Tag: moving

Moving to Hawaii – The 3 month checkmark

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Living the island life 

Aloha everyone!

Today (time of writing: February 26th 2023) marks the first 3 months in Hawaii. As cliché as it may sound, time really flew by. In this blog I’d like to tell you about our lives in Hawaii and our experiences with the island life so far. What things have been easier since moving away from Portland, what are some of the things we’re missing, and how do we feel about being haole?

The First Month In Hawaii

The first goal we set for our Hawaiian life was to pick up martial arts. We had been introduced to self-defense based jiujitsu in the months leading up to the move and decided it was worth pursuing. Considering Hawaii’s background and Asian influences, martial arts have deep roots on the island and are quite popular as well. We signed up at a gym, invested in a gi (jiujitsu uniform) and some boxing gloves, and started going 5 times a week. Jiujitsu and Muay Thai aren’t easy to get into. They’re hard on your body when you first start and if you don’t have any background in martial arts it can be pretty intimidating to walk into that gym. I’m glad we decided to stick with it though! Not only are we learning a valuable skill and training our bodies to be stronger, but we also met some awesome people at the gym and felt welcomed into the environment. I recently received my first stripe on my white belt!

 

The second goal was to enjoy activities that we exclusively could enjoy on a tropical island; spending time in the sun, enjoying the palm trees, and spending lots of time on beaches and in the ocean! It is very odd to wake up with the same weather almost every day. You don’t have to put much thought into your clothing. You don’t have to change plans much because of sudden rain. The best thing is that we wake up earlier than we used to in Portland, because we have natural sun coming into our apartment and the birds (and wild roosters…) are performing a concert every morning.
    My Dutch roots are strong, so I had to figure out a way to bike through the city and go from A to B. So I signed up for Biki Bikes, which has bike hubs all around the city of Honolulu (from Diamond Head in the East to the neighborhood we live in next to Downtown). You can easily unlock bikes with your phone at any time and return them at any hub. I now bike to the Ala Moana Regional Park at least twice a week to swim there. 
    Swimming in the ocean has been everything I dreamed of. It feels amazing to add that routine to my daily life and I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. The water is so clear and blue, and there are so many fish and sea turtles swimming around me as I go for my 2km training. When I’m done swimming, I take a quick shower at the beach (the water is surprisingly salty haha), grab a snack and just sit underneath a palm tree while drying in the sun. To be able to say that this is ‘’a regular Wednesday’’ for me is still not making any sense to me!

 

The third goal was to slow down in life. That sounds a bit vague, but it was actually one of the reasons we moved to the island. Our lives in Portland were rather hectic. We had our jobs that frequently took up over 40 hours a week, we had a busy social life, I was making road trips through Oregon almost every weekend with Abby, and in hindsight I don’t think we got proper rest in the area we lived in. There was always something going on. I’ll tell you about that part in a separate blog – ‘’the truth about why we left Portland’’ – but for now I just want to say that everything that was happening around us really took a toll on our mental health. It was never peaceful or quiet. The last month of us living in Portland was so bad that I couldn’t even walk Abby by myself anymore in broad daylight, as I constantly got bothered by people on the streets. When you’re in the middle of it you don’t realize how bad it is. In comparison, Hawaii is extremely peaceful and quiet (and we don’t even live in a ‘’quiet’’ neighborhood). I also wanted to slow down in life because honestly the last 6 years of my life have been a whirlwind. I have hardly spent any long periods of time with my family in The Netherlands since 2017, been traveling between Japan, the USA and The Netherlands with no place that I could truly call my home, going through an extensive immigration procedure, the pandemic, navigating a marriage. I lived life fast, and I didn’t know how to slow down.

I’m hoping that living in Hawaii is going to help me to finally take some rest. To enjoy life to the fullest. I noticed that you get forced to slow down in Hawaii little by little. First, there’s the weather. With light warm days and sun year-round, you just feel more energized. It invites you to spend your days outside, instead of working a 9 to 5 inside. Then, island time really is a thing. You can’t rush anything in Hawaii, it simply will not work. People are just slower here, for a good reason.

