This Past Week

Such a beautiful site. I love the mountains here. Evan tested this week for his yellow belt.

Here he is getting ready to go and below he is a happy yellow belt wearer.

Saturday the boys went to Lacy Veach Day at Punahou. Lacy Veach grew up in HI, graduated from Punahou and the Air Force Academy, became an F-16 fighter pilot earning a purple heart, became a Thunderbird Pilot and then a NASA astronaut. He died in 1995 from cancer.

Each year Punahou honors his memory with a day dedicated to science and space. Here Evan is looking at sun spots.

The key note speaker, Kalepa Baybayan from the Polynesian Voyaging Society. He has sailed on the Hokule'a (I forgot to post a picture in this post so I will in the next one) since 1975 and is an authority on celestial navigation-teaching at the UH Hilo in the Astronomy Dept. Lacy was very much involved with the Hokule'a as well as the people on it. Kalepa told us about the history of the Hokule'a as well as entertained us with his "talk story" in local dialect-pidgin.

Ponahou School happens to be the school Barack Obama went to. The tuition is $18,000/year beginning in Kindergarten. It is the largest campus in the US with 77 acres and 75 buildings. It was founded in 1841 on 255 acres of donated land called Ka Punahou by chief Kame'eiamoku's grand-daughter Kuini Liliha. Queen Ka'ahumanu invited Christian missionaries to begin a school. The building above is the original school. The school has many distinguished graduates and has won many honors. Sports Illustrated made it #1 out of 38,000 schools. When I was going to UH, in the morning I rode by on the bus and would look for the beautiful night blooming flowers of the cereus hedge on the lava rock wall. What I think is interesting is the the school song, with Hawaiian lyrics is sung to the tune of Maryland, My Maryland (yes, I am from Maryland)!

The boys had a NASA work shop on rockets with a super cool teacher from NASA.

Here they are getting ready to shoot their rockets.

They also had a work shop on circuits. I was shocked when Evan volunteered to go up and answer a question at the board! He seems to not pay attention at all but was so quick answering all the questions.

Here they are with their circuit board.

Erik came down to join us. They spent a lot of time with a heat camera. The hottest areas are white with the coldest areas being blue. Evan always asks why people get frost bite on their noses, cheeks and fingers-he got to see that they are the coolest parts of the body.

Looking through a different sun telescope.

Evan saw this bumper sticker as we were getting ready to leave and had to get a picture.