ハワイ専門サイト「ハワイの歩き方」は、最新情報やホテル、オプショナルツアー情報等を毎日ハワイからお届けしています!!
 |
|
|
|||||||||
 |
|
||||||||||
August 30, Our Annual Camping Trip After a busy first week of school, a busy weekend wasn't exactly what my tired body needed. But, as always, our annual camping trip was a lot of fun.Kyle's family - my new family - goes to Turtle Bay, on the North Shore, one weekend every summer. Although it was my first as a real "Kanetake," I've joined them several times before. Each family books a cabana, and we usually have a row of them between the beach and the pool. Everyone has a duty, whether it is Friday night's dinner or fishing expedition captain. The inventory of portable picnic tables, buckets and nets, and flashlights grow over the years. The family grows, too. It's a well-orchestrated production that we all look forward to every year. Even our Christmas presents are sometimes a new table, or crab hunting headlight-for the next year's trip. 
It's a totally different camping style from what I'm used to. Growing up in Hilo, we went to the beach every weekend, so tidepooling, swimming, and fishing became like second nature. As we grew older, we would follow Dad on weekend fishing trips, where "camping" literally meant, "roughing it." Still, we had a special camping trip every year to a place called Kapoho, where we'd rent beach houses and spend the entire weekend swimming, fishing, and barbecuing.My first year at Turtle Bay, I remember thinking how luxurious this "camping trip" was. After all, it was at a nice hotel, with running water and chlorinated pools. I still chuckle to myself when I hear my nephew calling a tidepool a "puddle," and see him desperately trying to keep the sand out of his reef walkers because it hurts.  But the differences are trivial.As I am studying to be a teacher, I am learning more that HOW things are done aren't important.It doesn't matter that my city cousins didn't grow up snorkeling in clear waters and watching the tide calendar to find a good time to go torching. As I see the students at school who have never even been to a movie, I value family time, and family vacations even more. And, as I watch some children pretend to not even care that their birthday has gone forgotten, I think about how lucky I am to have all the different family traditions I've grown up with.Becoming a student and a teacher at the same time has made me more reflective of my own life. One day, when I have my own family, and my own classroom, I'll only be a better mother, wife, and teacher by sharing all the wonderful life experiences and knowledge I have been so fortunate to have had, with my children.
|
|||||||||||
