Seahouse - Napili

I was assigned a new job this week - the Rotational guy - ie I do a bunch of rotating duties, the primary one being distilling the drinking water and making sure all water stations in the building are functioning. It's not completely new, since I did the same job two years ago. It is a good fit, as I can work my courier driving around the duties, if necesary.

We went for breakfast this morning to a restaurant on the west end of the island called The Seahouse. It was a georgous Maui morning, bright sunshine and while a bit of a drive, my passengers were entertained some of the way by whale activity. Whale sightings have been very common this year. In fact it is unusual in the mornings to not see sightings, or at least "spoutings". The restaurant looks out over a beautiful bay and you could see whale activity from the restaurant. We went with two couples, one from Manitoba, first time volunteers and one from Saskatchewan, here for the fifth time, like ourselves.

Our class of participants are quite entertaining - we have a Russian who is a Christian radio talk show host (he has done his show from here in his room twice) - three Catholic priests - an Indian who owns two pizza shops - and an assortment of others. The faculty all comment that this group is very responsive to their teaching.

Our speaker at Rotary this week talked on the education problem in Hawaii - 163 teaching days (compared to 200 in Canada, which some think is short) - no local schools boards, it all operates out of Honolulu, even though the cultures of the islands are quite dfferent - students falling behind graduates on the mainland in basic learning. The speaker believes the situation is getting to a discouraging level, with no solution in sight due to labour unions and turf wars.