Anthropologie

My heart belongs to a place called Anthropologie.

I feel like this store just screams my personality! I absolutely love all of the things that are in there (with the exception of their prices though). In fact, whenever I show Seth something from Anthro online, he usually says "That is definitely a Lacey shirt!"

One of my favorite things to do when I go home to the main land is hit up all of the Anthropologie stores and look at all of their amazing stuff! And the countdown has begun until I get to visit my beloved store. Some of my favorite things from this season:

Scalloped Dots Skirt

Dripping Blossoms Tee

Falling Ribbon Cardigan

Wind-Rippled Tee

Reveille Jacket

Remembering Violets Dress

Blushing Faille Dress

Garnet Glow Dress. This one is my absolute favorite! Isn't it just perfect for the holiday season?

It would look so adorable with a cardi and some tights! This is on my Christmas list for sure.

I wish Anthro would lower their prices so I could buy everything! For now everything will just

have to sit on my wish list.

I love you Anthropologie!

Volcano National Park: Day 3

I think the last day we were there it rained the hardest. I was so hard to get up that morning in the freezing cold, rainy weather and put on our dirty wet clothes! Though you have to admit, I looked pretty hot in that dirty yellow raincoat that I had to wear...

Ok, actually the tourists probably thought I was homeless because I was so disgusting.

Anyway, we left the cabins at 7am and drove off to Mauna Kea. It was so rainy, our professor couldn't find his way around the roads, so we ended up just driving in one big circle.

Soooo....we headed off to Rainbow Falls in the meantime. The waterfall was pretty big because of all of the rain Hilo had gotten that weekend.

Like I said......homeless!

So after spending some time over there we headed to another lava tube. This one was a real lava tube--no pavement, railing, or lights.

It was pretty scary actually because we all had dinky flashlights and couldn't see anything. Of course our professors each had a hard core headlamps on, but that didn't help the rest of us! This tube went 7 miles, and eventually went underneath the ocean. We didn't go more than a half-mile because it was pretty rainy and wet, and we (students) couldn't see anything. Plus we were tripping on everything and it was only a matter of time before someone got really hurt (which probably would have been me anyway).

Our next stop was Mauna Kea. We finally found our way over there, and drove up to about 5,000 feet elevation. The weather was a bit more clear up there, but it was still freeeeeezing!

We didn't end up going up to the 14,000 feet elevation level because our professors were afraid someone would get altitude sickness, which apparently had happened before. So, instead we went up to 9,000 feet. We went up to the hunting areas on the side of Mauna Kea to see if we could find the Palila bird around some Mamane trees, which were abundant in that area.

I like this picture because you can see Mauna Loa in the background:

The trip ended with one big, awesome TEST. We had to be able to identify various plants and flowers seen on the trip and its status (endemic, indigenous, introduced...), as well as the geological formations and volcanos, and how they were formed....blah blah blah. It was really hard. I know I did well on the biota section with all of the plants and conservation issues, but the geology portion was ridiculously hard. We were all grumbling about that afterwards. Eh, I guess I'll find out what I got next week! I'm just glad its over.

We took the test at a local drive in called Blaines. Once again, I had the most delicious sandwich of my life. Unfortunately I inhaled it before I could take a picture.

And lastly, here's a picture of the hard-core professors that took us:

They could probably have their own survivor-man show.

We flew back into Honolulu at about 9pm that night. Seth came and picked me up so I didn't have to ride back to Laie in the junk bus! I was SO EXCITED to see him! We went straight to Jack in the Box and grabbed me some food, and then went home. It was so nice to be with my love and go to sleep in a warm bed with clean, dry clothes!

Overall, the trip was quite the experience. It was rough, but I learned a lot and got to see some things that I probably wouldn't have had the chance to if I didn't go. Even though the weather was terrible, I'm glad I went and I'm glad I had some good friends to go with me. :)

Volcano National Park: Day 2

This day was my favorite day. We went on our longest hike but we saw some pretty awesome things.

We got up at 6am in the freezing and pouring rain to hike up to Pu'u huluhulu, Mauna Ulu and Mauna loa volcano craters.

We started out hiking to Pu'u huluhulu. I actually didn't get a picture of that crater because by the time we got to it, it was raining so hard that I was too afraid that my camera would get wet.

But the actual hike there had some really cool volcanic structures and formations from pahoehoe lava flows that erupted from Mauna Ulu.

Cupcake?

I'll have you know Jen and I became experts at building these things. Experts.

Today was tree mold day. We saw tons and tons of tree molds. This happens when the lava forms around the tree, killing the tree but leaving a deep hole etched with bark patterns. Whenever our professor pointed to a lava formation and asked us what it was, you had an 80% chance of getting it right if you said a tree mold or lava tree.

