Hawaii!!!!

Hawaii, Day 1

We arrived to Honolulu Harbor very early on April 19, at about 6am.  They woke us up around that time, and face to face immigration checks started at 6:15am.  After the all of the students, faculty, and crew completed immigration the boat was cleared, just after 8am.  It took a while for the crew to get cleared because only two out of the hundred or so of them are from the United States, and we all know how hard it is to travel into our country.  Chris and I headed out to do what we do best, walk and wander.  We started walking in the direction of Waikiki Beach, famous for its mention in a Beach Boys song and for its surfing.  It had been 10, almost 11 years since I had been to Hawaii but I still remembered some of the area.  We saw so many ABC stores, convenience/tourist shops that have EVERYTHING you could ever possibly want or need.  We stopped to get some Starbucks and it was SO weird paying in American, green money.  And getting back quarters in change was just so weird.  We continued to walk through the Waikiki Beach area, past the resorts and hotels.  One thing that I didn’t remember was how upscale and expensive all of the restaurants and shops are!  It was like Coach, Juicy Couture, Fendi, MAC, Ralph Lauren, Gucci . . . on and on and on . . . so expensive!  Chris and I decided to climb Diamondhead Crater, the remains of an extinct volcano nestled at the end of Waikiki Beach.  After walking about 6.5/7 miles to get there, we started out way up.  The hike isn’t that bad, only about 45 minutes, except we had already walked pretty far to get there!  It was very hot at that point in the day, about 11:30, and the Hawaiian sun was definitely beating down.  When we made it to the top we watched a lady get rescued by helicopter.  There is actually a heliport on the top of the crater for that very reason.  After admiring the beautiful view for a while, we started heading down.  On a side note, Hawaii has the most gorgeous blue sky, and the water is this amazing teal color, it truly is a paradise.  About half way down the volcano we watched an older lady get rescued.  Since there was no place for a helicopter to land they rescued her by basket hanging off of the helicopter.  When we got back down the volcano we took a bus about a mile, and then walked the rest of the way back to Waikiki Beach.  We ate lunch at Chili’s, a restaurant that I had missed so much.  I got fries loaded with cheese, bacon, peppers, onion, and guacamole.  We spent about 2 hours on the beach, at which point it was about 4pm, so we began to wander our way back to the ship, stopping along the way to shop of course.  I got Cold Stone, and it was, hands down, the best combination that I had ever gotten: Macadamia nut ice cream, rainbow sprinkles, cookie dough, and macadamia nuts!  Chris also thought that it was the best ice cream that he had ever had.  We made it back to the ship at 7:15pm, took showers, and went out to dinner at 8pm.  The ship was docked next to Aloha Tower and a shopping center area, so we just ate dinner there since it was already getting late, and, being a Sunday, places weren’t open as late.  We shared a delicious pizza for dinner, served on a mini surf board.  It had thin crust, sweat tomato sauce, cheese, onions, mushrooms, and pepperoni.  I also put fresh grated parmesan cheese on mine, go figure!  After dinner we went back to the ship for the night.  Being 20, I couldn’t drink in Hawaii, so sleep was more valuable to me than wandering around when nothing was open anyway. 

 

Day 2

We woke up fairly early, took showers, met up at breakfast, and then started walking around downtown Honolulu to find a bus or a taxi to take us to Pearl Harbor.  We ran into my friends Laura and Matt who were going to Pearl Harbor as well, so we jumped on a bus with them.  Pearl Harbor was neat, I had been there before but I was too young to appreciate it.  It is one of those places where you should go once but you don’t want to linger there too long, it is depressing to say the least.  After Pearl Harbor we took a bus to Waikiki which took forever because the buses stop about once every minute.  It took about 75 minutes to get to Waikiki by bus.  When we got to Waikiki Laura, Matt, Chris, and I met up with Laura’s roommate and then found our friend Nick, so we all went to lunch at California Pizza Kitchen.  Once again, it was a delicious meal.  After lunch we wandered around, shopped a little bit, and got more ice cream.  This time we got Macadamia Nut ice cream, double cookie dough, and yellow cake.  I think it may have been even better than the previous day’s, if that is even possible.  We NEED this ice cream at home, it is fantastic.  On ship time was 6pm so we took a cab back to the Aloha Tower, walked around the port area for a little and then went back onto the ship.  Hawaii was short lived . . . we definitely needed at least another day in Honolulu.  I would have loved to go back to the big island of Hawaii, and possibly Kauai, but we just didn’t have the time.  One more place to add to where I need to get back to.  Man, I am going to have to make a lot of money . . . .  

