photo adventure.

my poor blog has been severely neglected lately. i am almost always short on time thanks to school, and when i do have time to relax, blogging is just not high on my list.

but in an attempt to fix that, i decided to post some photos i took the other day while walking helix. i'll work on updating from the past month and a half soon.

my school is on an old naval base, and while some people find it unappealing... i love old buildings [even abandoned ones... which there are no shortage of around here] and places that you can just tell have a solid history behind them.

i have no idea what either of these buildings are or if they are in use today... but they just seem like they were probably important at one point. ha.
i walk through the same park area a few times a week, and i had never noticed these flowers before... they are actually covering a wooden arch in an out of sight corner of the park. it's so beautiful.

there are plenty of gigantic eucalyptus trees all over the island... and can you see some of the cement bunker things? i totally thought this park was a graveyard for quite a while after first seeing those because they reminded me of the punch bowl in hawaii. i would never walk near this area, and would rarely even drive by it! and then one day i said something to james about how i was too scared to walk over there, and he told me they are just bunkers or something like that... now it's one of our favorite places to walk. :]
these old mansions were the officers' quarters back in the day. the original ones were damaged in an earthquake or something, and these were rebuilt around 1898. the architecture is stunning. we've peeked inside one, and the insides seem to be just as impressive. [there are better photos of the houses coming...]
i love the variety of trees and shrubs that grow here too. i recently read that this area was used by the department of agriculture as an arboretum in the early 1900s, and they introduced a lot of rare plant species to the island. so while i don't get to visit the arboretum at the bellagio very often anymore... i guess i can think about that to get me by.
here's another picture of one of the officers' quarters. not too shabby, right?
many of the trees have these old plaques in them that tell when they were brought to the island. apparently the navy captains were encouraged to bring different trees back from their travels to plant here. amazing!

and one more photo of a different mansion. they are all so pretty and each one is a little bit unique.

that's all for now. i plan to take more photos of the other areas... eventually. :]