eating around oahu

today we made our way over to the north shore of oahu and took in some of the sites. along the way we stopped and ate a couple local style snacks. we had shave ice at matsumoto's grocery store. a photo shows the end of a pineapple and coconut with sweetened condensed milk and adzuki beans. adzuki beans are a red bean cooked in simple syrup - made popular in hawaii by japanese immigrants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azuki_bean). this style of shave ice is definitely a good example of how cultures have blended in hawaii over the years. we also stopped by giovanni's famous shrimp for a mid afternoon snack. we sampled their scampi plate lunch - loaded with toasted garlic and lots of butter - along with a side of hot sauce, it hit the spot.

our last day in hana

on the day before flying to honolulu, we took a hike along the coast for the last time (at least for a while). here are a few pictures to mark the occassion. on a side note - a big thanks to Michelle and the gang for giving us such a nice send-off.

the road ahead

well, the time has come. we are leaving our jobs and life here in hana and embarking on our next big adventure. alina and i will be flying to honolulu on saturday, october 27th to spend a few days with merilyn before we hit the road. we will be flying to seoul, south korea on november 1st.

i guess it goes without saying, but i'll say it anyways - we are super excited about our journey and the road ahead. however, our departure is somewhat bittersweet. we are leaving hana, our home for the last three years. we really can't say enough good things about our time here. the community has embraced us and we found a niche at hotel hana-maui. for those of you that didn't get a chance to visit us in hana, check out the website at http://www.hotelhanamaui.com/. we will certainly miss the friends we made.

alina and i plan to use this blog as a way to communicate with you, our friends and family, while we are traveling. we will do our best to keep you up to date on where we are and where we are going. we are planning on taking a lot of pictures, it will be a good way to record this trip and will also give us a constructive way to pass the time. we will post a few photos to this site, but will upload the majority of our pictures to our flickr account. the web address for that is http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidandalina/. if you all have any trouble accessing that site let me know - i am learning a lot of this as i go...

a little bit about our trip - we are planning on taking the better part of a year to travel. right now, our itinerary is going to take us to korea, china, vietnam, cambodia, laos, thailand, malaysia, singapore, india, egypt, jordan, syria, turkey, greece, italy, tunisia, morocco, portugal and spain. we are approaching this adventure with an open mind and a good sense of humor. as with most things in life, we are expecting plans to change along the way. in general though, this is the route that we have planned.

well, wish us luck. we'll see ya soon and we hope to hear from you on the road.