Hilo, Hawaii

Hawaii Day 1

The first day of Hawaii started early for me. I woke up at 0545 (not unlike any other day for Insanity) to watch the sunrise. Well, attempt to watch the sun rise. There’s wasn’t much of one because of all of the clouds over the ocean. It was still pretty cool though; everyone was super psyched to finally be getting into port after days at sea.

            After immigration we finally got left off the ship at around 10 in the morning. And we were off to the beach! Well, kind of. We had been told, well what Keani had been told by a friend from Hawaii, was that Richardson Ocean Park was only about 2 miles from the port. However, when we got to Hawaii and asked the police officers, it was actually 4 miles away. Luckily we were able to find a tour guide to take us to the beach. We loaded up like 10 people in the van and we were off! Again… BUT, first we had to stop and get some snacks of course! Keani talked me into trying this Hawaiian wrap thing called Musubi with Spam, sticky, rice, and sea weed. Surprisingly, it was pretty good. She thought what made me hesitant about trying it was the spam, but come on. Being raised in the south, Spam is at the bottom of some of the worst things I’ve tasted. It was the fact that it was warm and wrapped in seaweed that kept tripping me up. Something like that just seems like it needs to be kept refrigerated, not sitting out in the hot Hawaiian sun for hours.

            Once we finally got to the beach, all of my visions of Hawaii were shattered (later to be reconciled in Honolulu (from a distance)). Richardson Ocean Park was a black-sand beach, which is lava rocks that have been eroded over millions of years into a fine sand. I can tell you all about the geological processes and compositions, but nobody really cares, including me. When we went swimming, we ran into some fellow SAS guys who let us use an extra pair of goggles they had with them. We were able to see these GIANT sea turtles in the water. They all reminded me of Crush from Finding Nemo because they let you get right up close to them and look at them. Some of my friends with underwater cameras were able to get some really good close-up pictures of them. I’ll have those to show everybody over summer when I get back.

            All around the sandy part of the beach, there was all of these lava rocks that were awesome to climb around. On some of them, you could even see the lava flow patterns that were preserved in the rock. While Keani was hopping around the rocks like she was a bird, the SAS guys that had joined us were like bear crawling barely making it up the rocks without killing themselves. It was great and there is some pictures to prove it.

            After we were done with the beach, we piled in a taxi with some other SAS kids (9 people in a 7 people van) and made our way downtown. The taxi driver originally said $20 for everybody and then ended up charging us $3 a person so in reality he ripped us off. It was fun, though, and the driver was really interesting to talk to about Hawaiian culture. Note: Everywhere Keani went where she told people where she was from (Makaha, Wainai, Oahu) people kept like telling her they were praying for her and they were sorry because it is the bad part of town. It must have a pretty bad rep because everybody who has lived in Hawaii for any amount of time knew about it.

            We headed to the Farmer’s Market to give ourselves an idea of what would be there the next day. Keani got us all to try some of the tropical fruit and it was all so delicious. We tried leche, star fruit, apple bananas, and a lot of other weird stuff. It was even better because Desmond Tutu was there too the people probably had no idea who they were talking to. Abby bought a guitar from a cool little store on the corner while we were there for $100. Not bad.

            After the market, we walked down the main street and just explored some of the little shops. The first lady, Auntie Bev, told us to get some shaved ice from the shop next door and man was it good. You could get ice cream in the bottom and any flavors you wanted. The lady made all of the syrups herself and there was everything from the traditional strawberry to nasty dried plum (it’s a Hawaiian favorite, I’m told. Keani has candy just like it and tortures all of the people on the ship with it.) I got Leche and Lilikoi and it was one of the best things I’ve had in my life. After we ate our shaved ice we wandered into the store next to that where I bought two lava-lavas or the wraps that can be a skirt or a dress or whatever you want it to be. I got a purple and pink one with turtles and a black one with the sea and sea animals on it.  I then successfully got my ice cream around the world from a little homemade ice cream store downtown.

