mando fun”, mandatory fun, meaning you’re all going to take a picture inside this frame or else.

We also collected a lot of toys for a toys-4-tots type program on base.

It was such a fun night, and I’d love to keep doing ornament exchanges past Hawaii. No stress, no swapping… just raffle style. It’s hard to see, but I got a santa playing a ukelele riding a sea turtle, and that’s PERFECT.

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Henna and Wine

November 9, 2021 No Comments

After the previously very active and eventful caramel apple dipping event, I went to Henna and Wine the next night with KOSC. Much more low key. Henna refers to the die used to make temporary tattoos. Typically seen in Indian weddings.

I asked for a turtle and hibiscus on my foot. The first picture is it with the black henna “ink”. Then it starts to crust and you flake it off to leave a reddish toned tattoo.

P.S. people, if there is ever a dirty plate in the picture when I ask you to take a group photo, MOVE IT. Thanks 🙂

A lot more low key event, the henna each takes like 6-8 minutes, it’s really quick. We ate apps, my caramel apples, and drank wine. We also eventually played telestrations and cards against humanity.

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Halloween Bingo

November 2, 2021 No Comments

This month’s Bingo was Halloween themed! So was the sunrise that morning apparently. I went as Mrs. Incredible, and my newish friend Jess borrowed my skeleton “costume”, which was great because she’s a physical therapist.

Jess I met at one of the book clubs, and I basically pulled a “YOU’RE MY FRIEND REGARDLESS OF YOUR OPINION” on her, which I semi-apologize for basically forcing her to be friends with me, but I think it’s working out so far. She doesn’t have kids yet, so it makes socializing a bit easier. She’s also a Navy wife, her husband is a SWO (Surface Warfare Officer). She lives close by. It’s destiny, really.

At Bingo we collected food donations for the Thanksgiving food drive to provide food for military families in need of extra support. I wish we took a picture of the table because it was full and that made my heart warm. I also neglected taking any pictures of us actually playing bingo, but we did! Jess won wine.

The whole night was hilarious, and our table was particularly rowdy. At my table there were two Saras, and at one point they went to high five each other for having that name, and out of pure instinct I interrupted the high five by grabbing the arm of one of them next to me. I do not know what overcame me and I apologized and pray I didn’t scare her away (this was only one of multiple things that happened this night that could’ve). She did not seem to have been bothered by the interaction thankfully! The MC wives are such characters! Gotta have fun together to get through this life.

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Old Pali Rd Hike + Catastrophe

October 4, 2021 1 Comment

Well, after 10,000+ pictures, I finally had an SD card fail. I had a very eventful Saturday and Sunday morning and all my pictures are lost to a small, broken data card. I’m asking around if there are any tech geeks I can bring it to recover pictures… but not holding out hope. So, use your imagination and google internet pictures.

I decided to organize a hike for KOSC. I picked a really awesome, unique hike called Old Pali Rd. A section of the hike journeys over an overgrown highway (I am unsure the history there, honestly.) It’s supposed to be haunted, which is fitting for October. Logistically, there was paid parking at the entrance, which is helpful to avoid our cars being broken into. All of this set my expectations way too high for how the day would go…

First, we arrived at 8am, but the parking was definitely on Aloha time, and didn’t open until 8:10am ish. Not a huge deal, but caused me some concern and confusion.

The start of the hike was really cool, walking on the old pali road highway was so fascinating and easy going. However, we did go with a gaggle of kids… I mean there were at least 15 of them. I think the ratio of adults to kids ended up being 1:2. I am all for kids on hikes, they are so fun and bring a sense of innocence, but it can be logistically challenging to keep a group together. A few adults started off and ended up way ahead, and I was bringing up the rear after the huge group of kids and parents. After going underneath the actual, existing pali highway, the groups went different ways (without knowing it). We went left, and the other group ahead went right. I wasn’t really paying attention and didn’t realize the group ahead, who had done this hike before and I trusted, had split off. I was initially intending on going right and should’ve known to be more attentive. Well, going left ended us at a lookout… that you can easily drive to and I drive by probably twice a week. Going the other way, I would’ve ended at a lookout a little higher that I haven’t been to. It got really muddy and slick, and on the way I slipped and fell right on my tailbone. I’m still in a bit of pain today.

I am pretty upset with how it went even though I know I shouldn’t be. Everyone got out and explored which is really the goal. But, personally, I would like to go back, do it a lot slower, take pictures, and go to the other lookout. I was really disappointed I got hurt and felt gypped.

I think that moving forward it’ll be helpful to really scope out the hike beforehand, but it’s hard to do that without enough friends to go with. I also am throughly convinced that shoe spikes and hiking poles are just going to be part of my outfit. I don’t understand what it is about me and my balance, but I’m not clumsy until it comes time to slippery surfaces. Everyone else seems to do it so easily except me.

So, just imagine an old highway with tons of overgrowth, looking like you’re going through a jungle… and it’ll just be like I have a picture of it posted!

Here’s a historic picture. And a couple more good pictures of current pictures here.

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Bunco

October 4, 2021 No Comments

I’m behind in blogging. Been a crazy and tiring week.

