From one small rainy island, to a volcanic one, to a small volcanic rainy one

Because my mother is always, and I mean always, right, I didn't have the best time in small town America. I got cabin fever. Having to walk 20 minutes in one direction to get to the laundrette and 20 minutes in the other to get to the shops, combined with the fact there was nothing to do but play Fallout 3 or casually shop, made me a little psycho.

It didn't help that my host's bipolar girlfriend would leave her dirty panties on the floor of the room I was staying in and conveniently forget to take her medication.

So I thanked myself for having a good financial pool, rearranged my bus, reserved myself a room in a Travelodge for $80 and shipped out to Portland. That one weekend made up for a less than exhilarating week.

Portland was beautiful. The sun was shining, and the gentle wind whooshing in from the river kept the world cool enough. There were restaurants. There were people. There were museums. CULTURE. Aaaaahh, sweet culture.

Portland Art museum was a pleasant surprise. There was an excellent M.C.Escher exhibition with lino stamps as well as prints, sketches, plans and the PS3 game where you have to use crazy Escher rules to guide your man around the maze. Seeing Metamorphosis 3 in the flesh was awesome, even if I did end up colliding with a bloke in the middle (we started at opposite ends). Other highlights include a piano strung through a tree playing a 20s jazz and a piece by Robert Notkin called The Gift, which I studied at A level ceramics. It's a mosaic of body part tiles arranged to look like an atomic mushroom cloud. Sadly, my low blood sugar quickly rendered a large section of the modern art terrifying.

Portland is full of hippies, homeless people, people who live in vans, and students. I got invited by a man down at the waterfront to sing along with him to Hey There Deliah. I fed tropical Skittles to a chihuahua. I bought an arboreal necklace and was constantly complimented on it thereon. A man asked me if I knew my ass was fine. Another told me I had a nice piercing. A third asked me if I would give him a dollar because his girlfriend was hungry. I said no.

I overslept on Monday morning. My alarm was supposed to go off at 5.10 and I somehow woke at 6.40. To put this in perspective, my flight was due to leave at 8.45, and I wasn't packed. Cue a freakout packing, sadly unintentionally abandoning several packets of M&Ms and my copy of Life of Pi, only a quarter of the way in. I made my plane. Watched Coraline on a badly contrasted screen 4 feet away without sound (refused to pay $5 for a headset). Gasped at how beautiful Honolulu was from above.

Hawaii was hot. I say was, because my first night was cloudless and freezing. Today it rained non stop and I got very very very muddy and cold. But it's okay. Hawai'i is a lot like a holiday in Wales- during the course of a day you may get sunburnt, frozen, hungry, rained on and cold, but at the end of the day I get to go home to a cosy cabin, watch movies on Kyle's laptop (woo, Coraline with sound), cook a nice dinner and get clean and warm.

BTW, Kyle is my housemate. He's cool. Of course, I'm bias because he lets me use his laptop. Tomorrow we get another housemate and then on Sunday yet another, but number 4 is only here for a week. The other folks (my boss, his girlfriend, the foreman) and I all get on really well, which is a relief after the friction in Corvallis. I'll upload some photos as I go along, but it's hard to take photos during the day when you've got a machete in one hand, a water bottle in the other, and chicken shit on your arse.