Alhoa -- that is how the ship spelled Aloha in an e-mail...embarassing

4/21/09
19:51

I didn’t realize how much I missed the United States of America until I arrived on US land two days ago.  It was all so familiar, so comfortable.

I woke up early the morning we arrived in Honolulu because we had to do a face-to-face passport inspection with customs at 6:30am.  I rolled out of bed, still wearing my pajamas…and my retainer…and went through the inspection.  Everyone was out on deck 7 (the top deck) on their cell phones, a sight I haven’t seen in a long time.  I immediately ran down to my room to check my phone.  IT WORKED!  Perfect signal, not roaming.  I had a cellular phone at my disposal.  It was amazing.

I called home.  It was the first time I have talked to Dad, Katie, and Liv since January 18th.  That’s a pretty long time. When Dad answered I was like, “Hello!” and he was like, “Hello?  Wait is this…Hannah?”  And I was like, “YEAH!!!”  It was great to hear everyone’s voice.  Especially Liv.  She sang me a song.  She can sing songs now.  She can count.  She is a big girl.  And I’m missing it.  I can’t wait to see her and how much she’s grown.  After I heard her song I sort of felt like crying.  Just because she’s getting so big and well…I miss my family.I talked to Nate and Clare as well, my two favorite GAC kids. 

Then at about 8:45 my friend Alicia and I got suited up to go run along the coast of Honolulu to Waikiki Beach.  My friends Jill, Caroline, Greg, Doug (it was weird traveling with a Doug because I was tempted to call him Dougert McGee and I actually did at one point), Disha, and Alex were also coming to the beach with us, but they weren’t feeling as athletically inclined as Alicia and me, so they walked.  I miss running on land.  I miss it so much.  The only downside about the run was that we both had backpacks with us, that became rather heavy and cumbersome in the hot hot Hawaiian sun.  No worries, though, because right when we got to the beach we stripped into our bathing suits and ran into the cool and refreshing (do you like that reference, Mom?) waters of Waikiki Beach.  Aaaah yessssssssssss.

We all lounged on the beach and floated in the water for several hours.  It was weird not being able to recognize every white person that walked by.  Typically I can spot a SASer a mile away while in port, but in Hawaii this was not the case.  We also couldn’t talk as freely, because people actually understand what we’re saying.  The whole ‘no language barrier’ thing was also a nice change of pace. We could flag down a taxi and take comfort in the fact that not only is it metered, but the driver understands where we want to go. 

We got hungry around 11:30, so we went in search of nourishment.  We came across the Rock Island Café that was the epitome of American pop culture and unhealthy food.  The walls were lined with signed pictures of actresses, actors, and singers ranging from Elvis and Marilyn Monroe to the Zac Efron.  There were TVs playing the classics like Grease and the Wizard of Oz.  And then the menu.  Pizza, hotdogs, burgers, sandwiches, milkshakes, banana splits, nachos, chicken wings.  Nirvana.  Except nothing was less than $8.  Eight dollars.  Eight US dollars.  $1 USD = $1 Hawaiian dollar.  Bummer man. 

The high prices didn’t deter us from indulging ourselves, though.  I got a chili cheese dog with fries and Jill and I split a banana split for dessert.  It worked out perfectly because Jill loves strawberry ice cream but isn’t a big fan of chocolate ice cream, and I dig chocolate ice cream but am not the biggest fan of strawberry.  Can you say match made in heaven?

After lunch we headed back to the beach to enjoy more sunshine and waves.  Jill, Doug and Greg left after an hour or so because they were giving a tour to prospective students on the ship at 3.  At about 4, Disha, Caroline, Alex and I decided to head back to the ship to shower and change.  On our walk back we saw a Coldstone.  Who can resist Coldstone?  I got a “like it” size of Peanut Butter Perfection.  “Like it” is the smallest size, so I held back, obviously. 

