Fun fact: geckos sing.

This beautiful flower is called a Bird of Paradise, for obvious reasons. They are quite large, and apparently a good hiding place for sneaky little geckos.

"What sets the world in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions... By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death. The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us. Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life."

Kofi Annan

For the love of Spring.

Corinne, Kirsten and I decided to take a few pictures together, before going our separate ways for the summer.

Corinne is in Vietnam, Kirsten in Washington and I'll be in Italy.

Hawaii: The Aloha State

My trip to Hawaii was full of surprises. Good and bad, though predominately positive. This first set of pictures are just a small part of my adventures.

Disclaimer: my camera was having trouble focusing on automatic, so I had to use the manual focus. Sadly, most of the pictures that other people took of me are blurry, because they couldn't figure out the manual focus, despite my instruction.

This is Ryan. He was visiting as well, and hadn't gone to the Dole Plantation yet. Most of the people I spent time with didn't like to do the touristy things, since they live on Oahu.

Makapuu Point Lighthouse.

This lighthouse was so beautiful- it felt like New England. The Saturday before Easter Sunday we did a sunrise hike up to it.

The shops around Oahu are generally little and run down, like this one. They sell rice and pork. All the time.

These last pictures were taken at Sacred Falls. This hike is a little scary. The deeper you get into the mountain, it turns into a slot canyon. A few years ago there was a rock slide that killed quite a few people, but, we got by without any mishaps.