Waikiki Beach

For those of you have never been, it takes a long time to get to Hawaii….but, from what I can tell already, it is worth it.

I woke up on Sunday morning after a restless night. I kept thinking that I would sleep through both of the alarms I set, even though I did not need to wake particularly early. I did a last minute pull/add of a few items from my suitcase, and I was off to the bus and el to get to O’hare.

Upon arriving at the airport, I met fellow Chicagoan, Kristin, who would be my travel partner for the rest of the day. We experienced a 3 ½ hour flight to Phoenix, quickly ate some Mexican food at the airport, and settled in for another 6 ½ hour ride to Honolulu.

Then, we found another traveler, Maeve; we all grabbed out luggage and took a cab to the East West Center at University of Hawaii Manoa. There, we finally got a chance to meet Pi Poon. I’ve been in constant contact with her since being accepted into the program and it was wonderful to finally meet her in person. She provided us with our schedules and told us our first scheduled meeting would be the next morning at 10am.

Although it was midnight in Chicago, it was only 6pm in Hawaii. Guess what that meant?! That is right, Kristin and I soon found ourselves on the 4 bus from campus to Waikiki Beach with two missions: to stand in the water and to eat dinner.

I cannot tell you how amazing it was to complete both of those goals—the sand was like finely ground baby powder and the water warm, but refreshing after a day of traveling. I ate super yummy fish tacos for dinner, with waves hitting next to our table. In the picture, you can probably barely make out my smiling face right before a wave soaked me.

We made our way on the bus back to campus, and I soundly slept for 8 hours.

It could be noted that the ginormous cockroaches in the shower last night, all three of them, were not even close to enough to throw me off from an amazing start to this adventure. After all, they did have a pretty silver glint to them, and I just waited until this morning to shower instead.