Hello! It’s been awhile, huh? I’ve not been keeping up with this blog in part because of my other one (mohalakitchen.wordpress.com) and in part because I just haven’t been doing anything exciting. Well, that’s not entirely true. The exciting stuff that I’ve been doing just has kept me so busy that I haven’t had time to sit down and write about it! Or edit any of my photos. So since it is nearly after Christmas and I will soon be departing on a brand-new adventure, (Thailand! Twelve hours until we leave!) I thought I ought to share some of the things I’ve been up to and the photos I’ve taken along the way.

Brett’s parents came to visit in early December which was awesome, as they are the kind of parents you actually want to hang out with. We got to stay with them on Maui for a bit (Brett got to stay longer than me, as I had work and class. Jealous!) and then they came to Oahu and we got to show them around a little bit which was fun. Hands down, the coolest thing we did, though, was wake up ridiculously early and drive up to the summit of Haleakala, Maui’s tallest peak, and watch the sunrise. It was incredible.

In other news; we are going to Thailand! Tomorrow!! Gah! We are working with a group called Engineers Without Borders here in town, and we are going for our first site assessment in the hopes of building some kind of dam or water reservoir for a village in the Chiang Mai province. It is extremely thrilling for us, because neither Brett nor I have ever been anywhere in Asia so this will be an entirely new adventure. We are going out a week before the rest of the group and will have our own little vacation before meeting up with the group and going into the village. I am not bringing my computer, so I probably won’t be able to update while I’m there, but I promise to do so (more promptly) when I return!

Oh dear it sure has been awhile, huh? It’s a bummer but I have this…job…thing.. keeps me pretty busy. then on weekends i have this boyfriend to spend time with and we live in this place that’s called paradise.. (and it’s football season) so instead of just pretending i’m living… or wishing i was living… or writing about living…or dreaming about how i could be living.. i’ve been trying this new thing called living my life. I haven’t decided how it’s working out yet.. but I’ll let you know eventually.

hah. Just kidding. But really. I have been busy so I haven’t been updating and I am trying to go out and do things like enjoy life and stuff. But somehow none of it seems like I ought to write home about it. Or write internet about it, rather. I mean, I’m quite enjoying myself, but I feel if I tried to force myself to drone on and on about my life it would get very tedious…at least for someone other than me to have to sit down and read about. Meaning for you.

so. In attempting to save you from myself…I started a new blog that revolves around the one constant and always fantastic and interesting thing in my life—food! Yes that’s right, food. Brett happens to be a phenomenal cook and I happen to be an equally phenomenal.. um.. eater. And I cook some stuff sometimes too! BUT regardless of who’s doing the cooking, we both do the eating and we both have been making and eating some really good stuff lately AND I’ve taken to the habit of documenting it. Yes, dad, that’s right. I take pictures of all my food. What am I going to do with all these pictures you ask? Back them up. Via blog.  Since I have all these pictures of delicious food I thought I ought to share them along with the inside scoop on how we got to be eating something so tantalizingly tasty (..tasty-looking… for you… that is until you try some things…then they’ll be just plain tasty.. or just plain.. depending on how well you follow directions…)

And now I leave you to the link. Feel free to check it out if you so desire. If not, I won’t be…terribly offended… (sniff..sniff) I won’t stay up late.. hoping the stats will suddenly change and I’ll go from 2 views to 3 in a day… (sniff..sniff.. sniff).

No but really. You can find this blog at http://mohalakitchen.wordpress.com. For those of you prone to foregetfulness… I have linked the blog on the left side of this one right… over …..——-> that direction. So if you can find your way back here you can then get there.

I might keep updating this one occasionally, but I am prone to laziness and also to forgetfulness.. so no guarantees.

much love! and bon appetit!

Well. It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? I’m sure you all know this by now, or at least I hope you do, but I am now living in Hawaii. Yes, it’s pretty awesome. I’ve been here just about two months now, Brett and I found a great studio near the University where the landlords have chickens and grandchildren who like to chase them into our house. It’s absolutely fantastic.

I spent the first bit of summer taking a graduate seminar in Public Health which was thrilling, and then searching for jobs. After many many hours and many more applications and resume touch-ups, I landed a gig sweeter than I could have dreamed of. I swapped two part-time restaurant jobs for a full time position teaching at the most prestigious school in the state. I am no longer just Erin, I have taken up the title of Ms. Allmann, marine science teacher extraordinaire (or at least ordinaire, I hope…) It’s really amazing, I applied as a substitute, and they had an opening for a full year full time teacher teaching marine science, so they called me up a week and a half before school started, and well, here I am! I just finished my third full day. And by full I mean I teach four out of eight periods. And the students are so much better behaved than we ever were as kids…it’s strange. They come in, and sit down, and when I tell them to do work, they actually do it. Unnerving. That’s private school for you, I guess.

