Hello all!
Well, hopefully this will be the final entry – a conclusion to my Up with People adventures. I’ve got two weeks to get through, but I have a feeling my Hawaii weeks will be a bit easier than any Up with People weeks I’ve had to write about :)
Sunday, June 15th, 2008. A day that had been in our eyes avoidingly for the past five months. We’ve always known that it was out there, our final banquet day, but it is was always just a passive recognition – an event that was “out there” and most certainly not here. Well, the present caught up with “out there,” and it was finally time to draw everything to a close. It’s an amazing feeling, standing in one spot in time knowing that yours and a 100 other sets of eyes from both the past and our coming future are looking on this day and the events that would happen. The eyes from the past are looking onto this day with dread, indifference, and uncertainty, while the eyes of the future look back with fondness, smiles, and perhaps regret. And here I stand, in the present, with the one thing both are envious of – the power to act.
Sunday began early enough. My roommate, Mitch, and I weren’t sure when our host parents would be wanting us to hang out with them for the final time, so both Mitch and I rose early (regretfully) to finish packing our things away to prepare for our long travel day tomorrow back to the United States. I took the opportunity to clean out my suitcase a bit, which had managed to accumulate some trash over the past few weeks, and I found myself crossing my fingers in hope that my suitcase would make weight at the airport. What can I say – I picked up a few things in Thailand :) After Mitch and I had both packed up our stuff, our host family took us out to morning breakfast, and also presented us with some gifts. The first was a necklace/pendant with a picture of Buddha on the inside of a glass shell. The second was a moderately-sized picture of a Thai farm scene completely made out of straw. I have to admit that it was pretty cool, though I was worried about HOW I was going to get it home! After all, it had a frame and glass, and I had NO room on my carry-on. So I stuck it in my suitcase, and hoped for the best. (Don’t worry – it made it home. I know you all were worried) :) After breakfast, Mitch and I rounded up our stuff and loaded into our host family’s truck. Our final banquet was in a reception hall of a very nice hotel in Khon Kaen, so that is where out host family took us, dropped us off, and then said their goodbyes. After that, Mitch and I were free to relax while we waited for the afternoon to begin. By that time it was about 1:30 p.m., and the day wasn’t
supposed to start until about 2:00. So we milled around, talking to people and enjoying our last day together, not really grasping the finality that was just around the corner. Meeting started promptly at two, and soon we were winding our way to the reception hall, since we had met in the lobby of the hotel. When we entered, I was floored by the amount of work that had gone into the afternoon and evening. Our final banquet committee had put together a fantastic display throughout the huge reception hall, with beautifully decorated tables, photos, etc. We all found places around the room at round tables, and not long after the afternoon activities began. Voting also began for cast representatives – the people who would be in charge of keeping the cast together once we all left for home the next day. There were four pairs up for cast reps – AJ from Wisconsin and Vivia from Chicago, Maiken from Denmark and Phil from Arizona, Beth from New Hampshire and Alice from Belgium, and Sofie from Sweden with myself. Everyone turned in slips of paper with their votes, and then went off to eat dinner – our LAST sampling of Thai food. Or perhaps just mine. I have to admit that I was excited to get back to Western food – or at least something WITHOUT rice! :) After dinner, we went through our list of cast awards we’d voted on earlier in the week – things like “most genuine” or “biggest flirt” or “cutest cast couple”….(Chris from Hawaii and Astrid from Mexico won the last one by the way). After that, and the laughing that went with it, we all rounded up our items to be put into the cast time capsule – a small suitcase that would be taken home with one of the cast reps to hold onto until the five year reunion, where it would then be opened. Once that was done, we migrated back to our tables for presentation of our “Certificates of Completion,” which were
basically diplomas for our completion of the Up with People program. Along with that was a CD full of the culture presentations everyone had done throughout the year, a photo of the staff, and some other fun stuff that I can’t quite remember at this moment :) Once everyone made it through the presentation (which took a while, because there are almost a hundred of us), Andrew Lanham, our sound tech staff member, presented a project that he’d been working on for us for the past week, something he likes to do for the cast’s he’s traveled with. At the start of the city, he’d asked us to write down in a few short sentences what we’d be taking home from this program – from this experience. Once he collected all the responses, he photocopied them all onto consecutive sheets of paper and put them into a packet, which he handed out to us that evening. There were the responses everyone had made, all the little bits of strength and pieces of knowledge we’d