Oct. 23, 2010
Aloha friends and family,
I continue to love being here in Hilo, and am finally a ‘real’ Hawaiian…..I passed the paper and pencil Driver’s Test and am in possession of an Hawaiian Driver’s License!! Hooray!!! My picture on it is even a good one! One more sign that I am in the right place at this time in my life.
As acclimation to this new world continues unabated, I thought I would share some things that are now in my realm of awareness which you are missing. Let’s start with….
COQUI FROGS
You may or may not know that the Horned Toad or Horned Frog is the mascot of TCU. So, I am reasonably familiar and mostly comfortable with frogs in general. However there is a specific variety here that I had not encountered. The Coqui frog was accidentally brought to Hawaii from Puerto Rico. They are very very small frogs (less than 2 inches in length) which live within the leaves of plants where they can be hidden by folds and rolls of the leaves near the attachment point on the stalk. OK, so you say “what’s so bad about tiny frogs?” Since you asked, I’ll tell you. It’s the noise they make as they try to attract female companionship. For many people, the cacophony is sleep disrupting and quite annoying.
Allow me to describe an average evening here at my wonderful house on the cul-de-sac. These frogs sleep during the day….lucky little critters that they are. So, about 4pm or so they begin waking up and planning for an evening with friends. A few practice mating calls are heard, but they are sporadic and scattered over the foliage behind the house. By sundown the party is in full swing and hundreds of little frogs have begun to compete for the attention and whatever of the local girl frogs. These male frogs are hoping to strike it lucky with one or more loose women in the Coqui neighborhood. So they try to be louder and more interesting in their calling sounds. Squeaks, chirps, clicks (like a large toe nail clipper at work) and other variations on these sounds will be heard. Some sound like birds and can be misleading in that way. Friends from Austin who have heard them in the background when talking with me over the phone mention hearing a bird. No telling what they think when I tell them it’s not a bird, but a frog.
Now, I am not in the group who dislike the noise at night….and the joint is jumping through to early morning. Actually I sleep better with some type of ‘white noise’ in the background and usually have a fan on to create this very thing. So, the cocqui night club outside my open window actually contributes to this steady hum (?) of background noise. By about 2am the party has pretty much broken up, I assume because the guys got lucky or gave up trying because they were getting hoarse. Yet, there is usually one or two optimistic stragglers still calling into the darkness in hopes of hearing a returning….something….from that last, probably ugly, girl frog. Then things settle down for that day until the next night when the Coqui Club opens again for business. Check out Coqui frogs on Google, and they have links to sites where you can hear their calls.
PURPLE SWEET POTATOES
Yep, PURPLE Sweet Potatoes! Yesterday in the faculty meeting, my colleague, Laura, was eating one for lunch. The outside looks like a regular brown potato but the inside is the color of the TCU school colors. As I watched her eat it I had the strangest feeling. Do you remember hearing about a study done in which people were tested for likes or dislikes of regular foods which had been colored a very different color yet without changing the taste in any way? Green milk, blue mashed potatoes, etc.? People wouldn’t eat the foods or claimed they tasted different. Our perception of food and the taste of that food are closely linked to the colors we grew up seeing and eating. Right now, there is a move in America to introduce Red Celery to the public, but there is concern that people won’t buy it because of the unique color.
OK, back to purple sweet potato. I was almost getting sick watching Laura scoop out the purple potato ‘innerds’ and eat fork after forkful. She swears it tastes just like any other sweet potato. But as I was trying to pull my eyes away from this train wreck of a lunch, I remembered having ordered a lunch just a week or so ago that said it came with sweet potato salad. Sounded good. But when it arrived, it didn’t look orange. Instead it looked white with purple ‘stuff’ mixed in. Texture was all the same, but it never occurred to me that the purple ‘stuff’ was actually the sweet potato. OK, tell me why I could eat that salad, but not watch Laura eat all purple potato from its shell?? It’s a conundrum for sure!
MONKEYPOD TREES
Oh my heavens, these are gorgeous trees. They grow easily in Hawaii, and when they are growing in open areas of parks or greenbelts, they can get to be enormous. The leafy portion grows in a way that makes them look like huge umbrellas. They have a natural stop level for the lower branches so that they spread out with a horizontal edge at the base of the leaves, and a large corresponding sized arch of leaves over the top of the leaf section. Many of these are growing down near the Hilo Bay in the buffer zone of parkland that was established after the last Tsunami in the ‘60s.
Monkeypod wood is prized for use in wood working. You can pay quite a bit for large monkeypod bowls and trays, and such. They have a pretty grain so the wood item looks decorative and then the item itself is functional. If you come into possession of such a wooden décor item, treasure it. These are unique and will last a lifetime and beyond.
MORE FOR ANOTHER POSTING….
I’ll save the details about Paddle Surfing and Scuba Diving with Manta Rays for later. The former are fun to watch as these young people stand on their surfboards and paddle along on areas of calm water near the Bay. The latter is a nighttime tourist option in Kona, and Alisa says she wants to do that when she and Kathleen come to check on me at Christmas. I have elected to remain on shore for that little tourist attraction. Maybe on another visit…..yeah!!
Hope this finds you all doing well. School is moving quickly along here. My nursing home tour with students ends this coming Tuesday, and two weeks later, I get a new set of students who will go with me to the Cardiovascular Unit (read: Intermediate Step-Down / Telemetry Unit). That will be challenging and interesting. The unit is physically small, crowded, and has a high level of acuity (meaning very sick patients). It is very different from my comfy area at Round Rock Med Center…..but that is part of why I came over here. It will be interesting and I’m looking forward to getting more specific experience with that category of patients.
Hugs to you all,
Aloha,
Janene
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