Hawaii versus Kansas

In December, I went to Honolulu, Hawaii for a week. Three weeks later, I went to Fort Scott, Kansas for a week. Even though I had a nice trip to Kansas, I was missing Hawaii and noticing how different it was there. After I got home, I realized that if you don't take the scenery and weather in to account, I could find a lot of similarities between the two...

1. They both have statues that are great for (most likely, inappropriately) climbing on! Here's me with Duke Kahanamoku, legendary surfer, swimmer, and activist aaaaaaaand me with Winfield Scott, who Fort Scott is named after. The Duke statue has a live web cam, so my travel companion and I texted everybody in our office and had them watch us throw our leis on his arms and wave like maniacs. It's kind of fun to just watch the web cam. You can see boats going by and people swimming!

2. They both have such nice people! Kansas totally got the memo on the aloha spirit. Having never been to the Midwest, I was not prepared for people calling me Miss, sugar, hon, etc. but it was so cute and I loved it.

3. Both have carb heavy, amazing food. I had five delicious different kinds of pasta at one meal in Kansas (macaroni and cheese, chicken and dumplings, Italian pasta salad, Chinese Chicken salad with ramen topping, rotini and meat sauce) and an equally carb laden Hawaiian hotel breakfast buffet (fried rice, waffle, miso soup and the toast I ate after taking this picture.) To be fair to Kansas, it was a pot luck and I am positive that no other person took my cue and ate everything on the table. Normal people just pick one pasta, but I pretty much eat like I am about to run a marathon when I'm on vacation. Okay... all the time. 

4. Both have ramen! Here's some delicious shoyu ramen I had in Waikiki. The Kansas ramen is in the picture above. This was one of my favorite meals I've had in a long time, actually. The pork was perfectly tender, the sprouts were still crisp and the fried garlic slivers gave it some serious flavor. Plus, isn't the fish cake kind of cute in a why-the-heck-is-this-fish-neon-pink way?

                       

5. There was charming, native wildlife in both places. I met a real, live sea turtle in Hawaii (and went snorkeling with some a few days later- amazing!) but I also met a lot of real, dead animals in Kansas. Here I am forcing my sister to act excited to be standing below a taxidermied zoo with me. Sadly, my excitement did not rub off. 

6. They both have beautiful sunsets. Obviously, Hawaii is amazing. But after growing up in a farm town I just really have a weakness for that golden hour over a farm.

  

7. They both are a 5 hour flight. Look at the cute little curtain that separated my seat from first class on the way to Kansas. As if that tiny curtain could hide the hot towels my spoiled plane neighbors got [which, by the way, I thought was a myth. It is not!]

8. Obama's mom was from Kansas but met his dad while living in Hawaii. True story. I'm obviously desperate for comparisons at this point so that'll end it.

My point of this whole thing is that every place has its own charm and personality, but if you have a statue, feed me ramen and call me 'hon' I will wholeheartedly enjoy it no matter what the weather is like. My friend Steve used to tell me "everything is somebody's favorite thing," and it's true. Except in my case, everything is my favorite thing!