be taking home with us the next day. Flipping through it, it was great to read all the different things everyone took away from their semester, and you couldn’t help but find yourself identifying with other people as you read what they wrote. The final copy of the packet also went into the time capsule, to be found again in five years. After Andrew’s presentation, the emotional fireworks began. Gabe, the staff member sort of leading the evenings events, cued up a slideshow of pictures collected from around the world – from the families of everyone in the cast. On the slideshow were baby pictures of us all, sent in my our parents and family and friends. Once that slideshow was passed through, Gabe cued up another made from photos from home as well – this time, it was of family members sending love and safe-travel wishes and see-you-soons. When the slideshow was over, Gabe came forward with the results of the cast rep elections, and Sofie and I were surprised when Gabe announced that WE would be the cast reps. We went up to the front and collected our new baby – the time capsule of Cast A 2008, and went back to our seats. Once that was done, however, there was nothing left to procrastinate with – nothing left to block our view of the end. The time had come. The evening was fast growing late, and we still needed to change into travel clothes and load the buses for our nine hour drive to Bangkok International Airport. So we gathered together for one last group talk and final, official goodbye.
Five minutes later, it was done, and we were alumni. Good thing I didn’t blink :)
Once we broke, the room became chaos again. I quickly changed and tried to get my stuff into order. We all said goodbye to Imm, who lived only 20 minutes from Khon Kaen and would not be riding down to Bangkok with us. The goodbyes had begun. Before long, we’d all boarded the buses and pulled out of the hotel and Khon Kaen, waving goodbye to Imm and our last city on the road. The bus ride to Bangkok was long and tiring. My bus date was Jessica Rojas and we took advantage of our sleepiness and did just that – sleep! Or we tried. It only kind of worked. We arrived at the airport, we all unloaded the buses and began to say goodbyes. Thankfully we had arrived with about an hour of leeway time, so we had time to make our rounds. Sofie and I, however, spent the first twenty minutes writing in a book that had been a gift to our cast from Cast C 2007 – Dr. Suess’ “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” In it, Cast C had written a message to us, which had been read to us in the Green Room of our first show. It was now our turn, Cast A 2008, to write our own message in here and pass it along to Cast B 2008. Like I said, it took Sofie and I about twenty minutes to figure something out, but we finally did and then put it into the book. Sorry, I’m not going to put WHAT we wrote in this blog because I’d hate to have a Cast B’er hear it prematurely. They will get to hear it in their first Green Room :) After Sofie and I finished, we made our rounds saying goodbye to everyone. I was able to delay my goodbyes to all the Americans since we’d be flying together to L.A., but that left a good amount of other to still say goodbye to, as well as the Americans staying in Thailand for a few weeks still. Even as I was saying goodbye, it wasn’t quite setting in that I wouldn’t see them soon, though. Finally, it came time to check luggage and get our boarding passes. I waved goodbye and walked away from two-thirds of my cast.
After about three hours of waiting in line, going through customs and carry-on inspection, I finally boarded my flight to Hong Kong. Our flight there was short and simple. We arrived there and waited for about an hour before boarding our next flight to L.A. That took about 14.5 hours, and I slept for about half of it. The flight was pretty comfortable, though. On board, we had our own personal media centers where we could choose from huge libraries of music to make playlists, movies ranging from classics to new releases, and T.V. shows new and old. It was pretty cool – and most importantly, free! When we arrived in L.A., it was about 11:30 in morning on June 16th. We had left at 8:00 in the morning on the 16th. There was that day we’d lost a few weeks back! :) I grabbed my luggage from the terminal (including the time capsule which I had decided to take home). Kelsey O’Keefe, one of our cast members who lives in L.A., and her family rounded together all the people staying at her place and we hopped onto a large bus that her uncle owns. We loaded our suitcases and climbed aboard, feeling strangely like Up with People hadn’t ended at all! The feel would only intensify – Kelsey had made us schedules for the week that people would be there, along with host allocations and host codes. We even had morning meetings and wrap-ups! Once we got away from the airport, the group of us (which was about 12 people) went to Tasty’s to have some good ol’ American fast food goodness. It was sooo good. After that, we traveled to one of Kelsey’s friend’s place (who would be hosting a few of us there) and there we were able to sit back and relax and just swim in their pool. Very nice! After a grill out later, we all sat down and watched parts of the Cast DVD. Before long, it was 10:30 p.m. and somehow I was still awake. I paired up with my roommate – Brandon – and we rode with our host family back to their place. We quickly found our beds and crashed.