Oh and earlier, a few of us decided to take a sunset catamaran tour of the bay, which left at 5:30 but we were supposed to meet at the boat at 5.  Caroline and I realized that we wouldn’t have time to go all the way back to the ship to change and then come back because it was rush hour and it was about 4:45 already.  So Disha and Alex headed back without us and Caroline and I tried our best to freshen up in a mall bathroom.

We met Doug, Greg, Jill, Nancy, Skyler, Brendan, and Mike back at the boat.  This boat ride brought flashbacks of that fateful boat ride in Acapulco Senior Spring Break 2k7.  The boat ride that we are not to speak of EVER AGAIN.  Luckily, no one got seasick on this ride, no one fell off a bench because the ship was breaking, the music wasn’t a skipping CD of techno, and it was an overall enjoyable experience.  We all sat on the top deck laughing, drinking Mai Tais, taking pictures, and singing and dancing along to American pop songs.  So nice. 

Jill and Nancy began conversing with this Australian guy named Aaron who was on board.  Great accent, super cute.  At first we thought he was gay, but after a while it appeared that he was straight.  Sooo Jill invited him to dinner with us.  We ate at this restaurant called Duke’s, which was a sort of sports bar.  As usual just about every SASer had also decided to eat at this restaurant, so it was good that we had made a reservation for 8 earlier in the day.

I was still rather full from my second helping of ice cream that day, so I split deep-fried shrimp with Alicia and calamari with Nancy.  It was super tasty.  After dinner we hung out at the restaurant bar for a while, but the legal drinking age in the US is 21.  Weird.  Us youngens got bored of standing around the bar and constantly getting asked for our IDs and constantly telling the bartenders that we weren’t drinking, so I hung out on the beach for a while.  I sat in a powwow circle with Lia, Disha, Doug, and Lexi just chatting and hanging out.

 At around midnight, I decided to head back to the ship with Disha and Lia.  Lia was having a hard day and wanted to go to bed and I was over that restaurant scene, so we started walking back to the ship.  After a fair amount of walking, we decided to get  a cab, because Disha and Lia both had to pee.  We were further away from the ship than I thought so it was good we got a cab and it was relatively cheap between the three of us.

The next morning I got up at 8:30 to meet people for breakfast on the ship.  Jill, Caroline, Doug, Lexi and I planned to rent bikes and bike around Honolulu. Doug and Jill had seen a bike rental shop on their way home the night before so we knew the general area but it was a long walk from where the ship was docked.  We walked for about 15 or 20 minutes and then decided to take a bus instead of walking in the hot sun. 

We waited at a bus stop for like 10 minutes and not a single bus went by.  So we began walking again and then we saw the number 19 bus, which would take us exactly to where we needed to be.  It stopped about 50 feet in front of us.  We all looked at each other and said, “RUN!!” So we took off in a sprint to catch this bus.  We made it and breathlessly paid and took our seats, giggling all the while.

After a few stops we got off and found the bike rental shop.  It was $21 to rent the bike for the day.  We considered biking to Pearl Harbor or to this beautiful beach someone recommended to Jill, but they were both on the other side of the island so we didn’t have enough time. Instead we biked around the Waikiki area, along the coast. 

Before we really got into on our ride, we stopped at an ABC Store, which is kind of like the 7-Eleven of Hawaii.  AND they accept Yen so I was able to exchange all of my Yen.  Yay! 

On our way to the store, we had been biking on the sidewalks, weaving in an out of groups of people.  When we stopped at the store both a bike policeman and a local told us that it is illegal to bike on the sidewalks, you either have to bike on the streets or walk your bike on the sidewalk.  Oops.

Then we began the real ride.  I was the leader of the pack, which was a bit frustrating since I had no clue where to go and it’s always hard to communicate with your fellow bikers because they are behind you.  At one point Lexi shouted out to me, “Hannah stop! Doug fell!”  Apparently Doug doesn’t know how to ride a bike.  He claims that the breaks on his bike at home are different, so he clutched the front breaks and nearly flipped his bike.  He managed to jump off mid-flip and both him and the bike were perfectly fine.  Stupid Doug.

