POG and the kindness of strangers

wordnest girl became island girl during her first 12 days in oahu, hawaii! there being many things i could tell you about, ranging from marvel comic theme night at mormon family camp to making conversation with the AAA mechanic, real life and bliss collide into one perfect experience or, what bill bryson calls "low-level ecstacy, something we could all use a little more of in our lives." low-level, yes, because my heart is easily made glad, but also high-level, like my first view of kailua beach. i actually had to sit down and catch my breath. or my first time snorkeling which involved underwater beauty screams and no small amount of inhaled salt water. what really blew me away was the hospitality of my friend and her ohana, or hawaiian family. they drove me everywhere, 93 FM songs playing "new day" while we passed jack johnson's house, the dole plantation and famous surf beach pipeline. you don't have to be blood-related to be ohana and their first question before hanging out for hours to "talk story", or catch up on life, is always "have you eaten?" which of course they don't wait for you to answer. i'm a good eater, which i think they enjoyed by the way they ordered and bought me my first sweet pork and rice, POG (passion fruit, orange, guava juice), introduced me to taro, delicious poke (raw tuna), papaya, butter mochi (deep quote of the week, "butter mochi. it's really...buttery"), boiled peanuts, apple bananas, acai bowls and, believe it or not, spam. the eating tour of the island proved delicious: high-end, low-end, it didn't matter, it was GOOD. and then there was the kindness of strangers: take your time, do you need a ride to the beach?, have the rest of the time on my parking meter, i'll be your snorkel buddy, do you have dinner plans? on the flight home i had already consumed all my reading material, so the man in the seat next to me gave me his copy of bill bryson's "walk in the woods" and wrote their address in it, in case i was ever in australia. hospitality, food, books...speaking my universal language.