Tuesday brought a day at the beach. All of us loaded up into the bus and drove to the Santa Monica beach. There, we sat on the beach and caught some sun and waves, just enjoying the fact that we didn’t have to do anything but sit there. It was quite nice. We even saw Eddie Murphy shooting a film on the pier at Santa Monica. After a full day of this, we drove back to L.A., and Brandon and I got picked up by our host family. Before we left though, we said goodbye to everyone there, since Brandon and I were leaving for Hawaii the next day. Afterwards, we ate at a Mexican restaurant, and then went home to re-pack for Hawaii. I went to bed moderately early, feeling sort of sick still from the past couple days, and hoping to get a good night’s sleep so that I could enjoy Hawaii.
The next morning began simple enough. I finished packing my suitcase for my trip to Hawaii. I also packed together a box to send home so that I wouldn’t have to worry as much about being overweight. It ended up being 15 lbs – definitely much better!! :) I and Brandon’s host dad took us to LAX, and there we parted ways – Brandon was flying on American Airlines to a different Hawaiian island, while I was flying on Hawaiian Airlines to Oahu. I checked my luggage, and eventually boarded my flight to Hawaii at 5:00 p.m. With the time zone switch and flight time, I arrived at Hawaii in the night at about 8:30 p.m. By that point, by internal clock was so messed up that one more time change really wasn’t about to phase me. On the approach, I was able to see the sparkling city of Hawaii in a sea of night-blackness, which actually was the sea since Hawaii is an island. I hopped off the plane, grabbed my luggage there, and met up with Chris’ grandmother and grandfather (Chris is my castmate from Hawaii that was hosting myself and about 8 others). We drove in the dark through the busy streets on Honolulu to a military base that we all would be staying at for the next couple days. We arrived about a half hour after we left the airport, I grabbed my stuff, and Chris’ grandparents were off. I settled in and hung out with everyone before I crashed for the evening – the time shift had made the day a lot longer than it normally would have been.
I woke up the next morning to the sound of the rolling ocean. I walked out the back door of our cabin to be greeted by the great blue expanse of Pacific Ocean, line along the coast by trees,
sand, and rock. I literally had to walk about fifty steps before I was in the ocean. It was SO beautiful! For the next two days, we spent our time hanging out at the bea
ch on the military base, which made it a lot less crowded than anywhere else we went in Hawaii. The base itself had everything – a grocery store, a cafeteria/restaurant, a place to rent movies, and a souvenir shop. We even built a sand castle – moat and all. But our time there ended soon, and we packed up our stuff on Friday and migrated back to Chris’ place. We spent Friday afternoon at Waikiki beach on the south shore, swimming, touring, and just relaxing (a common theme so far). Friday also happened to be my 23rd birthday, and everyone treated me to dinner along Waikiki beach. Overall, it was a good day.
Over the nine days, we did a lot of things. And in an effort to streamline this for you a bit, I’ll list
them off. We went to Pearl Harbor twice. Chris used to be a tour guide there, so he gave us a personal tour of the U.S.S. Missouri, and got us to different places not normally shown on a tour. Our second visit took us to the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial, which was very cool to see, onto an active naval f
rigate, and finally a tour on the active portion of Pearl Harbor. On that last part, we got to see some of the places they filmed the movie “Pearl Harbor” at – including the airfield, and that tower in that one scene (I’m sure you know what I’m talking about) :) We also, over the course of our time, went to Waikiki beach a few more t
imes, as well as a few other beaches in the area. One day, we went to Hunama Bay, which is an old volcano caldera which fell beneath the crashing ocean and became a bay. The bay is full of coral reef and fish and different marine life. We all took turns going snorkeling, and just enjoying the view. We also took an entire day to drive around all of Oahu – we even saw the place they filmed “Jurassic Park” and the T.V. show “Lost.” And to top it all off, it was with a bunch of good people from Cast A 2008. A great way to end my Up with People experience.
