Not so "WWOOFing" farms and such...

We arrived in Maui after luckily making every standby flight we were listed for. A pretty easy journey over made us excited to finally be here and we called our manager Jonathan to come pick us up from the airport. Well, when he pulled up, my heart sank. Here we had the most stereotypical hippie surfer bro you can imagine. His clothes barely stayed on him for all the rips and his hair was dreadlocked, I guess, into one really hot "beaver tail" (as Tim put it). I could probably forgive this fashion sense if the person could look at me straight or keep his focus for more than a few seconds (while driving) but, as it was, Jon welcomed us halfheartedly through completely glazed over eyes (if you know what I mean).
Anyway, what to do? We piled all our things into the pickup and climbed in. Our manager proved a somewhat decent tour guide along the way as he told us about the sugar cane fields, Haleakala national park, the town of Paia, and the famous surfer beaches Hookipa and Jaws. Sadly, he had a difficult time tour-guiding and driving at the same time as he used the whoooole road, both sides, very liberally. We stopped a few times along the way to pick up some Hawaiian soda and, of course, a 40 of Heineken for Jon which he decided to crack open 3/4 of the way home. Safe.
We finally made it to the farm and there some more surprises were in store. We saw the outdoor kitchen, which looked decent, and the rec room. Jon took us into the tent village where we found tents, as expected, but something was very strange. The tents had huge slashes in them, as if from a knife. Yeah, Jon informed us offhandedly, the tent village had recently been broken into by local hooligans with knives. Great! But, don't worry, the police were NOT called because on this side of the island police don't really have much say. They simply told the local elders about the robberies and hoped that some social pressure would straighten the hooligans out and maybe make them return the goods. While hearing this story, Tim and I considered how much of our lives we brought with us and how much we couldn't afford to wait on "social pressure from elders" if anything should ever happen.
Regardless! We moved into our tent (a side note: we were told there was a full size bed in each tent, well there was a full size....box spring). We stole a couple twin beds out of an empty tent and created a bed for ourselves. After a little unpacking we decided to call it a night. I think we felt pretty overwhelmed and were feeling very jet-lagged. We would see what the next day brought.
We woke up the following morning at about 2am Maui time (that's exactly 7 chicago time) and had a hard time going back to sleep. This was ok since I was scheduled to work at 6:30. Tim and I got up to have some breakfast. We decided to scope out the kitchen a little closer. What we discovered in our "well stocked communal kitchen" was amazing! After debating between our options of Ramen Noodles or Raisen Bran (that's about it for what was on the shelves) we decided to go with the cereal. Upon opening, though, we saw that the cereal was what about 15 bugs had also chosen to eat that morning. After searching the kitchen, we finally found some "clean" bowls and spoons and had some cereal, bugs removed. There was no milk, of course, so dry cereal it was. There was a good part of breakfast though, the jungle cats came out to eat with us and a really sweet kitten sat on my lap and ate the raisins out of my raisen bran.
Ok, time to work. I had to meet people at 6:30 and Tim was scheduled to work at 10:30. People started arriving in the kitchen for our work shift about 40 minutes after we were supposed to meet. We headed up to the road to set up the fruit stand. The fruit stand has to be taken down every night because other local fruit stand owners burn down their competitions' stands if they are left unattended. Well, almost all the people who work on the farm came out to help set up the stand. (There were four guys and five girls on the farm, including me and Tim.) We all hauled boxes of fruit up to the road and started to unload everything. The kitchen inside the stand had to be prepared because the stand also sells smoothies and fruit crepes. Everyone seemed to work in slow motion and get very easily distracted. That's probably because Mary Jane was the hardest worker among them, she helped everyone out, and it wasn't even 7:30am yet! Anyway, we got the stand set up and people started coming by almost immediately. After being told by my "co-workers" that "I'd just figure it out as I went along" I knew it would be a long day if I didn't just kick it into gear so I really pretty much ran the stand for 6 hours. Made $5 in tips! (That's like a dollar an hour! - name the movie!).
Tim had a little "harder" of a work day. In trying to put in 6 hours of work (that's the required amount per day to be able to live there), he did everything the managers could come up with in about an hour and a half. This included raking mulch and gravel where he encountered Maui's famous 6 inch Red Centipede (google image search that!). Apparently their bites feel like "an electrified baseball bat hitting you" or "a gunshot wound" depending on who you ask. After being told "Hey man, just pace yourself. If you don't do any work, someone else here will you know bro", he "spread" out his work by taking a tour of the grounds, about 10 times. We also learned that on that same day, the farm was hiring 3 more people to help with the extensive amounts of work that had to be done! (insert sarcastic, enthusiastic voice)
When we were done working, everyone went into town and Tim and I regrouped in the kitchen. Then we started to talk. We were discussing how maybe after a month or two we should probably leave...then, after a moment of silent pondering, I turned to Tim and said, If you wanted to leave tomorrow, I'd be down. And he said "Let's go pack."
We made some calls and got a hotel room booked and a cab. Due to the fact that we never really unpacked, we packed up our things in under 20 minutes and were up on the road in a flash waiting for our taxi to come. We called our manager and told him that we realized we just needed to make some money on the island and, "for that reason only" we were going to head out. His only question was if he and Tim could still jam sometime. In all fairness, he and one other boy we talked to as we were leaving were very kind to us. It wasn't that the people weren't nice enough, it's just that the lack of almost everything that was promised made life there a little difficult. We signed up to do some real work, which wasn't there, and some recreational activities like hiking and biking, but "recreation" really only meant one thing to the people of this farm.
And so we headed into Kahului to check into the seaside hotel. Here we have been searching craigslist day and night for a place to live and jobs. This search has been an adventure in itself which we will write about soon.

Thanks for reading! We miss you all and love you very much!
Aloha,
Anna and Tim