            We decided to walk back to the ship thinking it wasn’t too far and it would only take about half an hour. What we didn’t think about was that it was raining and we had been given bad estimations of distance all day. So what we were told should take half an hour really took about two and a half hours. After about 45 minutes we decided to try and find a cab to take us back to the ship. We were “fortuitous” (Jordan-grr) to find one right away that we could take to the ship.

On the walk we did see some interesting things, though. We ran into some guy running along the beach, canoe practice, and a “Beware Falling Coconuts” sign.

After dinner on the ship we all embarked on the untold adventure  of SAS- the Wal-Mart run. We piled 13 people into a van and made our way to the exotic Wal-Mart. SAS kids had already attacked it- the randomest things were sold out in the food section. I’m sure we tripled their daily sales for the day.

The 2^nd day dawned early. We planned on meeting at 7am on the 2^nd deck, but it was more like 715 for me. Abby was surprisingly on time though (a first- for anything). As we were walking off the ship Jim Finley asked us where we were going and when we told him, he asked us if he could come along. Of course we told him yes so he ran on the ship to put his stuff down and came off like 5 minutes later (2^nd deck win- when the gangway is on the 2^nd at least.) He told us that he had just back from hiking the volcano. He and his group had gone to the volcano to find the lava the night before. They had gotten there at 4, didn’t find the lava until 11, and then didn’t find their way back until around 4 in the morning. So he didn’t sleep for a good 48 hours.

            After Jim joined us, we headed to the big farmer’s market again. On Wednesday it’s about triple the usual size, so it was pretty cool. We had decided not to get breakfast before we left the ship, so we made a breakfast of the fruit from the vendors. I ate almost a whole bushel of apple bananas by myself and a whole bunch of other fruit. It was all so good it sucks we can’t take any fresh fruit on the ship. All of the fruit on the ship tastes the same except for the pineapple, of which there is very little. When watermelon tastes like cantaloupe, you have a problem.

            After the farmer’s market we wanted to find a post office and a place with wifi to upload some pictures. We found this really big post office with this fountain in the middle. While we were waiting on Jim to finish sending off some post cards, Keani dropped her water bottle in the fountain. The guard/ police officer standing  nearby walked up right after she did it so we all thought we were going to get in trouble because it was like sacred water or something. He just told her to be sure to wash her hands and her bottle really well because homeless people like to bathe in it.

            We managed to find some Wi-Fi in a coffee shop right across the street. The shop owner, Terri, was really eccentric, to say the least. He gave me crap when I used a $20 to buy a soda, but I wanted some smaller bills. I also asked for a chocolate chip muffin which he told me I couldn’t have. When I asked him why he told me it was because he didn’t have any chocolate chip muffins, that it was a blueberry muffin. I ended up getting a chocolate chocolate chip muffin instead, which was delicious. I found out that people but butter on muffins? I’ve never seen anybody do it, but the group I was with did. I tried it and thought it was absolutely disgusting.

            While we were uploading pictures to Facebook (which took SO long), Terri came over to talk to us. He was asking us about Semester at Sea, what we were studying, and what classes we were taking. When he asked us if we had any cooking classes and we told him no, he was appalled. We jokingly suggested that he could give us one, not meaning him to take it seriously, and he told us to go to the kitchen. 5 of us made this huge, delicious lasagna in the kitchen (and made a mess in doing so.) Terri was hilarious the whole time, telling us to dig in with our hands and not be afraid to put too much cheese on it. He made sure that we knew you had to tuck in the edges and let it cool for two hours or it would fall apart.

            After we put the lasagna in the oven of the hostel right next door, we decided to go walk around some more. We went to take Jim and Imtiaz, who had joined us in the Farmer’s market I think, to get some shaved ice from the place we had gotten it the day before. I got mine with the ice cream this time. The syrup seeps into the ice cream and makes the ice cream taste amazing when you get to it. The boys really liked it, too.

