Monday, May 14th, 2001

Well, we're here! It was a good trip over on our Canada 3000 flight, although a little cramped, but nothing compared to the plane I took on my first trip to TDI last year.

		While I can't say we had as much room as we wanted, our flight to Hawaii wasn't too bad.

The movies and food on the flight were actually decent enough to allow the 6 hour flight to pass rather quickly. We landed in Honolulu last night around 11 pm Hawaiian time, and we spent the night in the Outrigger Hobron hotel on the edge of Waikiki. The hotel wasn't exactly first class, but it was cheap and it did the job for the one night stay we needed.

Today, we arrived at the participant house around 12:45 and Scott from TDI was just arriving to unlock the house. Good timing! We ended up waiting around most of the day and meeting the other participants as they arrived. I gave a few of the participants, Susie and Shannon, a little intro in the first few hand signals they teach you in the first few days with the hopes they'll be better ready than I was for their first local with one of the dolphins. Unfortunately, a number of other participants showed up after I had done this so I guess it was sort of a wasted effort. Oh well.

A few things have changed since last year in the house itself, but not a whole lot. Other than a new couch and some potted plants, the house is largely the same as I remember. Daisy is our in house monitor now, taking up Sean's place from my trip last year after he broke his collar bone and had to go home. Also, Scott has assumed Amy's position managing the participants and staff at the institute, so he was the one to give us our introduction lecture tonight.

		Geoff admires the view from Waikiki (click for larger image)

We were treated to a new, improved intro slideshow that Scott couldn't stop bragging about. Rightfully so; it was quite good actually, although a few slides weren't finished. Nothing much has changed since last time I got this lecture, so for me it was just a reminder. Having Scott talk about the lab reminded me how much I missed it, and how good it'll be to be spending time there again!

After a trip to Safeway and buying a ton of food and buying out their supply of Safeway select pop (3 cases worth... try carrying that a mile back to your house), we just sat back and relaxed some more watching the Adam Sandler movie, "Waterboy".

We're up rather early tomorrow, so I guess that's it for today. I can't wait 'till tomorrow!