A wedding and trying to find what's normal

 March has for sure been the craziest month of my life. With all this covid stuff going on the world is freaking out. Travel has stopped and basically, the world is at a standstill. They want everyone to freeze and not do anything. The COVID cases are spiking. BYU Hawaii has advised that the rest of the semester will be online because they have forced everyone living on campus to go home. I can't complain because the semester is really easy. The teachers weren't planning on this happening so they weren't really prepared for online lectures so lucky for me I was able to slide through my first semester as a junior. 

Covid is making anything normal and exciting impossible. People's weddings are happening over Zoom or just in random courthouses. No gatherings are to take place larger than 20 people. There was a sweet girl on campus who couldn't fly home because her country locked their borders so she was getting married in Laie and she invited me to be one of her bridesmaids because she wanted someone to celebrate the big day with. I feel bad because I don't even know this girl and here am standing right by her at the wedding. The ceremony was about a 2 min celebration before we all had to run and hide before the police came. Weird times right? 

The one good thing about COVID-19 is that everyone is scared at home. Which means the hiking trails and beaches are empty. Those of us who aren't concerned about COVID-19 have been living our best lives. I have gone on several more hikes with friends and we are loving the empty beaches. Also, some people are acting straight-up crazy. The state is making everyone wear masks to prevent COVID-19 from spreading. But let me tell you if you have tried wearing a mask for 8 hours it's impossible to breathe. A the preschool Aunty Tupu couldn't find one so she put on some random kids' underwear on her head.... Covid is making everyone crazy. Only 4 kids out of the 130 have decided to come to preschool so all of us teachers only work 1 day a week and get full pay from the state. I would say this is a win-win situation. I do feel bad for the small businesses that are suffering covid seems to be doing a lot of damage. 

Covid what's that?

Well, March started off pretty normal for me. I was working at the preschool and swimming like a mermaid. But as the month went on, the world slowly started falling apart. A new disease called COVID-19 was spreading rapidly across the globe. Schools and businesses everywhere shut down as the CDC tried to figure out what was happening. Honestly, I was thrilled when school got canceled because I had two friends in town visiting—Jessica and Jaiden from high school. Laurie and Hank were out of town, so they stayed with me at my place. We went on tons of adventures that week. We also watched the news every day, waking up to something even more dramatic happening because of COVID-19. Earthquakes, the Angel Moroni falling off the SLC temple, church events canceled, camps canceled, schools canceled, sports canceled... everything was shutting down. We were all advised to stay inside. I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, but I was definitely happy not to have to worry about school for a while

Jaiden brought one of his friends along—his name was Ethan, and he was kind of a little odd. We were hoping he’d be fun and maybe cute, you know? Because we all wanted some fun. But honestly, he just wasn’t doing it for us. Bless his heart though, because he was definitely nice.  

He was really into the Hawaiian wood carvings. We stopped at this shop on the side of the road, and he bought this huge statue to ship home for his mom. He kept looking at it in the car, saying, “Oh, she’s going to love this.” And I was just thinking, who’s mom would really love something like that?

The boys also rented this big van to sleep in half the time, so we just cruised around the island in it. I think we named her Rox Ann or something like that. But she gave us a great time! One day, we did a waterfall hike in Ka‘awa. Clearly, we weren’t paying attention to the weather because halfway up the river, a massive flash flood hit. We were literally hanging onto trees for our lives. I don’t even know how we made it out alive. We were soaked to the bone and pretty freaked out afterward. You can see in the pictures that we had to climb up a little waterfall. Going down was way harder especially with buckets of rain pouring down and the waterfall way bigger than before. Somehow, we even managed to take photos during the chaos!

Of course, Jaiden and Jessica needed to see Stairway to Heaven. So who did we call to take us up? Sam! He recruited about 12 other people I swear. We all piled into Roxann and bounced around in the van to the neighborhood hood. We had the best time running up the stairs this place never gets old to me. I could do it again and again! 

We did not let the rain or bad weather keep us from having a good time. We went to another waterfall only to find that it was just as muddy and wet as the previous one. We came back to Roxann all brown from the mud and wet. There were huge muddy potholes on the trail and I think I managed to accidentally step in every single one. 

We walked out to China's hat on the reef and our backs were fried from the sun. We lathered up the front of us but not our backs.. We were regretting every move we made that night. We also were able to celebrate Pie Day with the most amazing pie on the island! We went to the one and only Anna Millers for her Strawberry pie and we feasted on that all day. I think once a year you can get away with eating a whole pie. Our other adventures consisted of watching the sunset and going on the submarine tour in Waikiki!