            Uh oh! Where’s Jordan?! What a nightmare. We lost one of the girls in the group. We conducted a search for her including asking the people on the sidewalk and showing them a picture, giving and getting the numbers of several shopkeepers, and a personal phone call and text message from Tom Jelke, the executive dean. Not something that I want to remember. We did decide to go back to Bear’s Coffee and eat the lasagna we had made. Even though we still had to pay for it, it was really good.

            After we heard that Jordan was okay we decided to head back to the ship. On our way walking back we had to say goodbye to all of the shopkeeper friends we met along the way. Both Terri and Auntie Bev gave us flowers though Auntie Bev told us that Terri’s were for old women and gave us ones that were more suitable for young women and men. When we made it through security on the ship, we were greeted by some of the children saying “Aloha and welcome back to the MV Explorer.” They are so cute and so lucky. According to the board that was near the gangway, some reasons to get on the ship early were: 1) It’s gonna rain, 2)The line to get back on the ship will be long, and 3)Dock time stinks. (Dock time is where for every 15 minutes you’re late to the ship, you’re held 2 hours in the next port on the ship.)

            When I got back on the ship, everybody was doing Facetime ship tours with their friends and family. (I’ll make a tour video and post it on our next study day.)

            Also, when I walked by the library, I had saw that the books were tied down. The first day we met the librarians, Ellen and Olivia, they told us that the crew had told them that if the books were ever tied down that you should go and take your seasickness medication right then. They do that whenever they are expecting big waves so the books don’t go flying. We’ll see how it goes.

Daily Quote-January 11th

"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean."
    -Arthur C. Clarke

In our ocean seminar I found out that the size of the continents will easily fit inside the size of the Pacific Ocean. And we're traveling through it. In winter. Sounds kind of stupid when you think about it. My friend Joe says he's going to cross it in a sailboat. I think he's an idiot, but more power to him, I guess.

Super Awkward Lunch And The First Day Of Class

So today was the first day of class. We’ll-first afternoon of class for me. I didn’t start class until 2:15-that is 1415. Ship time, gotta love it. However, I did wake up at 8:30. Just in time to miss breakfast (0700-0830 everyday). I really have to get some snackage for the times I miss breakfast. The group I’m planning to travel with in Hawaii is actually writing that into our schedules-trip to Walmart. In addition to a trip to the volcanoes and this really good BBQ place Keani referred us to (the Hawaiian girl).

                Erika, my roommate, and I just chilled for the first 2 hours-writing in our journals, updating blogs, sending emails, reading, etc. She’s super chill. She’s from Philly and goes to school at Michigan.

                I then met up at lunch with Abby and then we went to relax on the 6^th deck. We originally had planned on getting some studying done since she was already assigned a lot of homework and I know I have a lot of reading coming up; however, our efforts were in vain. All we could talk about was how lucky we were and how beautiful the ocean was. We are currently planning times to force ourselves to study though I don’t know how well it is going to work. Luckily, as long as I pass the classes, they don’t count on my GPA.

                Today I had my WWII class and my Sino-American Relations class. I was worried about all the readings assigned for my WWII class, but the professor told us to just skim them and assigned a group of 3 each class day to summarize and critique the readings of the previous nights’ reading. All of the tests are going to be essays/discussions so it should be pretty easy, fun, and interesting. What is going to be REALLY interesting is my Sino-Americans Relations class considering I’m 1 of 3 out of probably 25 students that doesn’t speak Chinese. At least 15 of those are Chinese themselves and almost all of them have Chinese of Asian Studies as a major. To my credit, I was the only one who spoke Spanish outside of the guy from Peru (1 of the others who didn’t speak Chinese). The last girl who didn’t speak it has a French minor so all-in-all, we’re a pretty diverse bunch.

                There wasn’t much after that except for dinner, a seminar on the ocean, and training for working at the library.

It’s nice to start to settle into a routine and it feels like I’ve been here for longer than 3 days. I’m pleasantly surprised at how many people I recognize and know by name and how I already have some jokes with a couple of them.

