Week 6: 2/5-2/11

Sunday: Super bowl Sunday in the afternoon??

To start my day, I woke up at 8 am did some homework. After waking up Emma, Stefanie, Alexa and I drove to the bay and went paddling with the canoe club from 10 am to noon. Once again I rode in Pono, I love Pono, she is my favorite canoe. This time we went out in the ocean way beyond the breaker wall and jumped out of the canoes and went swimming. It was so much fun! When we got back in the canoes Chris helped me some with my paddling and gave me tips on how to improve my stroke. After that we had a race back to the breaker wall and then we rode the waves back in. It was a blast! After paddling I went back to school to get ready for the super bowl and you want to know what is more fun than watching the Super bowl? I’ll tell ya, watching the Super bowl at 2:00 in the afternoon. It is a weird experience watching the super bowl during the day, and it ending before the sun goes down. I watched the game at campus center with some of my friends and the club SAC. We got free Panda Express and played games; I even won free luxury towels for guessing a question correctly! I was super excited. I was very sad to see the Patriots win again; I was hoping that the Atlanta Falcons would win their first super bowl. It was also weird to be surround by people from Massachusetts the entire game because they were rooting for the Patriot the whole time. I have never been surrounded by so many Patriot’s fans it was crazy. After the super bowl, my friends and I grabbed dinner and then I went to church with Alexa and Stefanie.

Monday: Relaxation

I just relaxed again today. I had a very busy weekend so took the time to catch up on sleep, do homework and see friends.

Tuesday: Hula

After a day of classes, studying for exams and doing homework, I spent the afternoon at the pool doing homework. It was such a nice day that I went swimming in the pool for a little bit and then would do work at the tables. Then I went to Hula class. Hula is a lot hard than I originally thought it was going to be. You have to stand up straight, knees are bent and you have to make sure you don’t move your shoulders up and down, but at the same time it is super fun. We are learning one of the most common dances (I don’t know how to spell it but I will figure it out and let y’all know soon!). My favorite dance move is the Kaholo. You sway your hips by shifting weight to the right side and lift left heel and then shift weight to the left side and lift the right heel up. That is just one of the 4 basic steps you have to know in order to dance hula. It is a lot of fun and really pretty. I am also learning how to speak some Hawaiian. During the song when you transition between versus you must call out the theme in Hawaiian each time you start the versus. After Hula I did homework and hung out with my friends.

Wednesday: Relaxation

Just like Monday I spent the day relaxing and doing homework and studying for my Coral Reef Ecology exam for Thursday. I took a couple breaks throughout the day, one of which was to go grab lunch at BCM and to socialize. Lunch was good again today. We had Shepard’s Pie, salad and Mocchi which is a Japanese dessert. It is my new favorite dessert. After lunch I went back to the library and studied for several more hours, grabbed dinner and went to bed. Today was probably the most boring yet productive day I have had since being in Hawaii.

Thursday: Exam

Today was very stressful. This was the day of my first real exam at UHH and I have been stressing about it for weeks. As most people know I like biology but I do not particularly like studying it because it is mainly memorization and I have a hard time understanding it. But that being said, I do find the class to be interesting and like the material. I don’t think I did particularly well on it because I didn’t know what to expect and I didn’t have all of the terms memorized as I should have. But we will see in the coming weeks how I did and see how I can improve. The good thing about today though was that I have paddling in the afternoon which will relieve my stress. What was even better about today was that it was Rosa’s first day ever catching a wave in one of the canoes! We were all so excited for her! Along with this I got to Ride in Mele for the first time, which is something I have wanted to do since I joined canoe club, and we did a race and my canoe won!!! Go Mele!!! It was a blast! After canoeing, my canoe friends and I went out to dinner and hung out and went to BCM to hang out!