 

 

Here is some food for thought . . .

 

Ask me now.  Ask me now, mommy.  Am I too late?  Ask me now, what I wanna do.  Ask me now, what I wanna do when I grow up.  Am I too late?  Cuz I think I finally figured it out.  I don’t wanna do for a living.  I wanna be for a living.  I wanna be life.  I wanna make things grow and move and breathe and reproduce and respond, I wanna make things respond and react and rejoice and relax and relate and release and receive and reform as soon as I recite.  When I grow up, I don’t wanna be like those other kids, mommy, that wanna be ballers and doctors and astronauts, I wanna be passion and heat and energy when I grow up.  I don’t wanna be the fireman, mommy, I wanna be, the fire.  I wanna be the explosion behind the soul’s big bang theory that leaves in its place desire.  I wanna be that burning within that gives life to the word aspire.  Let me, warm the cold souls of the despairing and heartless, let me, light the paths of those wandering in darkness, let me, fill the most primitive with wonder, and provide children with their first definition of “HOT”, and when the artists of the world have become so infatuated with ice that the whole world freezes over, let me be the poet that melts the icecaps, drowns the planets, and starts things over again two mc’s at a time like noah.  When I grow up, I don’t wanna be the astronaut mommy, I wanna be the space that he explores.  I don’t wanna be the doctor, mommy, I wanna be the cure.  I wanna be the prescription for a better life, the way through which the sick and the shut-in can find hope, health, happiness, and healing; I wanna be the pill of which they take two, and the call that is placed the next morning, I wanna be the white blood cells that strengthen the immune system, the clot that stops the bleeding, the antidote that counters the poison, I wanna speak antibiotic poetry that defeats your life’s viruses but ONLY if you take my words in three times a day until the entire bottle is gone.  I wanna be the shot that you are scared to receive but makes you feel so much better when I am inside you, I wanna be the therapy that you hate going to but you know you cannot be better without.  I wanna be the perspective of the world through the eyes of a child, an autistic child who is diagnosed with a sickness when in fact she merely sees the world with a clarity that the rest of us can only dream of having.  When I grow up, I don’t wanna be the preacher, mommy, I wanna be the word.  I don’t wanna be an artist, mommy, I wanna be the art.  not the painter, let me be the canvas.  Not the choreographer, let me be the dances, not the poet, let me be the stanzas, I don’t wanna be the singer mommy, I want to, be the sound! The song you sing the way you sing it when you think ain’t nobody else around.  When I grow up I don’t wanna be the lawyer mommy, I wanna be the justice.  I don’t wanna the philosopher daddy, I wanna be the philosophy that the brilliant minds try to follow or the brilliance in that mind, or rather let me be the elusive concepts that they cant quite figure out like hope, purpose, faith, and time, I wanna be, time!  So that the world will go to sleep every day feeling like they never have enough of me, and will panic when they feel me slipping away and so that when I am up, people will stress out, when they feel that they are running out of me, let me be time so that I will never again feel this depression I feel now for being abandoned by it, let me be time so that I will never miss myself, so that I will never be before myself, never be, out of myself, never be too late never be too early so that for once in this life of unfulfilled dreams that have left my cheeks streaked with saltwater erosion and my mouth perpetually coated with the bitter aftertaste of disappointment, for once I can be right on me.  When I grow up, I wanna be the antithesis of without, the contradiction of silence, the inverse of absence, the reverse of regression, the paradox to mortality, the antilogy to emptiness the illumination of shadows, the antonym of void, the opposite of darkness, I wanna be the opposite of darkness, let me be the opposite of darkness, so that when the greatest poet in existence recites the first line of the greatest poem ever written, let there be light, I can begin.