Day 1 in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii

Day 1 is behind us and was quite the ride.
We arrived in Kona at 6pm Sunday evening, Hawaiian time, which is 6am Monday morning back home in Norway. We left Schiphol Airport (Netherlands) at 10am Sunday morning, so it was a long travel.
We were picked up at the airport and brought to our new home at Port YWAM.
Port YWAM is an amazing base, located in what used to be a hotel, with a pool and an amazing view over the ocean.
 (view from our room)
We got 2 rooms, which we are very happy with. The kids have their own room with bunk beds and we got a room with double bed. There’s also a fridge, microwave and water cooker in our rooms. What a blessing.
We had a snack and a drink, talked to a few people and were totally ready for bed, because a plane is not the ideal place to get a rest.

Monday morning we woke up extremely early due to our jetlag, so we were all up way in time for the schedule :-)
At 6.50am we were brought to the big campus at UofN (University of the Nations) for breakfast before Monday morning worship together with all students and staff in YWAM Kona.
At 9am the kids started their first day in school. We got the information we needed from the principal and the kids were off in class to make new friends.
Herbert and I walked back to Port YWAM, our home, which takes about 30 minutes.
We then had some time to unpack and relax a bit, and have lunch with the other staff and students, before Herbert had a meeting at 2pm and I had to walk back to campus to pick up the kids again, which literally is an uphill battle (our base is down by the beach, the campus where the kids are in school is up the hill).
I had planned to sit with the kids at the Banyan Tree Cafe so the kids finally could have their missed “kids frappe” again (kind of milkshake) and I could have a deserved rest after walking up there. Unfortunately, the Banyan Tree Cafe isn’t opened in the afternoons :-(
Since all playgrounds and the swimming pool on the big campus are under construction, it was a bit boring to just hang around there, so we headed back home.
We were lucky to see that a minibus with some students from the Korean DTS was just about to leave campus, so I asked them if they had space for the 3 of us and if they were heading in the direction of Port YWAM. They said they could drop us of at the marked, which is a lot closer and just about 10 more minutes to walk, instead of 30 minutes!
Stopped by the “Scandinavian Shave Ice” to get something nice and cold for the kids and headed home.
Back at the base we first went to the pool for a dive, because we were all sweaty.
5pm was dinner, but none of us were really hungry, we were just very very tired.
6pm we got out of the pool and were going to relax in our rooms. We had asked if we could borrow a car to drive to Walmart and do some shopping, and they’d promised to let us know when the car was available. It wasn’t until 8pm we were informed we could have the car, and by that time we were all sleeping ;)
Herbert woke up by the knocking on the door and then woke us all up, so we could go shopping. The kids thought it was Tuesday morning!
After getting our shopping done, we went straight back to bed and had an OK night sleep, although we did again wake up early.

To be honest, day 1 has been a bit too much for me yesterday, with all the walking to/from campus, jetlag and getting into a routine. I woke up in pain all over my body, headache, still very tired and also very emotional.
This morning (day 2) Herbert had breakfast with the kids and brought me breakfast in bed, and then he walked the kids to school.
I continued to unpack and tidy up both rooms and now chilling in bed writing this blog.
Hopefully this day will be less stressful and we’ll soon get into this new rhythm and routine.