Sun, Surf, and Sand

Day 1 in Hilo, Day 9 of my voyage

We’ve hit land!!!!! Many of us woke up incredibly early this morning to watch the sun rise in Hilo…I myself was up at 5 am this morning and on the phone with my mom, dad, and boyfriend around 5:30. It was so great to watch us dock and watch the little tugboat that pulled us into port. The sunrise was absolutely beautiful and so worth the lack of sleep the night before. Everyone was woken up at about 6 o’clock by the intercom because we had to go up and claim our passports and get them stamped and whatnot. They called us by seas, so after my sea was called I went into the dining room to have breakfast. After breakfast, Brittany and I hung out for a little bit before our FDP. It was for our English class, and we were headed to an elementary school and university that are Hawaiian immersion schools. We stopped first at the elementary school which had K-5^th grade. The kids did an amazing welcome ceremony, in which they sung to us in Hawaiian and danced and played the drums and ukuleles (pronounced ooh-coo-lay-lay, so get it right people). We took a tour of the classrooms and got to see some of the teachers teaching, and it was great to see how much the kids, even the really young ones, knew about the Hawaiian language. After this excursion, we went to the university to learn more about the Hawaiian language. They once again did a small welcome reception for us, and we got to learn a little bit about the history of Hawaiian immersion schools. Basically, the Hawaiian language was beginning to die out because the US had imposed an English only rule once we took possession of the Hawaiian Islands, and the immersion schools were created to bring back the language and keep it going throughout the islands. It is easily one of the most beautiful languages I have ever heard, and it only has 14 letters, which is strange compared to the 26 in the English alphabet. Originally, I was not all that thrilled about spending my first day in Hawaii doing this FDP, but I had so much fun and it was great. I had a small realization about Hawaii as well. Last time I was here three years ago, I was only in Honolulu in the tourist area of the islands. Going to Hilo opened my eyes to the purely cultural side of Hawaii. There is so much culture here, and it is all amazing. They are so in touch with their ancestors, the earth, and their own hearts. They are the most welcoming group of people I have ever met, and I only have great things to say about the people here. After our FDP, Brittany and I came back here, and then decided to head out to the black sand beach relatively near our ship. Apparently sea turtles usually head up toward the palm trees and sit on the sand, but we didn’t see any. L After the wonderful beach, we then decided to head out to Wal-Mart for some necessities with our new friend Graham, who also happens to be the token boy in our group of girls. Mine included another bottle of shampoo and conditioner, a beach towel, tanning oil (Maui Babe, which you can only buy here in Hawaii, and it’s the best tanning oil EVER), and SNACKS. Snacks are a necessity on the ship, because our meal times are really far apart and we always seem to be hungry on this ship. I bought some chips, some M&Ms, and some more gummies. Very unhealthy, I know, but they’re called snacks for a reason. After the epic Wal-Mart adventure, Brittany and Graham and I came back here, and then decided to head across the street to Margarita Village. When we walked in, there were about 50 other SAS kids already there. After a week of “forced sobriety”, majority of the people were going crazy. We met two guys who were friends with the bartender and owner of the place, and they were in total and complete awe of the 50 students that were there. We hung out for about two hours; I had one beverage called the pop quiz which was quite tasty. We met people, watched pool, and sang music loudly and rather and obnoxiously. Watching the entire bar (guys included) singing along to Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA” was great. I have a wonderful video of Graham and Brittany singing it, and it’s rather impressive that Graham knows all the lyrics. We left relatively early, came back and went to bed. Sleeping with perfectly still waters was difficult now that I am used to being gently rocked to sleep. Quickly going back to when we first got off the ship, many people were having some issues with landsickness. Some people couldn’t stand still, but were swaying back and forth as they were standing there. Brittany felt nauseous and got a headache, as did some other students.

