Blog 4

On January 27, we would get to Honolulu, and I had to get up at 7AM to go to my SAS Pearl Harbor trip. I woke up in my dark windowless hole of a cabin, showered, assumed the whole world had all stopped, then got to the gangway to realize that a huge amount of students were already lined up and anxious to go seize the day. I got on the bus and we headed out for Pearl Harbor. I saw some cool artifacts in the museum; like letters from soldier's, pieces of the ships and planes, maps and diagrams of the routes and outplay of the events, and depictions of the attack. We saw about a 20-minute movie which was very moving and then got on the fairy to take us to the memorial. The memorial is a long and skinny, white structure that rests on top of the hull of the sunken USS Arizona. Very cool! The Arizona was the big battle ship that was hit directly on its ammunitions chamber and took the most damage, killing 1100 men, who are still inside. The ship is still visibly leaking oil and will continue to for hundreds of years. After that, we all went to the submarine museum, which was cool, but we were all pretty tired and ready to get back to our own ship. The Pearl Harbor experience was worth it and I'm glad I went, but the whole thing could have been squeezed into an hour and a half rather than the four that we took.

I returned to the ship, had my free lunch aboard, and then set off for Waikiki beach. It was a very touristy and crowded beach, we ended doing a little boat ride for 20 bucks which was very cool and cruised up and down the cityscape of Honolulu. I got a cool picture of me driving the boat. This was some more good bonding experience for a lot of SASers who joined in, about 30 of us or so. After, some of my pike bros and I went back to the ship after they had a good laugh at a particular video that they took of me. I had made plans that evening to meet up with one of my friends at home who was in Honolulu on an internship for the semester. I had to take another nap that evening and then woke up around 9PM and left the ship. I met my Colorado buddy at a bar called The shack, but couldn't really stay out too late because of my plans for an early deep-sea-fishing adventure at 5:45AM the next morning. I went to Senor Frogs to meet up with some more people and enjoyed the atmosphere there. I hung out with a girl named Betsy who is on the ship and we spent some of the night hanging out.

The crew that I've kind of been hanging out with and had planned to go fishing with are Tim, Jeff, and Jimmy; cool guys from southern-Cali. I slept on Jeff and Tim's floor that night just to make sure I didn't sleep through my most expensive trip yet. I was able to scrape myself off their floor, and we were on a charter boat about 30 minutes later. It was a good day of chillin' and fishing, though we never actually caught anything, damn! A little disappointing, but I drank a Corona and the captain had a CD with Tech N9ne, and it was all good! The rest of the fellas' started feeling sea sick or hung over, or whatever… and I clearly enjoyed myself the most. I would say Jimmy was hurting the most out of us. I saw a couple hump-back whales and two submarines that morning. One, just the periscope and the other fully exposed out of the water. It was disappointing that we didn't catch anything, but I guess it's the luck of the draw. We got back in Honolulu and returned back to the ship in time to catch lunch, I did a little more exploring and then took a short nap before dinner. That night, I was on the phone with a girl from home for a chunk of time before we departed and before I lost service. It left kind of a bad taste in my mouth as we left the port, no worries though. Everyone seemed to be on the 7^th deck as we shipped out and the lights of Honolulu at night were an amazing sight. I played some cards up on the deck and talked Fraternity-stuff with Tim before we parted and finally went to sleep concluding the Hawaiian adventure.