I flew out of Honolulu Airport at about 1:30 p.m. I happened to have a window seat on the right side of the plane to see the entire island of Oahu as we took off. It was really cool to see it all and pick out all the places I’d been to and seen over the past week and a half. The flight lasted about 4.5 hours, landing me in L.A. at about 9:00 p.m. at night, local time. I grabbed my luggage and made my way to the international terminal where I waiting for my 6:00 a.m. flight to Denver. Yes. I got to wait in L.A. for about nine hours. Woo hoo. Thankfully I didn’t have to do it alone. One of the people from our crew in Hawaii – Kristen Ditges – was flying back home to Denver on the same flight. So we, waited out our long layover in the International Terminal, grabbing McDonald’s and other random food to tide us over. Finally, 6:00 a.m. came and with it we were on a flight to Denver. I arrived with twenty minutes to spare before my next flight, so I said a quick goodbye to Kristen, and walked quickly to my terminal, catching the hostess as they were closing the terminal door. I sat down on my final flight – to Omaha – and my final flight as part of Up with People. Sort of fitting that I was flying home from Denver – the place I started this journey on nearly six months before.
July 1st, 2008, 12:30 p.m. – My flight touches down in Omaha, Nebraska. The world hasn’t looked this flat since Texas :) Still, it’s slightly comforting to be somewhere familiar for once. But at the same time, no matter how much I said to myself that I recognized everything, it all felt strange somehow. I was missing something. A very large something. A hundred-plus persons something. For the first time in almost six months, I was by myself, away from Up with People and the natural support it gives. But for the first time in nearly six months, the road ahead was an open one and ready for my OWN personal touch. NOW was the time for me to find out what I’d learned over the past five and a half months, to learn how I’ve changed, and to figure out where I’m going from here.
And so I stepped off the plane…
Well, hopefully this will be the final entry – a conclusion to my Up with People adventures. I’ve got two weeks to get through, but I have a feeling my Hawaii weeks will be a bit easier than any Up with People weeks I’ve had to write about :)
Sunday, June 15th, 2008. A day that had been in our eyes avoidingly for the past five months. We’ve always known that it was out there, our final banquet day, but it is was always just a passive recognition – an event that was “out there” and most certainly not here. Well, the present caught up with “out there,” and it was finally time to draw everything to a close. It’s an amazing feeling, standing in one spot in time knowing that yours and a 100 other sets of eyes from both the past and our coming future are looking on this day and the events that would happen. The eyes from the past are looking onto this day with dread, indifference, and uncertainty, while the eyes of the future look back with fondness, smiles, and perhaps regret. And here I stand, in the present, with the one thing both are envious of – the power to act.
