Addictshun

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THANKS TO ALL OF YOU KIDS WHO WROTE TO ME!

 

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Port calls are pretty intense.  At least it seems so, thus far.  We knew that we were going to be woken up very early and that we'd have to go through customs really early in the morning on the top deck of the ship, but we didn't know exactly when or in what order or how long it would take.  Our LLC (Living Learning Coordinator) knocked on all of our doors at about 5:30 in the morning, and the Voice Of God came on over the loudspeaker a bit later to say that it was wake up time and a certain hall (Aegean Sea?) was supposed to report to customs at that time.  I woke up around 6 and went to breakfast with a couple people (pancakes!), and my sea didn't get called until I was leaving breakfast, and I ran right upstairs since I was already on the sixth deck.  They basically just looked at my passport and my face and said I was good to go.-

 

The gangway is where you get on or off the ship, and it can be on different levels, but it was in the rear starboard side on the second deck for this port.  I was waiting around down there, and they opened the door sometime right around 8am.  My friends were there waiting with me, and we walked right to the information center and figured out how to get ourselves to the Botanical Gardens.  We took a cab to rent a car, and went from there.

 

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HERE IS A GENERAL OVERVIEW OF THINGS I DID WHICH IS BORING AND FROM WHICH YOU WON'T LEARN ANYTHING:

 

-Got the car

-Went to Botanical Gardens

-Went to Hilo City Orientation

-Went to Wal*Mart (sad face)

-Went to a Hawaiian restaurant

-Went to a Kava bar

-Went to Volcanoes National Park

-Went to McDonalds (sad face)

-Went to Akaka Falls

-Went to a small beach after returning the car

-Walked back to the ship

 

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NOW COME THE FUN ANECDOTES WHERE YOU MIGHT ACTUALLY LEARN SOMETHING OR LAUGH

 

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When we were at the Hawaiian restaurant on the first night, we noticed that the tablecloth had snowmen on it.  Keep in mind that it's January here, and when I went to the gardens at 9am, I was sweating when I walked from the car to the entrance.  The person inside was wearing a sweater - she said it was chilly that morning.

 

Anyway, Kristina and Aleeza decided to share this big dish full of some local favorites, and I decided to try a couple bites.  Of course it included poi, the Hawaiian condiment that tastes pretty bland but apparently is pretty nice to add to dry food or to cool your mouth after you've had something a bit too spicy.  Apparently most people say it tastes like wallpaper paste, but I thought it kind of tasted like nothing.  There was also laulau, which I think is pig.  We had a bit of it left when we were finished eating, and someone mentioned getting it packed up to take with us.  For some reason I imagined the laulau dish (sort of stringy meat) sitting in a pile on the floor with two teeny duffel bags by its side, ready to get on a plane.  I laughed, and people though I was crazy.  I explained, and people thought I was crazier.  I told Katie later and I think she still thought I was crazy, but didn't say so out loud.

 

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One of the coolest things you can do at Volcanoes is to go through the lava tubes.  There's a lit one right near the park road that we walked through.  We heard from our friends Nick and Max that there's another unlit portion that goes for a while after that that you need flashlights to get through.  We actually walked past it, and one of us luckily noticed the sign on a gated door saying that the tube continued for 334m afterward unlighted, and we could go if we wanted.

 

Jenn, Kristina and I all decided to go, even though we didn't have flashlights.  We all had cameras and cell phones and figured that was good enough.  We went down and saw that it was a pretty flat surface to walk on, so nothing to worry about.  Kristina's flash was really good (and went off multiple times each push), so that gave us a ton of light.  My flash is only one go and it takes some time to recharge, so it didn't help a whole ton.  Jenn was pretty scared, and Kristina was a little bit too, but she wanted to make herself do it.  We ended up walking out after a little bit, and we joked about how creepy it would have been if - in between camera flashes - I had disappeared.  I think that was because I was walking in front, not because they hate me.

 

Anyway, Kristina decided she wanted to go further when she saw that there were no more tubes.  Jenn was too scared so she stayed out.

 

We used the same method as before, and went back a good way.  We went down a four-inch drop or so that we saw coming with no problem.  Eventually we got to a huge mound of rocks in the middle of the cave, and I asked Kristina if this was supposed to be interpreted as "Stop walking when you reach this."  We decided it probably was, and decided to turn back, so now Kristina was in the front.  I slipped a couple of times, pretty quickly after we turned back, and Kristina told me to take her hand and I did.  There was no tension, it was just to stay close in the darkness.  She said it was creepy when she would put her flash on near me and see that my normally very-blue eyes had become 100% pupil.