“Roll tide” dude-name is Phil, in my WWII class. I’ll give him crap later about saying RTR to me, even though he’s from CU (Colorado University at Boulder- a good 10% of the students here are from there, with another 10% being from University of Virginia, another 10% being from Chapman University, and the other 70% being from everywhere else). Wow, major ramble….

Oh! Something funny/ super awkward from today! When Abby (who is exactly 1 month older than me we discovered) and I were sitting at lunch,  these other 2 people came up and sat with us. One of them was an Unreasonable Scholar (a new SAS program that I don’t really know what it’s about) invited us to a volunteer meeting and we didn’t really have anything else to do so we agreed. When we got there, it was just a couple of people around a table in one of the classrooms/sections of the dining hall. Apparently, it was just a meeting for the Unreasonable at Sea director (an Aussie) and some people she had hand-selected from the sign-up sheet the night before. Which the girl who invited us apparently didn’t know, considering she wasn’t even supposed to be there herself. We think the other guy (a German guy, I sat beside a British guy in my WWII class, too) had mentioned he was going to her and she thought she should go and that it was an open meeting so she invited us. SUPER awkward. Even more so when the lady started asking us about our passions and what we could do for her that would involve them. Something along those lines, we’re not really sure. I don’t know what happened at all in the meeting and now we’re avoiding the German guy which is super hard on a small ship.

The ship seems so small when you’re trying to avoid somebody, yet so big when you’re trying to find somebody, go figure.

 

Daily Quote-January 10th

Everyday we get an email with what's called the "Dean's Memo" that details everything happening on the ship and the logistics of where we're at, how far we've traveled, how far we have to go, etc. There is also a daily quote so I'm going to be posting those up here with possibly a thought on them.

“Once more upon the waters, yet once more! And the waves bound beneath me as a steed that knows its rider!” –Lord Byron

The waves are rolling for sure. The boat is constantly rocking. It kind of feels like an airplane that's constantly going through turbulence. Luckily I'm not seasick but I know a bunch of people who are or have been.

The Beginning Of Life At Sea

-Thought these posted earlier but I had the wrong email. My bad-

Day 1 & 2

So I’m on the ship (not boat) with my email finally working (hopefully) and settling into life.

 

                Yesterday was stressful and was kind of a metal letdown. Not bad, just not what I was expecting. I guess I had it in my head that I would get on the bus for Mexico and would sit next to this awesome person who would be like my best friend for the next 4 months. Totally opposite. I originally went and sat with this girl with my huge bag. They seriously had the smallest charter busses in the world. And the oldest. I didn’t think I’d even make it to Ensenada. Anyways, my bag clearly wasn’t going to fit with the two of us so I went and sat in the empty seat behind her. I thought I’d end up getting this seat to myself but at the last minute this really old guy came and sat next to me. It would’ve been cool if he would’ve talked to me like all the other students and life-long learners were but he just sat there and slept and read this magazine on iPhones (I didn’t even know they made those but this guy had it and knew his way around his phone much better than I do). He also kept like stepping on my foot because he was like twitching or whatever. So best-friend seat buddies ruined.

                However, I did end up talking to the girl in front of me. Her name is Molly and she’s from San Francisco but goes to school in Portland. She is a foster kid that was put accidently in a Spanish-speaking foster home when she knew absolutely no Spanish. She told me that they would never speak English to her so she is now fluent in Spanish. She also lives down the hall from me so that’s pretty cool.

                After I boarded and went through the line, I helped out checking everybody’s yellow fever and medical cards. It was nice to finally put faces to the names I kept seeing on the Facebook group. I am surprised by how many names I was able to remember after that, though the amount is far surpassed by the names I forgot.

                Lunch was interesting and like everybody has said, it will really get old soon. Pasta, potatoes, and a different meat for every meal so far. There is also a salad bar and a little dessert bar. It’s pretty good food but I’m sure I won’t be saying that in like 3 weeks, especially after the 12-day stretch between Hawaii and Japan. It’s still so surreal to say that, to talk about going to Japan like it’s nothing.

