Fall Festival

Life in Kauai is keeping me busy!

Just a short disclaimer: In effort to keep blogging from becoming burdensome and too time-consuming, I never proofread or reorganize my thoughts after spewing them out onto the screen.  So please disregard any typos or poorly constructed sentences. :)

Onward!

I worked hard all week, and then Saturday morning I drove my employer to the airport (he island-hopped over the weekend), came back to the house to do a few hours of work, and then headed over to the Fall Festival—a Halloween carnival sponsored by Kauai Christian Academy (the school affiliated with my church here.)  It was so festive and definitely gave me that taste of fall that I’ve been missing here.  I’ve always enjoyed Halloween, so it was fun to see all the little kids (and big kids, and adults) dressed in costumes and trick-or-treating around the different booths. 

This is the first year the festival has been hosted two nights (Saturday and Sunday) instead of just one.  I went both nights—since there’s not much night life in Kilauea, it was kind of the place to be.  Most of my friends from church were there both nights as well, so it was fun just to socialize and be with people.  (Although I was super bummed to be missing my roommate Julie’s wild bachelorette party back home.)  

Here’s a short visual tour of the festival:

There were all sorts of fun game booths for the kids: Pie-in-the-Face, a dunk booth, a putting green, a balloon pop, shooting hoops, a ring toss, a fishing station… 

My friend Shikinah manned the face-painting booth with her mom and sister, Abby.  In addition to face-paints, they also used stencils, glue, and glitter to give sparkly tattoos.  Here’s are shots of Shikinah hard at work and of Abby’s handiwork on my hand (it’s just the angle of the camera that makes my hand look so deformed.)

There was a cute little petting zoo with chickens and rabbits and a lamb. 

There was a car-smashing station manned by my friend Dillon (not to be confused with my friend Dylan), who is Ryan’s younger brother.  He let me take a few swings at the car even though I hadn’t bought tickets (the system of payment for booth activities.)  The last shot was taken by my friend Michelle (Travis’ sister.)

For the cost of two tickets, you could pay to have someone put in “Jail,” where they would stay until they or someone else paid bail, which was another two tickets.    

There were small kiddie rides and bounce houses for the youngsters.

 

Here’s a shot of three girls I don’t know well, me (on the right), Michelle (in pink), and Abby (in the mask.)

They used the church as the food tent.  They had tables and chairs set up, and each night there was live music.  The second night I watched a set by a gar with an electric guitar and was temporarily transported to heaven.  His voice was a cross between John Mayer and Damien Rice—flawless—but his style was more in line with Jason Mraz jazz.  So good.  While I watched him I ate steak strips, rice, and mashed potatoes (was it mashed potatoes? Seems like it was something else, but I can’t remember what…) from one of the booths.  Here are a couple shots of my church:

  

There was only so much to do at the festival, so both nights carried on with other activities.  The first night, I went with Dillon and Austin and ten other people I didn’t know to see Paranormal Activity 2.  It could have been a very bad decision to see a super scary movie and then come home all alone to a dark, empty mansion.  Luckily, every scary scene was accompanied by much female screaming and subsequent laughter, so that really took the edge off.  I used to be such a champ when it came to scary movies… I could watch anything without flinching or covering my eyes.  But I’ve somehow lost a bit of my movie-watching valor in the last few years, and on Saturday night I had to watch the scary parts through my fingers.  (Or with my eyes shut… but don’t tell anyone.)   

Anyway, the movie itself won’t make my top ten list of awesome experiences in Hawaii, but the 45-minute van ride (we all piled into a 12-passenger van) was nice.  I got to know my now-friends Austin and Kevin, who lead worship at North Shore’s sister church Calvary Chapel.  We brainstormed about the possibility of them needing a keyboard player… maybe we’ll try that out when I come back in January?  Never know!

Sunday was Halloween, so the town of Kilauea was crawling with costumed-kids and their parents.  When we’d had our fill of the Fall Festival, Austin (the worship leader—also an avid surfer), Travis (the missionary), Sam (the German raised in India who, this particular night, was dressed as Aladdin—or a genie, depending on your interpretation) and I all walked to Calvary Chapel, where Austin’s dad pastors.  CC had tables set up with free food—hot dogs, chips, Halloween candy, etc.  Austin gave us a mini-tour of the church, which used to be a quaint movie theater.  Their sanctuary is gorgeous—theater seating, large stage and movie-screen projector, and high windows that I can’t remember anything about other than I thought they looked cool.

We walked around Kilauea for a bit, stopped at Healthy Hut (an organic health food store) for Travis to get a snack (he’s vegan and eats no sugar or caffeine, among many other every-day ingredients), and hung out on the back porch of the Fish Market, a restaurant that I have yet to try.  I’m picking up on the slang here, thanks to my friends who endure my questions and explain the definitions to me.  I always thought “gnarly” was a stereotypical word only used in the movies to delineate surfers—but everyone uses it here, constantly.  Its definitions range from hardcore/badass/cool (“That was a gnarly wave!”) to dirty/undesirable (“That guy has gnarly body odor.”)  The word “cruise” is used in place of “hang out.”  For instance, we didn’t “hang out” at the Fall Fest… we “cruised” the Fall Fest.  I still have a lot to learn—and any Hawaiian friends who are reading this, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about any slang definitions!        

After a while, we walked back to the Fall Fest, which was winding down.  I talked to Sam for a while about literature and adventure, which completely reawakened my passion to write a novel and travel the world.  Upon returning to Fall Fest I had a nice time discussing various television shows and Kauai politics with Shikinah, then I picked up my employer at the airport (where I randomly ran into my friend Raquel), and came home to find a cane spider in my office—thank God my employer was home to kill it.  He usually pokes fun at me for being so afraid of them, but after chasing it around the wall and finally squashing it on the floor (what a mess), he said, “They are kind of scary-looking, aren’t they?”

In summary, it feels good to be here; it feels good to be with these people.  The people I've met here seem to be so acutely self-aware and mindful of growth and fulfillment—it's refreshing to be in an environment that makes it so easy and acceptable to openly question life and purpose.  I’ve never felt quite so excited to exist and to have dreams and to actively pursue learning about the world and getting to know the people in it.  I’m at a point where my future is absolutely unlimited, and it makes me giddy.  There will be no more of this sitting at home in Beloit, Ohio business.  I only have one life to live this side of eternity, and I’m not going to waste it.

Aloha.