Well we’ve been in Waikiki for almost a week and I haven’t touched the blog. That is definitely a record for me, considering I’ve spent the past two years belting out posts every 3-5 days without fail.
And to be honest it’s been all sorts of awesome to have a break.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve definitely missed writing and chatting with you but I can’t remember the last time I actually did nothing for an entire week.
When was the last time you took a break? A real break? It’s hard to do, but I think it’s something we all should aim for at least once a year, don’t you?
You know, switch off, tune out, unwind.
I had big plans to read a book, write a book and wake up before sunrise every morning while we’re here. Guess how many of those things I’ve done? That’s right – none!
I also promised myself I wouldn’t write any blog posts yet here I am. And that’s because today something funny happened to me involving a turtle and a Japanese family, which naturally I had to share…
Turtle Time
Every afternoon here in Waikiki roughly 4-5 turtles, sometimes more, make their way to the shoreline to say hello. The kids leap into the water and have a swim with them while I stand on the pier snapping away with my camera. It really is an amazing sight.
There’s always several other people watching the turtles and today there was a young Japanese family standing nearby (Mum, Dad and a toddler) Now I should point out that I knew they were Japanese because I could hear them speaking fluent Japanese to each other as they were looking in the opposite direction and missing the whole turtle time action.
So. I turned to them and said, “Excuse me. There’s a turtle” and pointed to the turtle.
They looked and me and the mum said, “Oh turtle?” while the dad looked at the mum and said something in Japanese. The mum replied with, “turtle.”
I said, “See? It looks like a rock” and continued to point at the turtle. The pair looked at me blankly and then looked back at the ocean, trying to find the turtle.
The turtle was under the murky water, so it was quite tricky to see and the whole broken English thing wasn’t really helping the situation. But then the mum saw the turtle and became very excited.
She started jumping up and down and said, “Oh turtle! Turtle!” and the husband was all, “Oh tortoise! I see tortoise!”
They both smiled at me and I said, “Yes! It’s like a tortoise. Do you see it now? It’s down there. Isn’t it amazing?!”
The mum replied, “Yes! I see turtle!” and I was a bit chuffed that I’d helped a couple of non-English speaking tourists see the turtle.
I smiled at them both, “Can you see it?” I asked the dad, you know, just to make sure my turtle time work here was done.
He looked me straight in the eye and in a full-blown American accent says to me as dry as anything, “Yeah. I got it. I can see the turtle.”
“Right” came my reply, “Well they’re here every afternoon at 3pm, but I have a feeling you might already know that.”
And I left the Japanese American family who like to suck Australians into thinking they can’t speak English to it!*
*May or may not have also looked for Ashton Kutcher’s tv crew as I was walking away, as surely the only explanation to that whole situation was that I was being punked?!
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