Sunday began early enough. My roommate, Mitch, and I weren’t sure when our host parents would be wanting us to hang out with them for the final time, so both Mitch and I rose early (regretfully) to finish packing our things away to prepare for our long travel day tomorrow back to the United States. I took the opportunity to clean out my suitcase a bit, which had managed to accumulate some trash over the past few weeks, and I found myself crossing my fingers in hope that my suitcase would make weight at the airport. What can I say – I picked up a few things in Thailand :) After Mitch and I had both packed up our stuff, our host family took us out to morning breakfast, and also presented us with some gifts. The first was a necklace/pendant with a picture of Buddha on the inside of a glass shell. The second was a moderately-sized picture of a Thai farm scene completely made out of straw. I have to admit that it was pretty cool, though I was worried about HOW I was going to get it home! After all, it had a frame and glass, and I had NO room on my carry-on. So I stuck it in my suitcase, and hoped for the best. (Don’t worry – it made it home. I know you all were worried) :) After breakfast, Mitch and I rounded up our stuff and loaded into our host family’s truck. Our final banquet was in a reception hall of a very nice hotel in Khon Kaen, so that is where out host family took us, dropped us off, and then said their goodbyes. After that, Mitch and I were free to relax while we waited for the afternoon to begin. By that time it was about 1:30 p.m., and the day wasn’t
supposed to start until about 2:00. So we milled around, talking to people and enjoying our last day together, not really grasping the finality that was just around the corner. Meeting started promptly at two, and soon we were winding our way to the reception hall, since we had met in the lobby of the hotel. When we entered, I was floored by the amount of work that had gone into the afternoon and evening. Our final banquet committee had put together a fantastic display throughout the huge reception hall, with beautifully decorated tables, photos, etc. We all found places around the room at round tables, and not long after the afternoon activities began. Voting also began for cast representatives – the people who would be in charge of keeping the cast together once we all left for home the next day. There were four pairs up for cast reps – AJ from Wisconsin and Vivia from Chicago, Maiken from Denmark and Phil from Arizona, Beth from New Hampshire and Alice from Belgium, and Sofie from Sweden with myself. Everyone turned in slips of paper with their votes, and then went off to eat dinner – our LAST sampling of Thai food. Or perhaps just mine. I have to admit that I was excited to get back to Western food – or at least something WITHOUT rice! :) After dinner, we went through our list of cast awards we’d voted on earlier in the week – things like “most genuine” or “biggest flirt” or “cutest cast couple”….(Chris from Hawaii and Astrid from Mexico won the last one by the way). After that, and the laughing that went with it, we all rounded up our items to be put into the cast time capsule – a small suitcase that would be taken home with one of the cast reps to hold onto until the five year reunion, where it would then be opened. Once that was done, we migrated back to our tables for presentation of our “Certificates of Completion,” which were
basically diplomas for our completion of the Up with People program. Along with that was a CD full of the culture presentations everyone had done throughout the year, a photo of the staff, and some other fun stuff that I can’t quite remember at this moment :) Once everyone made it through the presentation (which took a while, because there are almost a hundred of us), Andrew Lanham, our sound tech staff member, presented a project that he’d been working on for us for the past week, something he likes to do for the cast’s he’s traveled with. At the start of the city, he’d asked us to write down in a few short sentences what we’d be taking home from this program – from this experience. Once he collected all the responses, he photocopied them all onto consecutive sheets of paper and put them into a packet, which he handed out to us that evening. There were the responses everyone had made, all the little bits of strength and pieces of knowledge we’d be taking home with us the next day. Flipping through it, it was great to read all the different things everyone took away from their semester, and you couldn’t help but find yourself identifying with other people as you read what they wrote. The final copy of the packet also went into the time capsule, to be found again in five years. After Andrew’s presentation, the emotional fireworks began. Gabe, the staff member sort of leading the evenings events, cued up a slideshow of pictures collected from around the world – from the families of everyone in the cast. On the slideshow were baby pictures of us all, sent in my our parents and family and friends. Once that slideshow was passed through, Gabe cued up another made from photos from home as well – this time, it was of family members sending love and safe-travel wishes and see-you-soons. When the slideshow was over, Gabe came forward with the results of the cast rep elections, and Sofie and I were surprised when Gabe announced that WE would be the cast reps. We went up to the front and collected our new baby – the time capsule of Cast A 2008, and went back to our seats. Once that was done, however, there was nothing left to procrastinate with – nothing left to block our view of the end. The time had come. The evening was fast growing late, and we still needed to change into travel clothes and load the buses for our nine hour drive to Bangkok International Airport. So we gathered together for one last group talk and final, official goodbye.Five minutes later, it was done, and we were alumni. Good thing I didn’t blink :)
Once we broke, the room became chaos again. I quickly changed and tried to get my stuff into order. We all said goodbye to Imm, who lived only 20 minutes from Khon Kaen and would not be riding down to Bangkok with us. The goodbyes had begun. Before long, we’d all boarded the buses and pulled out of the hotel and Khon Kaen, waving goodbye to Imm and our last city on the road. The bus ride to Bangkok was long and tiring. My bus date was Jessica Rojas and we took advantage of our sleepiness and did just that – sleep! Or we tried. It only kind of worked. We arrived at the airport, we all unloaded the buses and began to say goodbyes. Thankfully we had arrived with about an hour of leeway time, so we had time to make our rounds. Sofie and I, however, spent the first twenty minutes writing in a book that had been a gift to our cast from Cast C 2007 – Dr. Suess’ “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” In it, Cast C had written a message to us, which had been read to us in the Green Room of our first show. It was now our turn, Cast A 2008, to write our own message in here and pass it along to Cast B 2008. Like I said, it took Sofie and I about twenty minutes to figure something out, but we finally did and then put it into the book. Sorry, I’m not going to put WHAT we wrote in this blog because I’d hate to have a Cast B’er hear it prematurely. They will get to hear it in their first Green Room :) After Sofie and I finished, we made our rounds saying goodbye to everyone. I was able to delay my goodbyes to all the Americans since we’d be flying together to L.A., but that left a good amount of other to still say goodbye to, as well as the Americans staying in Thailand for a few weeks still. Even as I was saying goodbye, it wasn’t quite setting in that I wouldn’t see them soon, though. Finally, it came time to check luggage and get our boarding passes. I waved goodbye and walked away from two-thirds of my cast.
