Can't Wait to Meet Our Friends

Eden came climbing into my bed the other morning.  She snuggled up to me and said "I just can't wait to see all my friends".  "Yeah.." I say thinking she might still be asleep "It will be fun to go to school"  "No.  I mean all of my friends in Hawaii"  To get this straight, Eden doesn't know anyone in Hawaii--none of us do.  But I love that world view.  There will be friends everywhere we go.

We are leaving some pretty amazing friends here in SLC.  One friend sewed together my backpack (it had gotten cut during an attempted robbery a few years ago).  Another friend brought us cookies and offered to keep Jared's grave well tended while we were gone.  Another friend listened to me whine about packing for a straight hour (on her birthday no less).  And a life-long buddy of mine is coming into town this weekend so we can make 90s references and snort-laugh our way through the evening.  Yep...pretty lucky to have so many amazing people in my life.  It might be easy to say we lucked out.  That somehow we managed to land right in a nexus of awesomeness.  And you would be right.  But I think that nexus of awesome extends pretty far.

Point in case, we are renting a house on the Big Island from a lady who doesn't know us...at all.  We will pay her money and she will let us live there.  A pretty basic financial arrangement.  But because that nexus of awesome apparently includes Hawaii, she has taken my little family in.  She will leave out a Christmas tree for us to use and pick us up from the airport and, oh yeah, what size bikes do your kids need I'll look for them at yard sales.  She won't even let me put a safety deposit down because "they are just things...I don't mind if they break".  

People who think travel is scary often don't realize that the world is populated primarily by kind people.  I was in Tanzania after the US embassy was bombed.  I had people coming up to me on the street apologizing for the bombing (I'm pretty sure none of them had anything to do with it) and telling me how grateful they were that I was visiting their country.  I've been lost on every continent save one and have always found people willing to walk me to where I needed to go.  I have left my bag (with everything I owned) on a bench and had someone run it out to me.  I have said the wrong thing to the wrong person a million times and met only with forgiveness and patience.  

But wait, didn't my bag get slashed by some misanthrope while in Egypt?  Yep it did.  But statistically speaking, that doesn't really count.  Bad people are out there.  They are there to prey on the tourists and the easy pickings.  If you look a little less like prey they generally leave you alone.  So with a tiny bit of preparation the world suddenly gets pretty awesome.
So we've got a bunch of friends out there to visit.  I can't wait to see them.