Tree molds:

Kari at the end of a tree mold:

Lava trees:

This incredibly awkward picture makes me laugh. I was standing on a tiny lava bridge that was really unstable to see if it would hold me. Someone was taking a picture of me when I made a random last minute decision to jump off of it. As I was jumping off, the bridge collapsed under me and I fell and did a crazy tuck-and-roll sort of move right into the sharp volcanic rock. It was actually pretty hilarious--and I have the giant cuts on my legs to prove it! This picture just reminds me that I'm an idiot.

The hike to Mauna Ulu was just straight over volcanic rock. It was pretty freaky because you could feel the hollow tubes underneath. We were all freaked out that it would crack and we would fall in because some parts were so thin!

The top of the Mauna Ulu crater was sweet. It was kind of scary....the top seemed so unstable. One wrong step and you were plummeting to the bottom of a hot volcano. Lots of steam and sulfuric gas was coming up---it was SO hot up there!

After we finished this hike, we drove straight to another volcano: Mauna loa.

I only took one picture of this hike because at this point, I was on the verge of hypothermia and my hands and fingers couldn't move to get out my camera.

Who knew our longest and coldest day would end up being my favorite?

Once again, we spent the night laughing and talking about how offensive it is to people when you cut someone off and then throw your arms up in the air...and then just laughing because we were too tired to make any sense. And then we almost died laughing because one of our professors accidently brought his wife's sweatshirt that said "Number one Grandma" and was too cold to care.

I finally fell asleep watching Wall-E on Kari's iTouch, and then seriously felt like I woke up 2 hours later for day #3.

Day #3 hikes will be posted tomorrow!

Oh my!

What a face!!

Only 4 more weeks until I get to see my favorite ugly face!

Volcano National Park: Day 1

Well I survived the trip! It was pretty rough. I'm glad that I had friends on the trip to balance out the craziness. The main thing that I learned during this trip was that the professors that took us were freakin' hard core!

So here's the gist of day one:

We ended up getting to BYUH at 3am Thursday morning, and getting on our flight at 4:45am. We drove straight to the Volcano National Park when we got there, and got out to hike immediately! No on had any food or water or even the right clothes, because we all thought we were heading to our cabins first to drop off our stuff.......uh...nope! An 8 mile hike first. Like I said....hard core.

Did I mention that there was a giant storm over the Big Island this weekend? That didn't stop us either! Into the storm we went. All of my pictures are pretty grayish and rainy. Like this one. I didn't want to get out of the car, so I took a picture instead.

The first place we hiked was through the Thurston lava tube near Kilauea. It was pretty domestic, and lights installed to light the path, but was still pretty cool. We learned a whoooooolllleeee lot about lava formations and how lava tubes are formed.

We also headed down into the crater of Kilauea Iki, which had its last eruption in 1959.

Everything was so gray and desolate, it looked like we were hiking the trail to Mordor.

You could see the steam coming from the magma underground through various cracks and fissures. It was sooooo warm we just wanted to camp out there next to one.

We saw a lot of sweet lava formations, mainly made from A'a and pahoehoe lava flows.

This is a view of the crater we hiked through from the top. You can see the steam and sulfuric gas rising from Kilauea in the background.

This is Jen and I freezing to death at the top of the Pauahi crater:

This is the geologist that came with us. He taught us alllllll of the geology about the places that we went to. We all had to take notes because there was a test on the last day. I thought this picture was funny because he looks like he's casting a spell. This guy is incredibly hard core. He did all of the intense hikes with us and he is 74 years old!

After Kilauea Iki, we headed up to Kilauea (Still hungry, still in the rain...). It was too rainy to see much, so this is the best shot I got.

We couldn't hike any closer because of the sulfuric gas that was rising out (as you can see in the picture). I'm sure if it were up to our professors we would have gone anyway and took the chance. Thank goodness for the park rangers!

After the long day we stopped at this local place called the Lava Rock Cafe and I had the best Philly cheesestake sandwich of my life. I don't know whether the sandwich was actually good or I was just so hungry and nutrient deprived that anything I ate tasted like heaven. A rock would have probably tasted just as good. Either way I felt a lot better after eating it.

We finally stopped off at our cabins at the end of the day and they actually turned out to be pretty nice! I didn't get any pictures of it--probably because I immediately cocooned myself in all of the warm clothes and blankets I could find and just stayed there until the next morning! My friends and I got to room together, which was a total blast because we just ended up laughing and talking...but that ended up hurting us in the end when we had to get up at 6am to go hike again.

I'll save day two for tomorrow. So much to blog about!