After about three hours of waiting in line, going through customs and carry-on inspection, I finally boarded my flight to Hong Kong. Our flight there was short and simple. We arrived there and waited for about an hour before boarding our next flight to L.A. That took about 14.5 hours, and I slept for about half of it. The flight was pretty comfortable, though. On board, we had our own personal media centers where we could choose from huge libraries of music to make playlists, movies ranging from classics to new releases, and T.V. shows new and old. It was pretty cool – and most importantly, free! When we arrived in L.A., it was about 11:30 in morning on June 16th. We had left at 8:00 in the morning on the 16th. There was that day we’d lost a few weeks back! :) I grabbed my luggage from the terminal (including the time capsule which I had decided to take home). Kelsey O’Keefe, one of our cast members who lives in L.A., and her family rounded together all the people staying at her place and we hopped onto a large bus that her uncle owns. We loaded our suitcases and climbed aboard, feeling strangely like Up with People hadn’t ended at all! The feel would only intensify – Kelsey had made us schedules for the week that people would be there, along with host allocations and host codes. We even had morning meetings and wrap-ups! Once we got away from the airport, the group of us (which was about 12 people) went to Tasty’s to have some good ol’ American fast food goodness. It was sooo good. After that, we traveled to one of Kelsey’s friend’s place (who would be hosting a few of us there) and there we were able to sit back and relax and just swim in their pool. Very nice! After a grill out later, we all sat down and watched parts of the Cast DVD. Before long, it was 10:30 p.m. and somehow I was still awake. I paired up with my roommate – Brandon – and we rode with our host family back to their place. We quickly found our beds and crashed.
Tuesday brought a day at the beach. All of us loaded up into the bus and drove to the Santa Monica beach. There, we sat on the beach and caught some sun and waves, just enjoying the fact that we didn’t have to do anything but sit there. It was quite nice. We even saw Eddie Murphy shooting a film on the pier at Santa Monica. After a full day of this, we drove back to L.A., and Brandon and I got picked up by our host family. Before we left though, we said goodbye to everyone there, since Brandon and I were leaving for Hawaii the next day. Afterwards, we ate at a Mexican restaurant, and then went home to re-pack for Hawaii. I went to bed moderately early, feeling sort of sick still from the past couple days, and hoping to get a good night’s sleep so that I could enjoy Hawaii.
The next morning began simple enough. I finished packing my suitcase for my trip to Hawaii. I also packed together a box to send home so that I wouldn’t have to worry as much about being overweight. It ended up being 15 lbs – definitely much better!! :) I and Brandon’s host dad took us to LAX, and there we parted ways – Brandon was flying on American Airlines to a different Hawaiian island, while I was flying on Hawaiian Airlines to Oahu. I checked my luggage, and eventually boarded my flight to Hawaii at 5:00 p.m. With the time zone switch and flight time, I arrived at Hawaii in the night at about 8:30 p.m. By that point, by internal clock was so messed up that one more time change really wasn’t about to phase me. On the approach, I was able to see the sparkling city of Hawaii in a sea of night-blackness, which actually was the sea since Hawaii is an island. I hopped off the plane, grabbed my luggage there, and met up with Chris’ grandmother and grandfather (Chris is my castmate from Hawaii that was hosting myself and about 8 others). We drove in the dark through the busy streets on Honolulu to a military base that we all would be staying at for the next couple days. We arrived about a half hour after we left the airport, I grabbed my stuff, and Chris’ grandparents were off. I settled in and hung out with everyone before I crashed for the evening – the time shift had made the day a lot longer than it normally would have been.