 

Day 2 in Hilo, day 10 of my voyage

Where to begin for day 2 of Hilo? Rainbow Falls were the destination of the day for Brittany and I, and we left the ship right around 9 o’clock. We met up with two other girls in the port and started walking up the road. We were planning on taking a bus or catching a cab, but one of the girls stuck out her thumb and managed to hitch a ride in a little silver Dodge Neon with a native Hawaiian named Kaveka. He was headed to the farmers market which is exactly where we wanted to go, so it worked out perfectly. We got a little bit of his life story as we were driving. It was his 59^th birthday that day, so we sang him happy birthday in the car, and he told us that even though he was turning 59 and had 17 grandkids, he was still partying. He told us that his 21^st birthday party lasted 2 weeks and that it was the best time of his life. After we got dropped off at the farmers market, we had to wait for the bus to take us up to the falls. It was about a half an hour wait, so we decided to sample some of the fruit the vendors were selling. Brittany and I bought a fresh pineapple for 2 bucks, and they cut it right there for us and we dug in. It was some of the best pineapple I have ever tasted, and we sampled various other fruits as well, including lychee, tiny little bananas, and other stuff. The bus finally arrived, and the 20 of us at the bus stop hopped on for the short uphill ride to the falls. Once we got to rainbow falls national park, we were off exploring. The actually falls themselves were dry because the big island hasn’t been getting much rain this year compared to previous years. Despite the sadness at not getting to see pretty waterfalls, the park itself was still absolutely beautiful. There was a forest of some of the coolest trees I have ever seen. They were huge trees, and their branches went off in all directions and were strong enough for everyone to climb. Some of the more adventurous boys decided to climb the trees, and some made it to about 40 feet up. While we were there, the 4 of us that were all hanging out met a local who showed us some very interesting things and gave us some rather awesome local knowledge. After the falls, the four of us and our Hawaiian guide went to the bus stop to catch the bus back down to the farmers market. Sean (our guide), came with us, and while we were waiting for the bus stop, he told us a little bit about himself and our surroundings. He saw the sunburn I had on my shoulders, and told me that if I got a ginger root and squeezed the juice out of it and put it on my sunburn that it acts like aloe. He also told us that if we took a red hibiscus flower that was closed and we pulled it off at the stem, we could suck fresh honey out of it. Eventually we made it back to the farmers market and our guide left us, and Brittany and I began walking back to the ship around 12:30. While we were walking in the shade it was very refreshing, but once we hit the area with no trees and all pavement, it was hot. So, we decided to hitchhike the 2.5 or 3 miles back to the port. Eventually a guy in a truck who was taking a bunch of trash to the dumps pulled over for us, and we hopped in the back with the few bags of trash he had. Through our conversations though the back window, we found out that he was also from California! Woohoo! Right about now I know that half of my family is freaking out about the fact that I hitchhiked somewhere. This is the only stop on this voyage that I would ever even consider hitchhiking, and I would only do it during the day and with someone else. Hilo is also the only place I would consider doing it, as it is such a small little native town and the people all knew we were coming and were very curious about what we were doing. Hawaiian locals are the most welcoming and warm people I have ever met, and many semester at sea students were shown around by locals throughout the day. Brittany and I returned to the ship around 1, had lunch, and then ventured up to the top deck for some frozen yogurt and some sun. We were out there until about 530 or so, then we headed to dinner, and I went to my room to make phone calls before we departed Hilo. Most of us were excited to leave Hilo, as there wasn’t much for us to do at all. We departed at 8 pm, and we were off to Honolulu. It was nice to be back on a moving ship again. I couldn’t wait to get to Honolulu and head to some real beaches and get a tan.

 

Day 1 in Honolulu, day 11 of my voyage

Finally, a place with a bunch of sun and some great beaches and places to shop. 5 of us got off the ship relatively early in the day, and we were headed to Wal-Mart. Brittany and I had already been, but we went with the others anyways. We hopped on a bus and managed to find the store, ran a few other errands, then took the belongings back to the ship. We all changed into our swimwear and headed out again around 11:30. We took the bus to Waikiki, and walked around the mainly tourist area of town. It seemed as though we couldn’t go anywhere without seeing someone from SAS, whether it was a teacher, other faculty member, or other students. Since we won’t be eating much “traditional” American food in the coming months, we wanted to have some great American staples as our last meals here in the US. Our stop for lunch was Cheeseburger in Paradise. We all got big juicy burgers and we all got drinks in the little souvenir cup. We figured the cup was worth it because of the fact that we were headed to the beach across the street, and we could bring the cup back for refill whenever we wanted. We went back a few times throughout the day, and it was much cheaper than constantly buying soft drinks all the time. After lunch, we headed across the beach to soak up some sun and go for a swim.