After biking around for a while and working up a good sweat, we came across a hotel beach and decided to take a dip.  It felt sooooo good.  I love floating in the water.  I rarely touched the bottom of the ocean.  One, because I like to float, and two, because there are all kinds of CARL reefs.  It hurt my feet.  There’s just so much carl. 

After our dip, we were hungry and we wanted Mexican food.  It’s surprising how often we crave Mexican food.  I wanted guacamole. I MISS guac. We started biking rather aimlessly since, again, I didn’t know where to go.  We took a turn and then Lexi and Caroline and I stopped to convene with the entire group.  We turned our heads to the left and there was La Cucaracha, Mexican Restaurant.  Things always work out, I’ve come to realize in my travels.  I never really stress anymore because I know things have a way of working out.  City of miracles….oh wait that’s Tokyo.  My bad.

We locked our bikes up and put clothes back on (we had been biking in swimsuits after the ocean swim and this place didn’t serve shirtless, shoeless customers…dictators). This Mexican food was AMAZING.  We split a HUGE serving of nachos for the table and Caroline and I split chicken quesadillas.  Splitting food is a necessity since a) American serving sizes are mucho grande compared to anywhere else and b) everything is fricken expensive.  Our nachos were like $18.  That’s insane.

Oh and speaking of quesadillas, the pool bar on the ship now serves quesadillas.  Everyone I was sitting with just now, found that out and left me sitting here alone.  Bastards.

Anyways, after our pig-out session, we went to the beach…again.   On our way to the water we passed a Billabong swimsuit store.  I made a mental note of that, because as you may or may not know I can’t resist swimsuits and I am SICK of the 2 that I brought. 

At the beach we laid out and swam and avoided carl reefs and napped.  It was sooooo relaxing.  It was paradise.  We saw the boat we had gone on the night before and we considered doing another cruise around the island but we didn’t have enough time.  What a shame.  After a bit we got ice cream and then went to get our bikes.  Jill and Doug wanted to go for one more dip in the ocean, so Lexi, Caroline and I went to Billabong,  I may or may not have purchased a swimsuit, that I don’t necessarily need.  But it was super cute and brightly colored, which looks great against my coco brown skin.  Or something like that.

We had to return the bikes by 5 and it was 4:30 and we didn’t know where the bike shop was in proximity to our current location.  Dilemma.  I took the lead again and managed to get us back to the shop with minutes to spare.  A great sense of direction, I have.  There’s a little Yoda-speak for you.

We the planned to take a bus back to the ship, but no buses come to the bus stops EVER so we split a cab back to the ship.

Typically after being in a country for 4 or 5 days, I am ready to go back to the ship. It’s my home and it’s nice to sleep in my bed and to take a shower and have clean clothes and all that jazz.  This time I was not ready to go back.  I wish we could have stayed in Hawaii longer.  It was a little teaser for home.  Even though Hawaii is really nothing like Minnesota at all, it has all the familiarities of home. 

Back on the ship I made a few more phone calls.  I also connected to a free Internet network from the back of the ship.  I was able to make a tentative class schedule for fall semester at USD.  I sign up for classes in 3 days.  That’s kind of a reality check.  I might be taking 6 classes, because I feel like I’m behind since I’m just picking my major now.  It’s going to be a tough semester, especially in comparison to this.

Now I’m on the ship again.  One week until Guatemala.  Then two weeks, you guys.  I’ll be home in two weeks.  That blows my mind.  I stayed up late last night painting for an art project I have and talking with Greg.  We talked about friends and family.  Our families and our past are uncannily alike.  He is basically my long lost Jewish brother.  Who knew?  We talked about how we won’t see some of these people for years or possibly never again.  I thought about who I actually hope to stay in touch with.  I hope I do. I will. 

Well mahalo for reading.  Aloha.