Where the Streets Have No (Pronounceable) Name

Navigating around a new place is hard enough. Try throwing in streets that have names that you can't even pronounce. Or can pronounce if you want to take one minute sounding out the four vowels that are strung together, like in Ke'eaumoku St. Doesn't quite roll of the tongue, does it?

We live on the northeastern part of Oahu, in the "country" as they say here. We don't have a WalMart, or any store like that in Kailua, so driving to one takes at least 30 minutes. It seems like most of the places where I shop take about 30 minutes to get to. My destination today was the WalMart in downtown Honolulu. And what street is this on? Ke'eaumoku. I can type it, just can't say it.

I haven't even bothered trying to pronounce it. I knew when I'd run into this street simply by memorizing the "Ke'ea" part. When I saw the street sign with a long word with a bunch of vowels on it, I figured it must be the one. My guess was correct and for once, I was in the right lane.

It was only my 2nd time visiting this particular WalMart. The first time was days after we moved here. All three of us went to this Walmart to buy a bunch of things for the house. It was like throwing us into the middle of another country, but somehow they spoke what appeared to be English. We were there in the middle of the day on a weekday. Not usually considered a busy time, right? Ha!

We made the mistake of getting two carts. I don't know what we were thinking because I couldn't even get my cart down the aisle. It reminded me of WalMart in Meridian on the day after Thanksgiving. It was insane. By the time we left the store, I was so frazzled and stressed out that I swore I would never set foot in that store again. Well, as I say, "never say never". I made the mistake of saying it and today I ate my words...again.

One of the weirdest things about this location is that Walmart is on the 1st floor and Sam's Club is on the 3rd. When you want to enter Walmart, you enter the parking lot on one street (you know the one...the one I can't pronounce), and to enter Sam's Club, you just go around the block and enter from the other side. You can also take an elevator from the parking lot of WalMart up to Sam's Club. Strange.

It wasn't as busy as the first time we went in July, but that's probably because unbeknownst to us, we were there the week before the first day of school. We had no clue. I have come to the conclusion after today's experience that this store is always extremely busy. It is like shopping during the Christmas season in Boise. I can only imagine what it will look like in there in December. I shudder at the thought.

I've done my own study and it appears to me that only 10% of the street names are English. The rest are Hawaiian. As I headed back home, I passed street after street with more vowels than letters. Imagine my relief when I finally got to a street I could pronounce...Ward Avenue.

If it weren't for the ocean and the mountains, I probably would get lost. I know that to get home I need to head toward the mountains. And I know the Pali Highway will get me there. It must work because I'm home now on Aloha Oe. That's 5 vowels and 2 consonants. Not that anyone's counting.