Well. I think that might be it for now. I’ll be back in CA next week for Holly’s wedding (whoohoo!) and that’s really all the news I’ve got.

oh! and I won third place in a photo contest put on by Fujifim and Riteaid. So thank you older brother for being my model and dad for letting me use your camera. (I told you the shot was worth you getting hurt, Josh!)

So here’s the scoop: President’s day weekend 2010 my brother Patrick and I (along with the rest of our team and hundreds more) will be participating in UCLA’s annual charity event, DANCE MARATHON (DM). DM is exactly what it sounds like, as crazy as it sounds. We have pledged to dance (or at least remain standing) for twenty-six hours straight, taking a physical stand against HIV/AIDS infections worldwide. Every day more than 1350 children die from AIDS related illnesses, and countless more are affected by it, but this disease is entirely preventable and treatable. There is a drug, Nevirapine, which when given to both mother and child, reduces risk of transmission of HIV to only 2%. It costs $8. DM raises money to benefit benefit the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF), the world?s leading organization that seeks to halt pediatric HIV infection, as well as Camp Kindle and OneHeartland, two non-profits which sponsor cost-free camps for children infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. DM has raised nearly $1.8 million to date.

DM has been a huge event at UCLA for 8 years, and one of my best friends is one of the vice-executive-very-important-person-people on the organizing committee this year.  So Patrick and I are joining in. We are taking a stand against HIV/AIDS and we will stand, for twenty-six straight hours, February 13 and 14th, 2010. And we want you to help us.

As dancers we have each pledged to raise at least $208 to help these charities. We would greatly appreciate a sponsorship donation of any size to assist us in reaching our fundraising goal. All donations are tax deductible. Please make checks payable to <Dance Marathon at UCLA> and include one of our names on the memo line. You may also make online donations at our personal, secure, fundraising website at the link below.

We are so excited to have the opportunity to make a difference across the world and your donation will change the lives of many. Please feel free to contact either of us with any questions. Thank you so much for your generosity.

Peace and Love,

Erin and Patrick

Patrick’s donation page: http://dm.kintera.org/patrickallmann

Erin’s donation page: http://dm.kintera.org/erinallmann

**(much of this information came directly from the Dance Marathon webpage. To learn more about Dance marathon or its beneficiaries, please visit their website at www.bruindancemarathon.org.)

i haven’t any clever or noteworthy things to say, really..i finally got a job in a lab here, so i’ve been busy the past couple of weeks, and shall remain so until i leave…and thereafter, really. but enjoy these pictures and video links, for they are basically the final chapter of my hawaiian summer…and also one of the most awesome.

to see some mantas click here: http://www.vimeo.com/6621858

to see some dolphins click here: http://www.vimeo.com/6621902

hope you enjoy it anyway!

http://www.vimeo.com/6390084

Then came kauai. Where to begin? at the beginning I suppose. The first six days we spent at the marriot resort…aka amazing and incredibly fancy hotel/timeshare/villa with brett’s parents (who happen to be some of the nicest people ever). so sweet. we rented stand up paddle boards and paddled (and fell) all around the bay, went kayaking down a river into hanelei bay(home of puff the magic dragon, if anyone’s a fan) and went snorkeling, and then went ziplining through 200 foot pine trees planted by captain cook himself. pretty dang impressive. not to mention every night was a new taste sensation at a fantastic and delicious restaurant. living the life.

then. came the na pali coast. if you have never heard of it, hear of it now. imagine the most amazing  beaches and waterfalls you can think of, take every picture you’ve seen of hawaiian coastlines, remember the scenes (sans dinosaurs) from jurrasic park, gather every description you’ve heard of lush tropical forests where trees are brimming with fruit and you can live off the land…take all of this, multiply by 100 and you come close to imagining how amazing the na pali coast is. it’s an 11 mile trail to kalalau beach, a beautiful sandy beach with a waterfall flowing onto it, with several trails back into valleys to explore hidden waterfalls along the way, and plenty of friendly hippies living along the beaches and in the valleys. the trails are treacherous, going from clambering over lava rocks to sinking into thick, red mud to scaling ridges to wading through streams to sliding down slippery slopes with nothing between you and hundreds of feet of sheer wall straight to the ocean but an 8-inch ledge you walk on to hopping across hot sand to land in a cool, clear waterfall surrounded by tiny baby frogs. for us it was a four day affair, the first day spent hiking to the first beach, then back to a waterfall, then back out and over to the halfway point. the second day was a quick hike to the end of the trail, destination kalalau beach. there we stayed two nights. one day we walked all the way to the end of the beach, past tons of sea caves carved in the walls,  swam around a rocky point to get to a practically deserted beach with a huge arched rock which if you climb through leads to a hidden waterfall. amazing. we hiked the whole way out on the last day. so. four days, 26 miles, 103+ mosquito bites (on my legs alone), and innumerable slips, trips, and falls, I have conquered the na pali coast. and it feels damn good.

next time, i’m kayaking.

peace and love, all.

ps we made a video journal of our hike which we have to edit together and then that will be posted as well. so be patient and you’ll get to see what i’m talking about soon enough.