Bunco is a dice game, described by wikipedia as “housewife’s drinking game”. It’s very easy to play. Tables of four players take turns rolling three dice. You get a point if the number on the dice matches the value of the round you’re playing, so starting with 1, if you roll a one you get one point, two ones two points, three ones three points. If you roll no points, the next player rolls. You’re on a team with the person across from you, and the round ends as soon as one of the head table teams hits 21 (they ring a bell so everyone knows to stop). The team with the most points at your table, wins. Then, you move on to the next round, 2, and repeat when the dice values match 2. This repeats up to round 6. If you roll three of a kind, you get bunco which is 21 points if it matches the number round you’re in, or 5 points if it’s any other set of numbers except 1. If you roll 1s, “snake eyes” your points clear and you start from zero (unless you’re in round 1, in which case it’s a bunco). Winners rotate tables (unless you’re at the head table). If you get a bunco, you get to wear a lei. You keep track of your mini buncos, buncos, team wins, losses, various stats…and at the end you get prizes for all sorts of things.

They hosted in O’Club, the officer’s club on base. This a new friend of mine, we carpooled together. She actually reached out to me about it which encouraged me to go. (Fun, life in Hawaii tangent, she had a cockroach in her car, so I drove)

It was a lot of fun, mostly because there is zero skill involved so I can’t really get mad at winning or losing. I think it’s kinda hard to socialize, because it’s so fast paced. All in all, I’d definitely go again.

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Haku Lei Making

September 20, 2021 4 Comments

One of the spouse groups I am apart of did Lei making this past weekend. We made Haku Leis, or “head” leis. It was SO MUCH FUN, and so amazing how easy it is to make them beautiful (not necessarily easy to make in general). She taught us a little about the materials, usage, and the language around leis.

Here are the materials she brought us, which I was honestly at first disappointed they weren’t plumerias, but who am I to distrust an expert! Plumerias would have been ok, but they don’t handle well and brown easily, so retrospectively, listen to the lei expert.

The first thing we did was braid some long strings of some organic material, I forget the name, and then wrap a long tea leaf around it. This was kind of the base of the lei.

Then we started adding greenery in an X “shape” followed by the wrapping of a second string around the greenery. You kinda pinched the leaves and they make a cracking sound and our teacher would say “it’s ok they’re talking to you”. Then, you add flowers and wrap the string around the stem to hold it in place.

I would say it took about an hour in total of doing this. Once you’re done, she crowns you and ties it off at the back of your head.

I thought it was amazing how all of ours turned out different and all so beautiful. I want to keep mine forever, but since I can’t I just took a million pictures of it.

I told you there’d be Lei spam!

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What I’m “reading” – Moloka’i

August 10, 2021 No Comments

Image taken with another member’s iPhone

Military spouse groups all seem to have book clubs, and KOSC is no exception! The first book was Moloka’i by Alan Brennert. Off of a tip from a fellow spouse, I chose to listen to the audio book because the narrator was native Hawaiian and pronounced a lot of Hawaiian words over the course of the story.

It’s historical fiction and starts around 1890 I believe. It’s a story about a young girl who gets leprosy and her life on the island of Moloka’i suffering the consequences of exile and the disease. I tried to listen on my lunch breaks often, but there are definitely moments I couldn’t stomach eating and listening at the same time; so be forewarned there are some rather gruesome and grotesque bits. I do highly recommend reading it, though!

The military wives were very nice and we talked about a whole ton of things after we talked about the book itself. I sometimes find the chatter can trend too negative for my preference, once we were lost in a spiral of talking about disastrous move stories (someone’s crates got water logged and they essentially lost everything… you can use your imagination to guess about other stories). I remind myself it is reality for some and it doesn’t have to be my reality; in fact our moves have gone surprisingly well all things considered. It’s easy to say “it’s just things” when it hasn’t happened to me, but there’s some truth. Brian and I purposefully don’t have a lot of sentimental value things and have 10 year old furniture aside from a few pieces. Anyway, tangent over, book club was a great time to meet new people. Three(!!) of us were from MA!! The others were from all over. The host is part of a kickball league with some crazy rules and I anticipate going to watch sometime.

Looking forward to seeing what the next book is!

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Golf lessons at Klipper

August 1, 2021 No Comments

I signed up to take golf lessons at Klipper Golf Course, the golf course on Marine Corps Base which is supposed to have the best views. I’ve only had two lessons so far and we’ve used the putting green both times which is kinda away from the ocean. The KOSC (Kbay officer spouse club) set them up and there are five of us taking them.

We were learning how to chip today, on day 1 we learned how to putt.

He told us to focus much more on our swing than where the ball was going, which makes sense. My goal is to know enough that if I were ever invited to do a tournament, play with friends, or when my parents come out here I could at least hold my own and have an idea of what I’m doing. Jon’s a great teacher! There’s a lot to the game.

I’m glad I committed to taking this, it’s been a fun Saturday morning excursion that I think will prove valuable. I don’t imagine spending a ton of money on this, it seems we’ve been spending a lot of money on hobbies as of late, but who knows. I am wearing Brian’s MIT polo because I don’t have any collared shirts. I am going to buy one just to have.