Pahoa = Paradise?

SUNSET ON OUR STAY ON OAHU :(

Ok, I'll be totally honest...Pahoa and the Big Island has yet to grow on me. We arrived at our new home after days of frantic cleaning, packing, and mailing boxes. If I believed in messages from the universe than I would think the universe is telling me: "Get thee away from the Big Island!!!"

First, the whole moving process has been nuts. It's no secret that I'm a pack rat and having to sort through my stuff and decide what to keep and what to send was traumatic. Second, I supposed I ought to be thankful that Chris is ridiculously anal about cleaning but it just made the moving even more stressful. I felt like I had to attack every nook and cranny with a Q-Tip.

On a side note, lessons learned:
1) Kris and Chris should never be allowed to have carpet, we destroy them
2) Kris and Chris should also never be allowed to own a white or even slightly white couches
3) Those French doors with all the little wooden slates, are a HUGE PAIN IN THE BUTT TO CLEAN

Back to task: Add on not hearing from our former landlord after a letter, email, multiple phone calls to multiple numbers; hemorrhaging money on moving supplies; pushing back our flight by a day; waiting over 3 hours to drop off our cars to ship; having it pour in Waianae (where it never rains) while you are trying to pack the tiny rental car with 7 checked luggage/4 carryons/2 random bags of random stuff that we forgot to pack; leaving 30 minutes behind schedule to return the rental car...and you get the general idea.

We arrived in Hilo June 29, 2010 at 7:30pm and the comedy of errors continued when one of those luggage carts (Which are $4?!?!?!) loaded with half of our 7 checked bags and 4 carry-ons kept spilling all its contents multiple times on the short walk to the rental car terminal. Thankfully we were successful in getting the car, loading it up and we began the drive to our yet-unseen-rental-house.

Chris was very excited that he could hear the coqui frogs as soon as we stepped off the plane. I was excited that I could not.

Lemme tell you, we live in the middle of no where. We are off the main road, off the main road, off the main road, off the main road, off of Volcano Belt Road (kinda the Big main road). So driving in the dark to our new place was a little unnerving as we got further and further away from the (relative) bright lights of Hilo. Finally, after 40 minutes of iPhone-guided driving we pulled into our unpaved, circular driveway...where I promptly hit a rock. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say I drove into a rock. Left a nice 2 in thick/12 in long scratch on the side of the rental car. Fantastic.

We stepped out of the car and immediately I was assaulted by the high-pitched chirping of the coqui frogs. Darnnit I can hear them. It seems like there's a million of them and they are all discordantly co-qui-ing their little hearts out. I think by the end of living in Big Island I will be driven half mad by the frogs. Chris is already losing it...he keeps talking about meditating to the sound of the frogs, hearing voices in the frogs...oh dear.

The house is nice. It's strange having a house after living in Maili Cove. I keep losing Chris! There's elements of the house I like and elements I don't like, but perhaps I need to give it time. So at this point the judgment is still definitely out on whether or not Pahoa = Paradise.