 

 

 

 

Being the outsider

It may sound a little rough to put it into those words, but we do feel like the outsiders in Hawaii. That’s not to say that we don’t feel like we fit in, or that we feel uncomfortable with the melting pot of cultures. To the contrary, I like how culturally diverse the group of people on the island is. It took some getting used to when we first moved here, seeing so many different people and hearing different languages every day. But respectfully, we are outsiders. We did not grow up on the island, and island culture is not a thing that you can acquire later. From talking to the locals, it seems like growing up on an island changes you. It changes the way you treat the people around you and it changes how you go about your day. There is something unique about growing up on a little piece of land surrounded by the big powerful ocean. As one of the people we met here recently said ‘’You do not want to make anyone angry, because chances are, you going to see them again sometime’’. Sure, the city of Honolulu still has 345 thousand people living here. However, the island is just not that big. What locals share is not something you can easily understand or experience for yourself. There is a reason most people from the mainland only end up spending a couple of years here before moving back. Hawaiians have a powerful connection to their land, and I want to be as respectful as possible. Honolulu has extremely rich areas and very poor areas. Unfortunately, these rich areas seem to mainly be occupied by white people who have a lot of money. When you can buy a condo in Ala Moana/Waikiki, you will live a very good life here. There are luxuries all around, rooftop swimming pools, yoga rooms, infinity pools, giant gyms, hotel service concierge. For whoever can afford it. The reality is, a lot of people can’t afford living in Hawaii, not even in the cheaper areas. The cost of living is one of the highest in the entire US and having multiple jobs is kind of the norm here. It wasn’t like this when there were just native Hawaiians living on the island. A lot of natives are being priced out and that is a very sad thing. I can understand why not everyone on the island is happy to see all these rich people come to their island and enjoy a luxury lifestyle, while they can’t even afford their groceries. And still, I feel welcomed here. I may stand out because of my light skin and blond hair, but I truly feel more comfortable in this melting pot than I ever did in Portland. The people are kind here. They take the time and are interested in your story. They are very family-oriented, and this extends to friendships, work and even gyms. It is a stark contrast compared to the mainland’s extreme individualism.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Homesick?

As someone who has lived in quite a lot of different places/countries in her life, I do not have a clear definition on what ‘’home’’ is anymore. When I get homesick, I might describe that as a longing for something familiar. A strong desire to be with my loved ones. A need to be surrounded by people who share the same values and ideals because they grew up with them. In that sense, The Netherlands is still my home. But I don’t entirely fit in there anymore. I have some American in me now! Do I miss Portland at all? I have been back once – in January for work, and I did not like being back at all. The only thing I liked was smelling the rain and the mossy trees while taking a walk and seeing some of my friends. I don’t miss the culture. I don’t miss the food. I don’t miss the city, and I don’t miss the views. So far, we do not have any regrets about leaving Portland. But only time will tell .. 

Time for a change: We moved to Hawaii!

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ALOHA~

I don’t know exactly where to begin, and this might be a long one, but we have officially moved to Honolulu, Hawaii! 

The process leading up to the move was intense to say the least. This blog is dedicated to that story! So sit back and relax while I take you through our journey, where I once again packed my life into a couple of suitcases and took a plane to find a new home.

 

“There’s a place I dream aboutWhere the sun never goes out.And the sky is deep and blue.Won’t you take me there with you.
Oh, we can begin again.Shed our skin, let the sun shine in.At the edge of the oceanWe can start over again.“

The first thing we focused on was finding an apartment. We were not entirely unfamiliar with Honolulu, since we travelled there on three different occasions (pre, mid, and post-pandemic), but we didn’t know a lot about the residential areas. Since work is mainly remote for the both of us, commute time wasn’t an issue. We knew we wanted to be close to major stores and busy areas, but far enough from the city to be able to afford rent. We also didn’t want to be forced to own a car, so in real Dutch fashion we made sure all the places we wanted to regularly travel to were biking distance. Once we found an apartment building, it took us about 11 phone calls, 25 emails, 40 pages of paperwork and countless hours to finally get approved. Good – we get the apartment in Hawaii on the 14th, and our move-out date in Portland is the 24th. A bit of overlap, but it wasn’t too bad.