The point is: I got to do some incredible dives. A lot of them were just in the bay, on shallow reefs. The bay where  we were diving has been heavily polluted, and it shows in the health of the corals and other life on the reefs. But a few were well protected and in such amazing health; almost 95% living coral, tons of fish and so many turtles! It was beautiful. We also did a deep dive, to about 100 feet, where we dropped down off the boats onto a reef 40 feet deep, then swam over this amazing dropoff..literally 60 feet of wall straight down. And at the bottom there is a cave filled with jacks and it was soooo cool. We also did a night dive, which is incredible because everything in the ocean seems to come alive at night. The surface is dead calm, glassy and black…but below you can hear the deafening roar of shrimps and crabs click-clicking away ( you wouldn’t believe it but it really turns into a roar), see beady red and orange eyes poking out from every pocket of coral, and see fish and eels in a light completely different from the day. Namely because there is no light but your flashlight beam. And when you turn that out, nothing but the blackest black you’ll ever see. Amazing. And then. The culmination of it all. A blue water dive. Which means, roughly, you are suspended in the water column,  tethered to a line which is tethered to a boat which is drifting along with the current, miles outside the safety of the bay (which truly isn’t safe, since 10+ foot tiger sharks are spotted there regularly), neither at the bottom nor at the surface, but sitting in the middle surrounded by nothing but blue in every direction. If if weren’t for the sunbeams passing through the water, and the fact that bubbles go up, you would have no idea what direction was what. It was amazing. We swam right in the middle of a huge school of mackerel, and drifted so far that we watched the bottom come up and were above reef by the end, swimming with turtles and fish and getting stung by jellies, and sunburned on the surface, but not caring at all because it was so worth it. Awe-some.

And next, I leave for a cruise. From this Wednesday until basically the end of August I will not be near a computer, and mostly not near any forms of communication besides the spoken word of mouth. I will hopefully be accumulating many more stories to flesh out these posts, and perhaps keep some people entertained.

oh yeah, and I’ll bring my camera this time.

Other than that though, I spend my weekdays under my favorite banyon tree down at the beach, and my weekends exploring. This weekend we went snorkeling up on the north shore which was super nice, so clear and so warm and so many cool things to see. We also went on a hike to this place called Laie falls, which was the most amazing place. So it’s an hour and a half hike up to this one waterfall, right? THEN you can be B.A. like we were, and hike down a bit to a second waterfall. From there, you can climb through the mud to a tree which has a rope leading down to a third waterfall. so you climb this rope down, then you wade through the pool to another waterfall. then you shimmy on your butt through the actual waterfall to get to another pool. then you swim through that to get to another waterfall, and this one is straight down, so you have to climb down a rope, again in the waterfall to get to the next pool. then i would assume one could keep going, but the water was a bit too high and coming a bit too hard to try and finagle our way down the next waterfall. so then, after a delicious picnic lunch of fruit and pb&j’s, you have to climb back up. through the waterfalls. It was SO incredible. it had been raining a bunch, so the water was murky with sediment, but it still was so beautiful.

In other news, I bought a bike! so now I am mobile even when brett has his bike at work. whoohoo.

well, I hope all is well back on the mainland!

peace and love, all.

So this summer, this entire summer, I will be in Hawaii. My goal is to do as many exciting things as my budget allows (and yes, dad, to learn some stuff too). So far, I had my birthday out here (whoohoo, twenty-one!). We celebrated by getting dinner and then going to a bar where I did not get carded. yes, that’s right..I did not get carded on my twenty-first birthday. ha! then this weekend we went camping…and didn’t check the weather and it was so windy and stormy that I almost got blown over on the hike back several times. But it was incredibly beautiful up there.

I think that may be all of my adventures so far, this week I’m not going to be doing anything terribly exciting, and in about a week and a half  I will be volunteering on a Hawaii Ocean Timeseries cruise, which is a week-long research cruise. So I hope my summer will prove to entertain you!

peace and love, all!