13th of April - Hard Rock Café and departure

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And the trip came to an end. It was so good to have you all in Hawaii, this land of amazing sightseeing and particular atmosphere. During a week we had the best time, sharing friendship, nice beaches, and a lot of fun.  We were the typical Hawaiian Ohana, we will miss you a lot and hope to see you very soon.

Mahalo,

Aloha.

Fred, Kiersten, Corinne and Ty

12th of April - Pearl Harbour

Alooooha!

Tuesday and the sun is still shining!

The day was warm and muggy and some of us went surfing the first thing in the morning! Unfortunately the waves weren't big enough so the surfers had a hard catching the tiny waves.

Me, including a few others went power walking in the beautiful Hawaii morning sun!

My breakfast, that was of our choice this morning, consisted of a delicious, antioxidant, Hawaiian, acai bowl/smoothie!

After a lazy morning, we took the bus, driven by the amazing Alfred, to Pearl Harbor. We were greeted by incredible nice staff and entered the memorial! While in the cultural memorial we learned more about the history of WWII, unfortunately because of bad weather conditions the boat to USS Arizona got closed! That resulted in earlier departure from the memorial but more beach time!

Back on Waikiki, most of us went to the beach to enjoy the beautiful Hawaii weather.
The sun was hot on our not sun protected faces, but we were more than happy get a light sun burn the last day of our trip! (Hello we wanna be more tanned than our friends back at home)

Back at the hotel after an amazing afternoon with,sun and frozen yogurt, we got ready for an incredible Japanese buffet dinner!
The dinner was for sure interesting with a lot of new flavors and smells, doe I wouldn't recommend the restaurant for future trips!

Most of us shopped or just enjoyed Honolulu during our last nightly free time. At 10.30 we gathered back at Ohana east for information and cupcakes!

Surprisingly we got even more free time after the meeting until 01.30!

Right now its 02.30 and after a long day with lots of sun and shopping me and Meredith are happy to say goodnight and mahalo for today!

Xoxo
Josefina

11th of April - North Shore and Polynesian Cultural Center

Yoyo,

We had a pretty busy day Monday so i'll try to keep it short. 

Some of us started their day by going to the beach at 6am to surf; surfing with a rainbow over their heads. For the others, including myself, we just "slept in". We all met each other at Denny's to eat breakfast.

After that, it's with enthusiasm that we jumped in our bus direction the pineapple plantation. We didn't get to see the actual plantations but we ate a lot of fresh pineapples and pineapple yogurts. Some of us also got some face and Henna tattoos. We hang out a little bit there before we left for another existing Hawaiian spot.

Our next stop was the north Shore. For those who don't know what it is,  it is where the surf world championships take place every year. Even though the waves are the tallest/biggest in January we were able to see some humongous ones... We were all so exited ! From everywhere you could see us taking picture. As I were taking a picture with the French crew (because yea, nice to meet you I am Meredith from Paris, France) some incident happened. So basically I had my shoes on on a beach so I decided to threw them a few meters away from us to take our picture. But for some, I guess unfortunately reasons, a big wave crashed right in our backs taking not only us by surprised but also my shoes.

Half laughing and scream I started running after them. It is with a lot of regrets that I have to tell you guys that I lost one of them in the ocean. It was so sad but so funny at the same time. Also scary as the waves were coming crashing in front of me when I was trying to get my shoe.  Kind of lost I just gave up and followed the rest of the bus back to the bus. For Runa, Susana, Agathe, Anthony and I, it was we pleasure that we met an old pro surfers on his way back to the beach. Nicest person ever! We took the bus to stop in a small town before we actually go to the Polynesian center. 

We had an hour to eat a snack and shop if we wanted to. With Josefina, Emma, Frida and Maud we decided to go a little bakery. For the outside it looked cute and normal but inside, amazing. Small prices with a lot of flavors! We bought some smoothies and home made cookies... I personally took the dragon fruit smoothie, following the advices of a young man who entered the shop a bit after us. Happy I trusted him because that was really tasty, kinda like candy. We left the  bakery after spending a good 30 minutes there. We were sad because that was seriously a really cool place. Again, we all took the bus direction....the Polynesian center !

 

So many things to say about this place! First of all we stayed from 3 to 9 or so so that is a pretty full afternoon. The center is organised by "islands". In each one you could learn about their culture, their history and more. We took pictures with people wearing their traditional costumes, we got tribal tattoos and learned how to dance the hula. Every one of us could do what they wanted, do their own itinerary but that's what we did. What I enjoyed the most was listening to the history of the islands of Figi and Hawaii but we also stopped by Tahiti (French Polynesia yohou). The learning of the hula was so amazing it was like we were lilo in the Disney movie. 