Friday: Community Service Trip

After classes today, some of my friends in NSE and ISE, participated in the Keaukaha Service day. This service project is designed to give exchange students the opportunity to immerse themselves in to the culture and environment of Hawaii. Today’s service project was designed for us to help with the reforestation of Hawaii’s wet lowland forests. There are many species of plants and animals that are not native to the island of Hawaii that were brought over here by missionaries and settlers. They have over time invaded and are killing off the native plants. So, for this service project, we spent the afternoon on one of the military bases by the airport. We were in charge of removing some of the invasive ferns and plants from a plot so some researchers can go in and see the rate at which they are growing and to learn how to control them. We were out there for about 4 hours and got a 20 by 20 meter plot completely cleared. In order to get out to the site we had to ride in the back of truck on the military base and on the road which was really fun. It has been years since I have done that and it is something you aren’t allowed to do in South Carolina. When we were finished clearing the plot we drove back up to the base and had to clean the bottom of our shoes with alcohol spray because of a disease called Rapid ‘Ohi’a Death. This disease has caused a drastic decline in the native ‘Ohia tree of Hawaii’s forests. These trees have been used in the past to make tools and weapons; hula dancers use the flowers for parts of their costumes; and native Hawaiian Birds use them for shelter and get food from them. Without these trees’ there will be a decline in the bird species and could have very harmful environmental effects. When we were done at the service project, I went back to my room took a quick nap, grabbed dinner with my friends. We hopped in a taxi and we went to the theater to see a movie and then walked over to Walmart to go shopping. Julia, Alex, Alicia and I ended up spending and hour or so in the theater and bought Valentine’s day stuffed animals. We spent so much time in Walmart that none of the taxi’s would pick us up so I called Kaliah, one of the Outdoor Edventure Staff members and a friend of mine and she picked us up so we didn’t have to walk home in the dark by ourselves or hitch hike. The car ride back was a lot of fun and she enjoyed making fun of us the whole time for the fact that we bought stuffed animals, but it was still a lot of fun! When we got back it was close to midnight and I went straight to bed because I was leaving for White Road in the morning!!!

Saturday: White Road Adventure and International Night

Today was such an amazing day! I finally made it out to see White Road thanks to Anita and the BCM crew! Now a lot of you are probably thinking what is White road. Well White road is this hiking trail on private property, yes I said private-you have to get permission to go or you just hop the fences like us. I mean who is going to stop a huge group of 20 something people from going J. Well anyway after jumping over a couple fences and following an old spill way you come up to an incredible view of a valley you can’t see anywhere else on the island. Knowing me, we had to stop here for a little while in order to take pictures and man the pictures not do it justice but they are still pretty. After taking pictures we continued hiking up this little trail along the edge of the valley and followed it until we got to this pipe we had to climb/ walk across to get to the other side. Once we walked across that we jumped into a hole and had to walk through an old tunnel that was used to transport the sugarcane via water. Let me tell you these tunnels were dark and the water was very very cold. We walked through the tunnel for a little ways and by the time we walked through all of them we got to this large opening where there was an old sugarcane shoot! It was incredible to think that someone made this so long ago and it was still here!! The shoot was just beautiful. It looked like a large slide that gushes water, and if you haven’t guessed yet that’s exactly what we used it for! In order to get up to the top of the shoot there was this rope that you held on to and pulled yourself up the rushing water going down, this was by far the scariest part of the hike. When I got to the top of the shoot I sat down and went sliding down. I was the second person to go and it was AMAZING! It was so fast and the water was freezing, I don’t think I have ever been in colder water or ever had an adrenaline rush like that. As soon as I got out of the water I walked back up the shoot, but this time I went exploring down the tunnel and found another sugarcane shoot but I wasn’t able to slide down that one because I was too short to reach the rope L. So, I walked back through the tunnel and was the last person to go down the shoot again. This time around I took an inner tube down the slide. I went so much faster but ended up popping the tube from hitting the water so fast and hard…It was so cool! I know, I know most of you are probably thinking what I was doing was crazy but it was SO MUCH FUN! I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to do it again. After we were done riding the slide, we walked back to the vans, and drove to Wimea to eat at an amazing burger joint and then hoped back into the cars to get back in time for International night at school.

An interesting fact about UHH is that it is the most diverse school in the USA. They have students from over 40 countries! Because of this, the school puts on international night each year which gives students and members of the community a chance to show others different dances and gives them the chance to teach them something about their culture. It was a really neat experience. I think my favorite one was the Indian one. For one of their dances they were throwing fire and doing some really cool dances. After this, I went back to my room and fell asleep.

#Superbowl #FreeLunch #Hula #Exams #CommunityServiceTrip #WhiteRoad #InternationalNight