aloha

Yesterday the NRCS (National Resources Conservation Service) came out to inspect the land.  They are partnering with Kutira to help her make the land even more sustainable that it already is, helping redesign her water catchment system so that we will be able to water our gardens entirely from rainwater, plus making gardens more viable in the sketchier/jungleier parts of the land.  I mentioned this interested me, so she invited me to come along on their tour of the gardens and then to the meeting afterwards.  They'll be working with us throughout my time here and I get to be a big part of it.  Plus, they have a lot of grant money available so I'll be assisting Kutira in writing grants to get funding for things like a potential wind turbine on site.

And to top it off, since I'm staying for six months and my interests align, I'm going to be getting a first-hand crash course on how everything that makes the Kahua Institute "sustainable" is functioning.  Pretty much, if things go as planned I will have the skills to advise other people on how to make their land sustainable.  We have solar panels, a biodigester, water catchment, and probably more stuff I don't even know about but will.  Pretty sweet, ya?

In other news, Sean (I learned to spell his name correctly) and I walked (rather rappelled) down to the beach here.  It was dry out and still I almost wiped out several times.  I can't even imagine the path after it rains!  Anyways, it was rocky, but quite beautiful.  I've started a Maui album and you can find those photos there.

Today we are heading into Kahului, the city where the airport is, to go to a big farmer's market thing, check out the library, and do some other "big city" errands.  Then, beach day at Baldwin Beach in Paia.  Sean and I mentioned we wanted to buy surfboards to learn to surf and Kutira told us there was one under our staff house.  Excited, we dug it out, but it was just a boogie board.  However it has a hilarious picture of a monster on it and its called the "Wave Ripper" so we are excited to rip some waves today.  Hopefully I don't smash into the sand there - the surf gets pretty huge!