                We had a lifeboat drill at 4 before we left. It was so funny because we were all just talking and socializing when “The Number 1 Rule is Quiet!” Yeah, no. They had to do role call of everybody on the ship. Everybody. Like all 800 students/faculty/life long learners. There is no way that if the ship is sinking that they are going to be able to do that. Especially because we will all be panicking. Titanic anybody? They tell you that if you hear the alarm you are supposed to go to your cabin and change into long pants, long sleeves, a hat, and close-toed shoes. So warm clothes for if we get stranded on the Pacific Ocean. Which makes sense except for 2 major problems-1) I highly doubt anybody would take the time to fight through the crowd to get to their cabin, especially if they’re on the second floor like me and that’s the first thing to go down, and 2) they say that they assigned 140 people to each life boat. 140 people are not going to fit in one of those life boats, I don’t care how hard you try. They guys were making jokes that we better watch out because they don’t know if they’d be doing a women and children thing first. So not chivalrous. They weren’t able to get all of the bags to the ship by the time that they started the drill so there was some people without pants and close-toed shoes. They sent them to the back so the captain couldn’t see them when he did the walk-through. I’m not sure why because it’s not their fault, I just happened to be wearing the right things and carried on most of my clothes.

 

Another failure on the day- dinner. I was like hey, I’ll randomly sit with this group and it will be awesome and we’ll click. Nope. Totally awkward.  I did sit next to a girl that was from Westminster (Vietnamese, of course). After that, I went and found my roommate with this group in the Piano Lounge and we all started hanging out and talking. Finally people that were fun to hang out with! We had some shifts in people and then proceeded to run out onto the top decks at night-it was cold. And scary. The waves have gotten really choppy lately and it’s really hard to balance, but I’m not seasick at all so I’ll take it.

We ended up playing cards and then there was a faculty meeting and “sea” meeting after that. Your sea is kind of like your dorm hall and each has their own Resident Director (mine is an Auburn alum!). Woo Woo Aegean Sea! Where that is, I’m not really sure. My bad… We decided to play Assassin in our sea meeting with the object to kill your “target” with a sock. So yeah, I carried around a sock all morning which I couldn’t even really use because I got killed leaving lunch. I actually knew my target too! And where his cabin was! It was the guy the RD pointed out in the meeting and a guy I knew from the Facebook page, Sean. (The names are partly to help me remember, sorry about that.)

Taking a shower… Usually one of the most easy and relaxing things in life, right? Nope. Not on a ship. The shower is tiny. Like half a motorhome tiny. You can’t even bend over in it. Also, the water keeps swinging back and forth as the ship went over the waves. Whenever I would take a step to balance myself, I would accidently turn off the water. It’s going to take some time to get used to that.

Crash time. Orientation at 9 in the morning? So not fun.

My alarm went off at 7 am, but having an inside cabin, it was pitch black and I couldn’t tell what it is. It is so easy to lose complete track of time in my cabin, but luckily I won’t be spending much time in it.

I’m not going to go over everything that said was in orientation because it was so boring. Just safety and health and blah blah blah. I fell asleep through most of it so I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to.  Though I did find out that the captain is British and the other 3 top officers are from Russia/Ukraine.

Lunch. More blah blah blah/ nap time. Then I went to get help with my email. I had it set up right but it wasn’t working for some reason. I went to the IT lab and the line was out the door and down the hall. Everybody with Macs were having a hard time getting it set up. I don’t think anybody was able to have it work right away.

In the hallway there was another group sitting on the floor that some guy was helping all at once and nobody seemed to be really waiting for so I joined them. The guy was really nice and was trying to help everybody all at once. I thought he worked in the IT department because he seemed to know what he was doing, but he’s actually a student sailing. His name is Mike and he’s a senior sailing for the 2^nd time, the first being last spring. Even though he wasn’t able to figure out my computer he was so nice I just wanted to bring him cookies if I was able to.