After soaking up our rays for the day, we got ready at the ship then headed downtown to Senor Frogs for Kara’s 21^st birthday. There were about 20 of us at our table, and let me tell you, this place is one of the best as far as birthdays go. There’s a stage, there is karaoke, there are balloon hats, the hosts are absolutely hilarious, and it was just a generally fun time. After 10 o’clock they had drink specials from anywhere from 1-5 dollars, so many of the students were using this to the fullest. I had an FDP the next morning, so a dollar drink a friend bought me was all I had. Eventually, the place was absolutely packed with SAS students, dancing, drinking, singing, playing the games they had, and just having a great time. They had music videos playing, and everyone went absolutely crazy when they played “I’m On A Boat”. It is such a stereotypical semester at sea song, but it is so much fun to sing and get excited about when everyone is together. I left around 11:30 with 5 other semester at sea girls, and we caught a cab and came back to the ship and I went to bed in preparation for my morning FDP at 8:45.

 

Day 2 in Honolulu, day 12 of my voyage

Woke up around 7 for my FDP to the Hawaii Psychiatric Hospital. This was the FDP I was overall most excited for two reasons. One, I had never been to a psychiatric hospital. Two, 98% of the patients were forensic patients, or ones who were referred there by the court system after being deemed unfit to stand trial. We got there and got our visitors badges, then headed out to the psychology buildings. We originally were not allowed to even see any of the patients for confidentiality reasons, so we had a meeting with a woman who ran the facility and one of the psychiatrists on the medical team. After our meeting, we were supposed to head over to another building, but as we were headed outside, there was a fire drill and all of the clients (it’s what they call patients) came outside. We all had to go back inside the kitchen as they filed outside for the fire drill. 39% or so of the patients at the facility have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, most of them on the much more severe end of the condition. Schizophrenia does not involve, contrary to popular belief, multiple personalities. Schizophrenia can involve many different conditions: catatonia, in which a patient may sit in one position and appear completely unresponsive for long periods of time; word salad, in which their sentences do not make sense to anyone except for them; hallucinations, such as hearing voices talking to them or sometimes visual hallucinations (visual hallucinations are very rare); and delusions, in which they may believe they are someone else (Jesus Christ, someone famous), they are hearing voices of aliens from outer space, or they believe someone is following them or that they can control people in everyday life. There are some more mild forms of schizophrenia, but many of these patients have the more serious forms of the disease. One of the most unnerving stories the psychiatrist told us (this may be slightly disturbing) was of a patient who had incredibly serious delusions. He believed that everyone in his family was a vampire and that they were out to get him. In order to solve this problem, he decided to get rid of his vampire family in the way you are supposed to get rid of vampires. He shoved a stake through the hearts of his mother and his sister, and then he set the house on fire. The mother and sister survived for a little while in a burn unit under immense amounts of pain, but eventually died from complications. This was a case that my teacher was even slightly taken aback by, and he has been a psychiatrist for many years. One this about this case with the young man was the fact that not only did he have severe schizophrenia, he was also under the influence of drugs. Co-morbidity, which is when a person has one or more problems, is very common in psychology. Drug use is incredibly common with people who have mental illness, and they can usually make the persons’ problems much worse. The guy mentioned above was also a methamphetamine addict, which heightened his delusions and made them more serious than they actually were. Once the man was taken into custody and deemed unfit to stand trial, he was sent to the psychiatric hospital, where he was put into both mental health therapy and a drug rehabilitation program. He was put on anti-psychotic medications by the psychiatrist, and once he began to come out of his delusions and his drug addled haze, he began to realize what he had done, and a very intense depression set in.  He was put into a program for his depression as well, and I’m pretty sure that eventually, after many years of therapy, he was released from the hospital and able to function in everyday life as a fairly normal person as long as he stayed on his medication. For him, the medication and sobriety was the key to his treatment. This was the story the psychiatrist told us as the fire drill was going on. After the fire drill was over and the patients headed back inside, we were able to go to one of the empty wards and see what the rooms were like. Each patient has a single room to themselves, and two of them share a bathroom. The rooms were very bleak, and many of the clients did not have many belongings at all. Some of them did have photos of people on the wall, from actors and actresses to pictures they simply pulled out of Vogue. The ward we took a tour of had cameras and mirrors everywhere, and we learned that the unit used to be an “open” unit. They had an open reception desk, vases with flowers, and a fish tank. It wasn’t until the vases got thrown and the fish tank broken that they put walls up around the reception desk and everything became much more closed and had more of a prison-like feel. Despite this, the beauty of outdoor Hawaii still managed to shine. They would have small courtyards in the middle of the wards that were very green and grassy. We also got to head down to the Aloha Garden they have on the premises. Many of the clients that are at the hospital work down in the garden. They are pretty much free to roam around the garden and do what they want. They grow taro, passionfruit, coconut, and many other things. Many of the clients love to come down to the garden and get away from the incredibly structured day of the hospital. We got to try crackers with homemade passionfruit jam that some of the clients had made earlier in the day. It was absolutely excellent, unlike the poi that many people tried. I had tried it a few years ago and discovered that it tasted like glue, so I didn’t have any desire to try it again. After the garden we were able to head back up with our guide for the closing statements and last few points of the tour. One of my absolute favorite facts about the hospital was the fact that they used one of the wards on Lost to film Hurley’s scenes in the mental hospital. After a quick goodbye, we hopped back on the bus and headed back to the ship.

