Pearl Harbor

The busdrive to pearl harbor was about 30 minutes from the hotel. The buss left at 8 this morning. First we went to the visitor center were you could walk around a small museum and see a lot of dirrerent missiles. There were also different memorials, giftshop and pictures to look at. Then we saw a movie that told the story about what happened December 7, 1941 (the day the base got attacted by Japan). Pretty interesting! After the movie we took a ferry out to the USS Arizona memorial. That's the name of the ship that had the biggest explosion when the Japaneses attacked pearl har or in 1941. More than 1200 people died that day. The memorial is place right on where the shhip sank, since the water is not very deep out there you san see the ship under the water.

For lunch we had panda express, think this is the first time I eat there and I really liked it!

After lunch break we went to see the battle ship USS Missouri. The ship is not longer used in the military since 1992, but is now avalible for visiting. The ship was used in WWII. It's an important ship as it's on that ship Japan came onboard to sign the paper that the pacific war was over in 1945. That's the reason the ship is next to the Arizona memorial - the beggining and the end of the war are next to each other ;)

Our group got a special tour since we did a service project on the ship. We swept the entire deck. So now I've done some community service in Hawaii :) I also bought a book from a guy who survived December 7th at pearl harbor, he's sat at the visitor center and signed them, so cool!

After visiting the ship we headed bach to the hotel and just hung out for a while. I went shopping and got ice cream with some ppl. Dinner was at the hotel tonight on the 21st floor so the view was pretty nice!
After dinner -more shopping and then sleeping... Feels like I'm constatly "hyper" during this trip haha!

Day 5 in Hawaii

Already the 5th day here on Ohau! Time goes by way to fast :o
It was raining early this morning so the sand was too wet to have breakfast on the beach, we had it at the pool instead. A guy was playing hawaiian music and a giril was dancing hawaiian dances:)

My group went hiking today. It was a 2h hike up a hill. The view from up there was amazing. You could see the intire Hobolulu and the different colors of the water, really pretty even though we were all sweaty when we got there. When we came down from the hill we all had shaved ice or in my case a mango smoothie before heading back to the hotel. Me, Sofia, Hanna (from sweden), Emilia (finland) and Karoline (norway) went out for lunch on the strip. We found a pancake place. I had one with mango, pineapple, strawberries, whipped cream and chocolate ice cream -yummy!

After that swim and tan on the beach. I think old ppl are tired of having us on the beach with music on by now haha!

At 5pm the buss left to go to a mall. Bought sunglases, ballerina shoes and a bag. Dinner was at Bubba Gump. The Bubba Gump restaurants are built after the movie Forest Gump. So they are kind of decorated after the movie and you can buy staff in their giftshop. It was a pretty cool place! I had a shrimp pasta with garlic/lemon sauce, super good!

Day 4 in Hawaii

Learned a new word in Hawaiian: Mahalo! (means Thank you).
Today has been a relaxing day at the beach. The buses left the hotel at 9 in the morning and the first stop for the day was a viewpoint with a beautiful view over the east side of the island. The next stop was in a small town were we stopped to buy lunch to take with us at the beach, we also got some Starbucks. My new "hawaiian drink" at Starbucks is Cool Lime. It's the perfectdrink her in paradise.

The beach we went to after that was so beautiful that there are no words to describe it. The sand was white and the water clear blue. Palm trees and coconuts were everywhere along the beach and the temperature was awesome. The warm breeze together with the few clouds in the sky made it perfect to lay on the beach. The waves were pretty big though so we were only aloud to swim at certain times, the lifeguard said it was to dangerous otherwise. We also saw a wedding on the beach - that's how I want my wedding haha!! The beach was called Waimanalo.

After a couple of hoursat the beach we returned to the hotel to take a shower and get ready for dinner. We saw an amazing rainbow on the way back. It was huge and the colors were so bright! And it was double! For dinner we had pizza, then shopping/free time on our way back. Has been an other awesome day!!!!!!! :D

3rd day in Hawai´i

The day started with breakfast at the beach like yesterday. Today's weather was a mic between cloudy, rain and sunshine - the temperature didn't change though (80F, 25C).
We started by taking the bus to the Hawaiian state building. On our way there we past President Obama's grandma's apartment (he is from hawaii), pretty cool!
The city of Honolulu is a modern city but with a lot of green tropical plants/trees. Bright colors and very pretty!
Then we went to a big famous pineapple plantation "Dole". Didn't know pineapples grow under the ground... Thought they grew on palmtrees^^. Tasted fresh pineapple ice cream - sooo good!

After that we headed towards the North Shore (other side of the island) were there are several miles of amazing beaches perfect for surfing. A lot of big surf competition are hold here and movies/tv-shows are filmed here. For example 50 fisrt dates and pirates of the caribbean. The beaches were gorgeous!
We also stopped for lunch in a small town for lunch and shopping of souvenirs. We had lunch in a small local thai place were you had to go through the kitchen to use the restroom.. I'm sure that wouldn't be allowed in Sweden! Food was good though.