 

Some hikers with flashlights came our way after a little bit, and we asked if we could walk all the way in with them.  They said yes and we let go of each other's hands, and went all the way to where the ceiling touched the floor.

 

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I'm having pretty good luck with my friend-crushes so far this trip.  Kelly M and Emily B both came out with us at different points this trip, and Toby was planning on coming out with us too until the last second when everyone else backed out because they were too tired.  I met McKenzie when I jumped in to Rainbow Falls, and I think Katie might even want me to be her friend too!  Though I would like to get better at NOT mentioning her ex-boy in front of her, ever, because she doesn't really want to think about it and I can't really help.

 

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During the Hilo City Orientation, we stopped by Rainbow Falls, which I always accidentally call Angel Falls.  It's not a very big drop - maybe about 70 feet - but it's still pretty nice to look at.  The whole bus got out.  I heard that you could jump in somewhere, and so I asked around, and found out you needed to go upstream a good bit and you didn't actually jump with the falling water.

 

I ran upstream through the cleared woods a bit.  There was a sign saying that it was dangerous and I shouldn't swim there, but it was just one of those signs adults put to stop kids from having fun.

 

I eventually found my way to a path back to the river upstream maybe 1/5 of a mile away, and walked through it.  Some fellow Semester at Sea students said that there were more of us on top of the rocks, near where you can jump, so I went.  I saw a couple of them, and asked them how to get to where they were.  They said to just walk through the water, because it was shallow and not too cold.

 

[[There were tons of rocks all over the river at this point, but concentrated mostly in the middle, where they got very high.  Further upriver there were two peaks with grass on them, and the one furthest up was where you jumped from]]

 

When I walked over I met McKenzie and Brook for the first time.  McKenzie was taking pictures and I think wearing a backward baseball hat like she always does and pulls off amazingly well, and Brook was still swimming around the exit ledge because she'd just jumped in.  I took off my shirt and sandals and took out my electronics and climbed up to the jumping point.

 

When I got there, there were a bunch of kids I didn't recognize.  A girl asked me if my name was Jeff, and I said yes.  I asked her how she knew, and she said, "It's written on your arm."  I wrote it on my arm because no one on the bus knew anyone's name, and I wanted to make their lives easier.  Turns out I helped her too.  I think her name was something close to Mehlee, but I didn't really catch it, and I felt bad about that.  A fairly built boy was up there too.  Both were probably about 18 years old.  I asked where to jump from and they pointed to right next to where he was standing.  I asked if he could jump first so I knew that I wouldn't die, and even though he'd just gone in, he went ahead and did a belly flop from like 25 feet up, and swam right out unphased.  I got on the ledge, and they told me "Just jump FORWARD," and I did.  It was cold, but not Take Your Breath Away cold, and it hurt my feet a little bit.  I swam back down to where McKenzie and Brook were to get out, and put my things on.

 

The girl was leaving as soon as I was.  She took her flip-flops on and off a bunch of times as she navigated the rocks, and did so much more skillfully than I.  She had to leave to go to kickboxing practice - turned out she was a local.  I ran back to the bus, and people asked if I jumped.

 

"No, of course not..."

 

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Kava is a local drink that tastes like the ground, numbs your tongue, and relaxes your muscles.  The Kava Bar nearby was a nice place to go, and there were people playing guitar and talking there, so we hung out for a while after Kristina and Emily said we should definitely return.  It was definitely a pretty good time, and I was glad not everyone was going out to drink.  I asked a guy about the Akaka Bill, and he gave me some interest stories about the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

 

There was a store next to it with glass window displays.  There was a fat cat sleeping inside of it.  I was confused, so I took a picture.

 

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Hawaii feels very much like America, and not so much like the Pacific Rim.  It feels culturally dominated.  Maybe it's just because I didn't wander into any neighborhoods and knock on some doors and ask them to let me live with them overnight or tell me what was going on.  I don't know if that's really appropriate though.  But I do wish I could do things like that and know that it would turn out well.  But I guess sometimes opening unmarked doors in more fun anyway.

 

Peace out.