Once I got back to the ship, I waited for Graham to get back from developing his pictures, then we were headed out to get Japanese rail passes and to see Pearl Harbor. We hopped in a cab to get the Japanese rail passes, and we ended up at a Japanese travel agency. The ladies were very helpful, and we were in and out of there in about 15 minutes. After this, we hopped on the bus and took about a 30 minute ride to Pearl Harbor. People watching on the bus is a really fun time, as there are so many people that use public transportation. One of the more interesting experiences Graham and I had on the bus was when a rather large Samoan woman sat next to us. He and I were sitting in a group of three seats, and she got on the bus and wiggled her way right next to me, so that I was forced to move over and squish poor Graham up against the side of his seat. It was rather uncomfortable for about 5 minutes, until the woman moved across from us and sat down in an empty seat. Now, when she sat by herself, she took up about two seats, so you can imagine how uncomfortable it was for the two of us for a little while. In the end, we were just able to laugh about it and continue on our day. Once we hopped off the bus at Pearl Harbor, we made our way over to the ticket counter and were told that if we hurried up we would be able to catch the last boat out to the Arizona Memorial. We got out there, took some pictures, looked at a bunch of the names on the wall, heard a little bit about the memorial from the guide, then hopped back on the boat and headed back.

The entire time Graham and I were touring Pearl Harbor, I was also texting my friend Colin. He is a friend of Perry’s from the military who I became good friends with as well, and he is stationed at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, which is right around the corner from Pearl Harbor. He had a promotion ceremony that started at two, so I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to see him at all that day. Fortunately, luck was on my side. He was done with his ceremony around 3:45, so he came and picked me and Graham up at Pearl Harbor. We didn’t want ship food for our last meal in the US, so Colin took us to Taco Bell. J You all know how much I love Taco Bell, so this was perfect, and Graham and Colin were very excited about it too. After Taco Bell, Colin took us back to the ship around 4:45. It was great to see Colin, as I hadn’t gotten to see him since July. He is getting deployed to Turkey for two and a half months in April, so it will be quite a long time before I get to see him again.

Once back on the ship, I made all my last minute phone calls before I had to shut my phone off for the next three and a half months. It will honestly be really nice to not have a phone or access to Facebook, but I will miss having the ability to pick up the phone and call family or friends whenever I want. On the bright side of being cut off from technology, you are forced to be social here on the ship. It’s great! If there is someone that does not like being social and doesn’t like people, this is definitely not the trip for them. One thing my group of friends is not looking forward to are the next 11 days on the way to Japan. It is the longest passage of the entire voyage, and I know many of us will be so excited to get off the ship once we get to Japan. On the bright side, we can rent games from downstairs, and we all split the cost of Twister at Wal-Mart, so that will give us something to do while we are stuck here on the ship. We also have cards and movies too, so hopefully that will make the time pass a little bit faster. There are a group of about 5 or 6 of us that always hang out on the ship, so we are getting as creative as we can with varying ways to play games and have fun. It is reading time for me, so I will be updating soon, maybe about halfway between here and Japan, even though there really isn’t much to update you on. Oh, and on another side note, the only way to really post photos is if I am off the ship and I have wireless internet. We can’t send attachments in an e-mail unless they are tiny, and I don’t know if my computer can get them down to that small of a size, or if you would even be able to see them. I will try to send them to my blog, but if you guys don’t see them, I am sorry. Love you all!