Rather quiet week.  Kaye was very successful with the Storytelling class.  It will soon grow to be bigger than the library can handle.  She is also moving forward on upgrading the Curriculum section of the library.  She had a meeting with the education professors and they all signed up to come and visit with her as she weeds, updates, and orders new books.  

My classes are better than last semester.  I have figured it out to a point.  I have never taught Missionary Prep (Religion 130) before so I am inventing this class as we go but the students seem engaged and focused.  This weekend they have the assignment to contact ten strangers on the street and start up a conversation.  They just finished reporting on their interview with ten returned missionaries.  It is fun to see them so excited about doing missionary type things.  They start teaching the missionary discussions after their midterm next week. 

For MLK day we went to Kaneohe to a movie and lunch at a place Leah saw on Diners and Dives.  Wow, this one was a dive.  It was at the end of the pier in a really small building.  Expensive!  The menu was very limited...rice, mac salad, spam or fish.  We decided to pass and went to I HOP which was awful.  What happened to that restaurant?   It made the rice and mac salad sound really good.
The big event of the week was whale watching on Saturday.  Here are some photos and comment.

Whale watching boat from the Aloha Tower

Here is the whale watching boat.  It is like a very small cruise ship.  It does whale watching in the day time and sunset dinner cruises in the evening.  Our cruise included a two-hour boat ride, nice buffet lunch and a guarantee to see whales. 

No whales in sight

 For most of the trip you just look over the rail looking at the empty ocean and the shoreline.  In this photo we are looking at Honolulu and seeing no whales. 

Then all of a sudden whales start to appear.  First you see their blow spouts shoot up.  Big ones for adults and little ones for the "calves" 

We soon see a huge flipper sticking out of the water. The whale begins to slap the water.
They stick their flipper out of the water and repeatedly slap the water.  It is exciting.  

Whale slapping the water with flipper

Then we begin to see the backs of the whales as they surface.  They come up and go down in a smooth motion hardly causing a ripple.  Then all at once they leap out of the water.  They are huge!  They rise about 2/3 of their body out of the water and then belly flop back into the ocean.  It was amazing to see. Boats are not allowed closer than 100 yards to the whales, so we are watching this from a distance.

I did not catch a whale out of the water with my little slow camera, but here is the splash.  You can see how big it is even viewed from 100 yards. The boat steward told us that we had the best sightings in the month.  The boat crew and captain were very excited. 

Then after the whale sightings they have activities.  Mom made a flower lei at their craft table.  Here she is making her lei. 

Making a lei aboard the whale sighting ship

This afternoon Kaye has a RS training meeting and I will make ministry visits.  Then we will attend a fireside this evening on family history.  That will end the week and we will be tired.