At 4.30 we had to all meet up for dinner. Hold on : funniest dinner so far. We were just eating and some guy was doing the animation on the main stage. Some dances, some good music it was just a really good atmosphere to be in. But close from the end Josefina and I needed to go to the bathroom. As we stood up we start hearing a romantic song so to make a joke we decided to start dancing a slow. "Bad luck" the entertainer was calling on stage the couples in the room. If you already guessed what we did, good job! We ended up going on stage with couple that have been together for years and years. Funny moment, not as awkward as you could think it could be. After that some hula dancers called volunteers on stage stage half of our group went on. We start learning more hula moves : how to move your hips really fast doing circles -not that easy. After enjoying our seconds of glory one of the woman called back Thomas on stage. He started dancing with the all crew because yeah, Norwegians can move their hips really well. He was the star of our night! Shortly after that we went to the show. It was amazing, thrilling, moving...but so long! I forgot confusing also. The dancers were really good, the story was about all the islands of Polynesia getting together but for me it took me a while to understand it. It was good but after our long day impossible to follow. I don't know if I should tell you but some of us may or may not have fallen asleep during the show. At 9 we came back and it was so late after night that, it is the reason with you are only getting that journal today.

Hope you enjoyed like I did! That was probably our best day so far and I came back with lots of starts in my eyes, a big smile on my face and again...only one shoe.

Meredith

10th of Abril - Catamaran

Our fifth fantastic day in Hawaii started a little bit earlier than usually. We had to get up a half hour earlier today, to catch our ride with a Catamaran. It’s not hard here to get up early in the morning. Everybody is so excited for the day, that you don’t even have time to be tired with all the fun program, that we have here. So we caught our ride with the Catamaran. They offered us a 1 hour ride and we got really lucky. The sea was really calm, so we got to swim right in the middle of the ocean. We even saw some dolphins and a sea turtle. Everybody took lots of pictures of our beautiful island Oahu and of the sea. The Swimming was the best part they gave us 15 minutes to swim  in the clearest sea I have ever seen. After our boats tour we went straight to the hotel. We didn’t have much time, to get ready to go to the mall. So around noon, we where in the mall here  in Hawaii. First we all had some time for shopping, before we had the talent show for the Hawaii trip 2016. Thomas, Anthony and Eric just nailed it with their Hawaiian dance. We had a great dance performance from Frank and after that from Ty. J did some really cool rapping, Coco did a handstand and some other stuff. Well and Fred at least tried a handstand. We had some other stuff that I didn’t list. But it all ended with an amazing sing and dance performance from the staff of Forrest Gump Restaurant in the mall. After that we had the whole day free time to relaxe at the beach or to some shopping. Our amazing 5th day ended around 11pm, when everyone was excited to see if the next will be even better.

9th of April - Hanauma Bay

Another fantastic day! Waking up is still a struggle because we just love to sleep. Once we get up and see the sun, no one is tired anymore. Today we got to pick our own breakfast. They have delicious fruits in every store, so the first meal of the day is always a good one. After gathering in the hotel, we went to Hanauma Bay to go snorkeling. I think everyone was super excited! The view was gorgeous and although it was my first time professional snorkeling, it went really well! We saw so many different fish in beautiful colors. We also saw a lot of red lobsters and shrimp today because so many of us have a sunburn. Hey, that's what you get for being in Hawaii :-)
In the afternoon, we had a couple hours of free time. I went surfing with other students. Emma caught a nice wave, and Anthony and Tomas looked like real Hawaiian surfer boys. Kylie and Claudia were laying on their surfboards to get a tan. There weren't a lot of waves today, but every now and then some of us caught a nice one. 6'o clock means dinner time: eating pizza while watching the sunset. What a way to end the day. At night we got some time to explore the city a little bit more, get the real Hawaiian flowers, watch street shows or go shopping. All we need is a good night of sleep to have an even better day tomorrow, if that's even possible!  Aloha (this also means goodbye)

Maud, Belgium

8th of April - Surfing

Today was the second day in Hawaii, we had a gift card from Starbucks to get breakfast. Then we had surf lessons, we were divided in multiples groups with different teachers. The waves were good for beginners so everyone had an awesome time.
We had free time and a lot of people got sunburned, so therefore no one is going to get any sleep tonight. After that we went to a park to ate our dinner, we also got to play around with soccer balls, people went swimming and hang out with music. We watched the sunset and took a lot of pictures. Then we watched a fireworks on the beach and we introduced ourselves to each other. We got back to the hotel, had free time, a briefing and went to bed.

This day was just awesome, because we got to know each other a lot better and the weather was great.

Emma, France.
Erik, Denmark.

7th of April - Diamond Head

Today was our "first" day in Hawaii. All of us woke up at 7 this morning to go for breakfast at Denny's. We had 3 different choices for breakfast, we can have pancakes, eggs, fruit, yogurt, bacon, sausage and beverage. It was very good!  At 10 am, we had a meeting, we learned everything about what we can and can't do.  After the meeting, we took the bus to go hiking at Diamond Head. We walked 30 minutes to be at the "bunker" on the top of the volcano. We had a amazing view and lots of fun! It was sunny and very warm.  After our very good walk on the volcano, we had free time to go eat. Most of the exchange students went to the Subway close to the Hotel.  At 3, all of us went to the famous Waikiki beach. The water was so warm and pretty, it was AMAZING.  After the beach, we went to take a shower to be prepared to go in a very good burgers place. The burgers were HUGE!  And for the rest of our night we had free time. All of us went downtown Waikiki to see the different shows and to go shopping.

It was a really fun day, and now we are ready for the next day! 

Anthony, France