Week 3: 1/15-1/21

Sunday: Hilo Zoo and Rainbow Falls

Today was a very quiet and peaceful day. I got to sleep in for the first time in a couple weeks and go to brunch with my friends. The best meal on campus during the week is brunch on the weekends. The breakfast food is really good. They have all you can eat pancakes, hash browns, eggs, rice, potatoes, fruit, cereal, bacon, sausage, and all different types of food, they even do ice cream which was a lot of fun! After my friends and I grabbed breakfast, we headed over to the student life center to sign in for our adventure of the day. The first adventure was going to the Hilo Zoo. The Hilo zoo is a lot smaller than the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, but it has a lot of cool animals! They had a Bengal and a Siberian Tiger! They were so pretty to look at. They also had alligators and lots of birds like parrots. One of my friends loves sloths and per the map there were supposed to be sloths in the zoo, so we spent most of the time walking in circles through the zoo trying to find the spots where they are supposed to be. Finally we asked someone and they said they had them removed which made Julia very sad.

Monday: Carlsmith Beach Park

Being MLK day and not having any school, my friends and I decided why not take a walk to the beach. So that is exactly what we did. The five of us, Julia, Vickie, Sammi, Elaine, Hannah and I walked the 6 miles to go to Carlsmith Beach Park. We left around 8 in the morning and got there around 10 am. As soon as we got there, we took off our clothes and jumped in the water. It felt so good! It was cold and crystal clear. While we were swimming, I was treading water and I felt something swim into my legs and I screamed. When I looked down it was a little baby sea turtle swimming towards me. The little turtle followed me for a few minutes then swam after one of my friends. After seeing the turtle we decided we wanted to go snorkeling, so we pulled out our snorkel gear which we had bought the day before and swam around and saw so many colorful fish. Then after a while we saw more sea turtles and started swimming with them. I got several pictures of them but we were not allowed to touch them. If humans touch them we can get them sick from the oils on our skin. We swam around, sun bathed and relaxed for most of the day. I met Ono too. She is the largest female sea turtle out of the group. She also just laid eggs a couple of weeks ago and the locals were looking around to see if they could find where she put her nest. She swam up to me several times and tried to eat my hair. She also followed me around a lot when I was swimming. One of the locals said that she liked me and that I must have a good heart because they don’t usually follow people around. That made me really happy to hear when they said that. The rest of the day was spent doing the same, we swam, ate, took naps and sun bathed. When we were tired and wanted to go home, we called a taxi and he picked us up. When we got back I hopped into the shower and then met the girls for dinner and we did homework together.

Tuesday: Yoga and Hula Start

When I was at the gym the other day I heard about different class that the Student Life Center offers and decided I wanted to take a couple of them. One of my goals for this semester is to take a couple fitness class and try to exercise at least 4 times a week for an hour each time. These classes will help me achieve this goal. The first one I decided to take is on Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 6:45- 7:45 am. I decided that I would take a yoga class so that I would stay active and so that I could become more flexible. My body was really sore today after doing Yoga. I never knew my body could hurt from stretching, but at the same time it was a lot of fun. I learned a lot and know that I am going to go back again. When Yoga was done, I went to all of my classes and then spent the afternoon walking around and relaxing. Then at 6 pm, I walked over to the SLC and went to my Hula class. Hula is a ton of fun. It’s hard to sway your hips and not move your shoulders. I probably looked like an idiot but it is a lot of fun.

Wednesday: Relaxation

On Wednesday, I didn’t do much. I went to free lunch at BCM and talked to some students and then went to the pool swam for about an hour, then relaxed and did homework on the pool deck. Wednesdays are usually my relaxation day and catching up on sleep day. Which is exactly what I did!

Thursday: Breaker walk and hitch hiking

After classes, Stephanie, Alexa and I decided to go exploring. We walked 6 miles so that we could walk the breaker wall. When we were there, we met a couple locals fishing and talked to them about the island and life in general. The guy asked us if we walked here and when we told him yes he was amazed that someone would walk 6 miles just to walk another 4 miles on the breaker wall. We didn’t get a chance to walk the entire breaker wall because the water started to come up pretty fast. We didn’t want to get stuck out there or get hurt so we walked back. On the walk back we became very tired and fatigued. We ended up hitch hiking with two nice people who pulled over, picked us up, and took us back to campus. After get back to campus we ate dinner, did homework together, and went to bed early.

Friday: BINGO

In my ‘Ohana class, we watched a movie today on the Hawaiian Language and how the missionaries came over and made English the official language. It also discussed how when the United States Annexed Hawaii, they forced schools to be taught in English and not Hawaiian. When this happened a lot of the culture and language was lost. That was until the 1970’s when a group of people got together and decided to start a preschool completely taught in Hawaiian. Because of this, elementary, middle and high schools were created that were completely taught in Hawaiian. This soon led to the Hawaiian Studies major here at UHH. It was really neat to hear and learn about the Hawaiian language and all the hardships it went through. After a day full of classes, my friends and I decided we wanted to go swimming at the pool. We floated on the rafts and did summersaults and flips into the water. It was a blast. Then after that was done, we went to SAC’s room, which is a club on campus, and played bingo. They had some pretty cool prizes. My friend won a nice camera and sim card. After bingo we grabbed dinner and then hung out for a little while and watched some television and did homework.

Saturday: Volcano Crater hike/ Rain

Today was soooooo cool! When I woke up this morning the rain had started. This was the first day I have had rain the entire day, but anyway, as we headed towards the volcano the sun started to come out and shine with a few clouds over head. I knew it was going to be a good day. When we got to the Volcano National Park it was very chilly and there was a misty rain. We decided to spend a few minutes in the nature center and look at the different exhibits. I also bought some post cards. I love post cards. When we were done looking at the exhibits we got back in the vans and headed over to the volcano crater. We decided we would take a 5 mile hike walk around the crater, down through it and then up again. As soon as we got to the crater a rainbow appeared above it. It was so beautiful. It was the first rainbow I have seen since being in Hawaii. We took lots of pictures and then headed down into the crater. On our way down we were told that we can’t take anything from the volcano or Pele will curse us and they told us stories of people who have been cursed for taking sand and other things from the island. As we walked further and further into the crater, it started to rain more and more but this made the hike very enjoyable because we weren’t overheating. This was the easiest part of the trip. On the way back up I had to go really slow because of my asthma. I made it up, but man did it really hurt. After taking a break, we hiked over to the lava tube and walked over it. It was really neat getting to walk through the shell where lava use to constantly flow through. After the lava tube we walked back to our vans and got on the bus. We missed lunch on the walk back to campus but it was all good cause my friends and I ate peanut butter and guava sandwiches together and relaxed the rest of the day until bed.

#RainbowFalls #HiloZoo #CarlsmithBeach #Canoe #VolcanoCrater