So I'm feeling better now. After a short rest and talking to Sami (whom I miss terribly), we walked back to the store to procure an actual, working umbrella and some wine for dinner at Kriss and Jo's place. It was kind of nice to have some "real" food of simple chicken, sourdough bread, fresh pineapple and a dinner salad. I like eating out, but when one does it for too many meals, it tends to wear on you in several ways, not the least of which is in the pocketbook. It was nice to have "home food" for a night and my stomach is quite thankful.

We stayed for a bit and I taught Jo how to use Facebook (Have I created a monster? Quite likely, ha ha.) Jo laughed that pretty much as soon as the three of us left for the hike today, she located exactly three rain ponchos in their condo that she didn't know she had. Hilarious. But it turns out we'll need them tomorrow, and my new umbrella because it's supposed to rain all day (which I actually don't mind when I have rain gear). We're leaving early in the morning to go round the island, which I'm quite excited about. First we're going up the west side to the Dole plantation (which rocks because I could eat my weight in pineapple), and then onto the North Shore towns, where the waves are supposed to be between 15 and 20 feet high tomorrow. Pretty excited about that, and about the famous garlic shrimp one is supposed to be able to procure there. The other thing I can eat my weight in is fresh shrimp. Yum. In general, I'm excited to get out of Honolulu/Waikiki, which is nice, but feels a lot like every other urban locale. I got a taste of rural Oahu today, and I definitely want more of that.

Incidentally, Jamison is still irked about the lighthouse deal, but I told him earlier that I feel certain any jury would side with me on the walking in the rain without protected/plastic-wrapped expensive electronic items issue.

When we were walking home from the condo, however, a young Chinese woman stopped us on the sidewalk with her check-in from her hotel in hand, asking us how to get there. She was clearly lost and seemed scared - scared enough to entrust herself to total strangers - and she spoke so little English that she could scarcely ask us for help. Luckily, she had a phone number for the hotel, so I called it, got directions, and we walked her there. She was incredibly thankful and from what I gathered, only staying here for a day or so. I have no idea how she got so far from where she was supposed to be, but I'm glad we could do a good deed. I'm thinking my "mom" vibes cross cultural boundaries now too.