I woke up the next morning to the sound of the rolling ocean. I walked out the back door of our cabin to be greeted by the great blue expanse of Pacific Ocean, line along the coast by trees,
sand, and rock. I literally had to walk about fifty steps before I was in the ocean. It was SO beautiful! For the next two days, we spent our time hanging out at the bea
ch on the military base, which made it a lot less crowded than anywhere else we went in Hawaii. The base itself had everything – a grocery store, a cafeteria/restaurant, a place to rent movies, and a souvenir shop. We even built a sand castle – moat and all. But our time there ended soon, and we packed up our stuff on Friday and migrated back to Chris’ place. We spent Friday afternoon at Waikiki beach on the south shore, swimming, touring, and just relaxing (a common theme so far). Friday also happened to be my 23rd birthday, and everyone treated me to dinner along Waikiki beach. Overall, it was a good day.Over the nine days, we did a lot of things. And in an effort to streamline this for you a bit, I’ll list
them off. We went to Pearl Harbor twice. Chris used to be a tour guide there, so he gave us a personal tour of the U.S.S. Missouri, and got us to different places not normally shown on a tour. Our second visit took us to the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial, which was very cool to see, onto an active naval f
rigate, and finally a tour on the active portion of Pearl Harbor. On that last part, we got to see some of the places they filmed the movie “Pearl Harbor” at – including the airfield, and that tower in that one scene (I’m sure you know what I’m talking about) :) We also, over the course of our time, went to Waikiki beach a few more t
imes, as well as a few other beaches in the area. One day, we went to Hunama Bay, which is an old volcano caldera which fell beneath the crashing ocean and became a bay. The bay is full of coral reef and fish and different marine life. We all took turns going snorkeling, and just enjoying the view. We also took an entire day to drive around all of Oahu – we even saw the place they filmed “Jurassic Park” and the T.V. show “Lost.” And to top it all off, it was with a bunch of good people from Cast A 2008. A great way to end my Up with People experience.I flew out of Honolulu Airport at about 1:30 p.m. I happened to have a window seat on the right side of the plane to see the entire island of Oahu as we took off. It was really cool to see it all and pick out all the places I’d been to and seen over the past week and a half. The flight lasted about 4.5 hours, landing me in L.A. at about 9:00 p.m. at night, local time. I grabbed my luggage and made my way to the international terminal where I waiting for my 6:00 a.m. flight to Denver. Yes. I got to wait in L.A. for about nine hours. Woo hoo. Thankfully I didn’t have to do it alone. One of the people from our crew in Hawaii – Kristen Ditges – was flying back home to Denver on the same flight. So we, waited out our long layover in the International Terminal, grabbing McDonald’s and other random food to tide us over. Finally, 6:00 a.m. came and with it we were on a flight to Denver. I arrived with twenty minutes to spare before my next flight, so I said a quick goodbye to Kristen, and walked quickly to my terminal, catching the hostess as they were closing the terminal door. I sat down on my final flight – to Omaha – and my final flight as part of Up with People. Sort of fitting that I was flying home from Denver – the place I started this journey on nearly six months before.
July 1st, 2008, 12:30 p.m. – My flight touches down in Omaha, Nebraska. The world hasn’t looked this flat since Texas :) Still, it’s slightly comforting to be somewhere familiar for once. But at the same time, no matter how much I said to myself that I recognized everything, it all felt strange somehow. I was missing something. A very large something. A hundred-plus persons something. For the first time in almost six months, I was by myself, away from Up with People and the natural support it gives. But for the first time in nearly six months, the road ahead was an open one and ready for my OWN personal touch. NOW was the time for me to find out what I’d learned over the past five and a half months, to learn how I’ve changed, and to figure out where I’m going from here.
And so I stepped off the plane…
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AWW
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