We finished our day by going to the Polynesian Coltural center. It's like a disney world but with different island cultures. The Islands represented were Fijii, Hawaii, Thonga, Thaiti, Samoa, md maybe some more I don't remember. We saw different shows were they showed their dances in their native costumes/clothes, climbed the plamtrees, played music, cooked etc all in the way they do it on the islands. Very well done and it was fun to see all the different cultures! We also had dinner there and saw a big shou at the end in a huge outside theatre. The show was called "HA"and gad lot's of different dances and music from the different islands.

I've experienced so much today and had so much fun - I love it here!!!!!!!! And peopke from here are so chill, they never seem to worry about anything and are always smiling.
Aloha! (Means hi/goodbye i. Hawaiian).

2nd day in Paradise

The days here in Hawaii starts in a great way. Our hotel is right at the beach so they give you the opportunity to take a lunchbag to put your breakfast in and then go down to the beach and eat it! So wehad our breakfast on the beach under the palmtrees.
At 8.15 we all met in the lobby to leave for the adventures of the day. The sun was shining of course and the temperature perfect :) we walked to Waikiki Beach . As we are a lot of people we are devided in groups, I'm in group "Blue".
My group started with free time. We took pictures, taned and I webt swimming for the first time in the pacific ocean! The water is turqoise and clear - this is like paradise :D

After a quick subway lunch it was finallyour turn to go on the catamaran. We were 40 on it so it was a pretty big boat. We went out in the bay and saw turtles. Soo cool! We saw maybe 6, all different sizes. The biggest one was probably around 1 m. As we stoped we were able to go in the water which was awesome! The turtles weren't afraid of humans so we swam all together:D still can't believe how awesome everything is here!!!
After swimming with turtles we got tha sails out and went out sailing in the waves of Waikiki bay. We also saw some dolphings in the distance! It felt amazing to be out on the water again, that's something u miss living in arizona...

After that it was time for surfing class! We learned the basic stuff like how to paddle /stern the board how to stand on it on the beach before going in the water. Then it was time to try to catch the waves! It was exhausting to paddle -my arms were tired after 10 min haha.. But it was so worth it! The feeling when you stand on the board catching the wave is amazing! Even though it takes a lot of tries to make it! Awesome ecperience!!!!!:D and our instructor was only one of all the hot surfers walking around here in Honolulu haha ;)
After surfing we headed back to the hotel to take a shower and freshing up before dinner. Dinner today was at Hard Rock Cafe !:D had a cheesburger and then I also bought a t-shirt:) the awesome thing about restaurants in america is that you get free refils of you drink, so you never have an empty glass and you don't have to pay extra :D

Aloha! First day in HI

Aloha! The alarm rang at 2.30 this morning. After the 2h sleep we got we were more than ready to hit the road to the airport. Me, Sofia (sweden), Emila(Finland) and Benna (Denmark) flew together. Our first flight was from Phoenix to LA @6.15 in the morning. And then we flew from LA to Honolulu - Hawaii! Thanks to Starbucks we had some energy left when we landed in the middle of the pacific ocean! Sooo cool, still haven't get used to how pretty it is here. The colors are so bright and temperature is perfect, not to hot and not to cold with a warm breeze from the ocean (25C but The city Honolulu is right at the beach and behinde the city you can see the green rainforest hills.

Since we got here at 1pm we had plenty of time to walk around, shop, have a late lunch (shared some great mexican tapas at a bar), feel the water, talk to a surf teacher, take plenty of pictures, see some hawaiian women dancing and buy a beachtowel.
People kept arriving during the afternoon. The hotel we are staying in is really nice. There is a big outdoor lobby to hang out in, a swimmingpool, and beautiful wiev of the beach and the hills. When the entire group finally got here we walked to an other hotel were they served us dinner (buffet) and had a small orientation.
The food was really good.

We are 116 students on the trip so we will be devided in smaller groups for the activities. I've already learned two words in Hawaiian (which has it's own culture and language). Aloha = hi/goodbye, Mahalo = thank you.
My life couldn't be better than this right now:D
time to get some sleep now:)

Soda Pop

OMG OMG OMG!! In just a couple of hours I'll be on my way to the airport and Hawaii!!!!!!
Yesterday after school my dad I went to the airport to pickup Sofia. It is so much fun to see her again. I met her at the YFU orientation in Stockholm before I left Sweden, and she is now in Kentucky. We went out for dinner at my family's favorite pizza place.
Today both my mom and I took the day of from school. Together with Sofia we went on a road trip over the day to Sedona. This was the second time I've been there and it was just as pretty as I remember it to be. We didn't really have time to go on a hike but we saw the church built in the rock, some pretty view points and ate lunch at a really nice little cafe called The secret Garden.
It takes about 2 hours to Sedona so it's not that far. We had a really great time! When we came home before dinner we drove to the library a few minutes from my house as Sofia wanted to get a picture of her next to a cactus (There are plenty of them here). Then Emilia  came over! She is also coming to Hawaii. We had a good dinner and than we tried an american dessert for the first time. It's called soda pop. You have vanilla ice cream and soda in a glass... I thought it sounded weird but it was actually really good, sweet though... Have a good one and I'll try to update during my week in Hawaii!

America is gettin' ready for Valentine's day!

The swedes in Sedona

the church in the rocks

Me and my mom

Me and Sofia hugging a cactus

Sofia :)