After about two hours and my computer freezing I finally gave up and shut it off. When I got to my cabin to leave it, on a whim I decided to try one last time and what do you know? When I turned it on I got all the emails I had been trying to send all day!

I met up with one of the girls I had met earlier but bonded with waiting to try and fix our emails, Abby. She said she was going to go wait in line for dinner but when I met up with her she was in one of the main cross areas of the ship with some girls checking out field labs, Rose and Kearisten. We ended up going to dinner and a girl named Keani and Angela joined us in addition to Mike, the computer guy, and his roommate Jake. Cabin 4150! Super creepy, but we were all joking around about coming up and bothering him and I remember it. He made the mistake of telling all of us that he had sailed before and had been to all but 3 of the countries on his first voyage. He barely even got to eat dinner with us bombarding him with questions, poor guy.

So I finally  found my travel group! I was so worried about not being able to find people who want to do close to what I wanted to do, but it ended up fine. At least for now, though I’m sure it will change a little as the voyage goes on. It’s me, Abby, Rose, Kearisten, Jordan who we met up later with in the library, Keani, who is from Hawaii, and Angela who is also from Anaheim. We had a minor-major-freak out when we realized that. She went to Western High School and graduated in 2008. She doesn’t know the other Paulsons though. It would’ve been awesome.

But so far we’ve planned Hawaii, Japan, and China tentatively. Very tentatively.

It’s harder than I would’ve thought to meet up. I’m so used to being able to text when I want to meet up or find out where someone is, but on the ship you have to plan it out before or hope that you run into them somewhere and that they’re eating in the same dining hall as you (there’s the main one on the 5^th deck and the Garden Lounge on the 7^th deck.)

Also, it’s so surreal that I’m actually here. I can’t believe that I’m on a ship in the middle of the ocean, living out a normal daily routine with 700 new people, and casually making plans about what we’re planning to do in China. Going back to Auburn is going to be so weird.

And since I have class tomorrow and I’m on duty in the library from 9-11pm (:/), I’m going to bed now. The ship like rocks you to sleep and you’re always tired. I’m sure I’ll add some random stuff in tomorrow as I remember it since there is just so many thoughts running through my head right now. If you have any specific questions, email me!

 

The Opportunity Of A Lifetime

“Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins

I was going to put a lot of different travel quotes and then I came across that one and felt all the others were irrelevant. Nothing can top that one, the truth behind it.

Why am I going on about this? This semester I am going on the journey of a lifetime. Semester at Sea. 106 days on a ship. I've never been on a ship before... 13 different countries. I've never been out of country before... Am I scared? A little, but who wouldn't be? Am I excited? There's not words to cover it.

Yes, I will be taking classes. Yes, I have a "job" while I'm on the ship. No, I don't have TV or Internet and will sadly be missing the Super Bowl this year. But have I mentioned I will be getting to travel 13 different countries? How many people can say they've done that? How many people can say they've trekked through the jungles of Vietnam, the mountains of India? How many people can say they've stayed in the home of a family from rural South Africa and impoverished Ghana? How many people can say they've talked for hours with farmers just trying to survive and camped outside around a bonfire in the middle of the Asian continent? By the time I get back I'll have experienced almost every type of food imaginable, rode an elephant, a camel, and a rickshaw, and have gotten to see a Wonder of the World in Myanmar/Burma- Shooting an Elephant, anyone? I will have seen the devastation of Hiroshima while also learning about the war that caused it.

I will have sailed across 3 oceans, 6 seas, 1 bay, and 1 gulf. And that's just what I can see on Google Maps. Most importantly, I will have met so many people. I will have gained a new family of about 1,000 students, teachers, staff, and crew. I will establish friends in different countries. Who knows? I might even make a lasting difference in a country or more likely, in at least one person's life. The sea is the limit.