Time for another update! So we ended last time on leaving our hotel and moving into this new place in Wailuku. Yesterday was our first day and we just literally attacked the room we are going to live in. Mike, the manager, and two other work-trade tenants Leo and Carl, helped us pull the carpet out of the floor of our room. (We will put pictures up later of the whole transformation process of the room.) We realized that there had been a leak on the side wall and literally just dirt and water were coming into the room. I swept out the whole place while Tim, Leo, and Carl scraped off all the carpet-glue (or whatever is used to glue that blue foam under carpets, I'm still learning so much!) We bleached all the walls and cleaned the wood paneling as well. After a few hours of work the room already looked a lot brighter.
We really lucked out with the people who live at this place too. Leo is a painter and offered to paint the whole floor for us which was stunning because Tim and I were definitely expecting to just do it ourselves. Everyone has been really helpful and very friendly. Mike told us that we could live in a studio on the property while our room is being painted. The room we're staying in is called Sunrise and it has a beautiful view and is surrounded by fruit trees. I guess while we continue to work on our room we are still living a somewhat transient life and Tim and I are both restless to finally unpack and call something "home". In the mean time, though, we feel we really have a nice place with nice people helping us out and that is already a big comfort to us.
Here we're attaching some photos of the grounds we live on. It's really a jungle with waterfalls and abundant fruit trees. We'll put up more pictures of our room as it progresses. Till next time!

Tim and Anna

The studio we are temporarily staying in

Another view of our studio

The entrance to our room that is half way re-modeled

Entrance to our shared kitchen

Front outside view of our apartment/shared kitchen

Waterfall just outside our room

Garden that is somewhat overgrown with a partial view of the volcano Puukau

First half of the walkway up to our room

Second half of the walkway up to our room

View of our somewhat cluttered shared kitchen