Then, we had to decide our final move date, and book our one-way tickets to Hawaii. Our lease ends on Thanksgiving, should we move on such an important American holiday? Would flights be cheaper on Black Friday? Did we have enough time to finish the paperwork for Abby so she was cleared to fly with us? We still had many questions, but every day you postpone the decision you get more anxious, so we just booked for the 25th. Hopefully it will work out!

The third major thing on our to-do-list was to start the whole process with Abby. Hawaii is a rabies free island and therefore has very strict quarantine regulations. In order for Abby not to be quarantined, we had to (once again) file a bunch of paperwork. The vet took care of most of it; it required a FAVN rabies antibodies test, a health exam, an acclimation certificate, and proof of vaccinations. It wasn’t hard to get, but the tricky thing was the waiting periods. We had a very specific timeline to work with and if we messed that up, it would make it harder or even impossible to fly Abby over.

Alright, so by now we got all the major steps done. We are about 5 weeks away from our move. Time to tell our employers our official moving date, time to submit the notice to vacate and officially end our Portland lease, and time to start thinking about what to keep and what to sell/throw out. Our work continues throughout this period and we both experience an increase of work hours (sometimes it’s like that). On top of that we decided to start taking Brazilian Jiujitsu lessons of 4+ hours a week, because we like life to be a little hectic and difficult. Our friends try to set things up, there’s lots of birthdays and some impromptu goodbye parties being planned. All the fun stuff! But it was a lot. It was a lot of ups and downs. Every time something was taken care of, something else came to mess it up. And I just couldn’t process everything that we were doing. It felt so surreal to be making these plans for ‘’when we move to Hawaii’’. There was so much uncertainty. Not to mention having to say goodbye to some really good people in our lives. It made this whole experience a bittersweet one.

Getting the apartment ready for move-out was the most time-consuming. We only collected a small amount of stuff over the course of 3 years,  but still. You have to go through everything to determine what to do with it. We needed to significantly downsize, just because it would be too expensive to ship everything over. I already didn’t have that much; I left a lot of my life behind in The Netherlands when I moved to Portland in 2020. So the things that I had were all of sentimental value. We managed to pack our lives into 3 large suitcases, 2 small suitcases, 2 backpacks, and 4 large USPS boxes. The hard part was done! Exhausted, nervous, and excited we got on that plane to Honolulu. Leaving Abby behind at the airport and not being able to be with her during the flight was nerve-racking. The first thing we did when we landed and collected our luggage was run over to the Quarantine Station to pick her up. She looked exhausted and was shaking but luckily, she recovered very quickly once we got to our apartment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a strange experience to move into an apartment you’ve never been to before. The worst thing was that we didn’t have anything. Nothing to cook with, nothing to wash and dry ourselves with, and no bed to sleep in. So we had to pick ourselves back up and start shopping. We didn’t have a car to get around either, so we took a lot of Uber XL’s to help us transport some of the furniture. I must admit that we were both pretty out of it. The lack of sleep, minor jetlag, worries about Abby, and the intensity of it all hit us hard. Ultimately, you are the one to make it your home. So the next couple of weeks were spent adjusting, putting furniture together, and exploring the area. I think the hardest part for me was being patient in all of this. I often want too much too fast and something like this you just can’t force. I felt very out of place the first couple of weeks, even wondering if we made a mistake, but I had to remind myself it needed time. So let’s try and make Hawaii our new home! Stay tuned for more blogs coming up!