Hawaii Towards Japan

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  Pacific Ocean, United States
Tuesday, September 11, 2007

I have had a busy week or so since I last wrote. On Sunday, we landed in Hawaii, our first port. When I got on the boat, they offered us some SAS sponsored trips and so I decided to buy the trip to Pearl Harbor - because I knew that I wanted to go anyways. I'm really glad that I did! The ship docked in Honolulu around 6:30 in the morning and then we had to go through customs. The customs officials come on board and then everyone has to go through and check in which a customs officer. Before anyone can get on the boat, all passengers on board had to check in. So we were sitting on board waiting for like two and a half hours. The good thing was that because we were in Hawaii, everyone had free cell phone service so people were sitting on their cell phones all over the boat. It was really nice calling home and talking to people.
             When we were finally able to get off the ship, I got on a bus with a bunch of other people and soon we were off. The only person that I knew that was on my bus was Katy, a girl that I met on the bus down to Ensenada. So I hung out with her and her friends the entire time in Hawaii. When we got to Pearl Harbor, we got our tickets and then had about an hour before we watched the movie and went out the boat. So we went and had hot dogs (at 10 AM... not so delicious) and went to the gift shop and just kind of hung out for an hour. When our tickets came up, we watched a movie about Pearl Harbor. I was really glad that we watched this movie because although I knew nearly all the information, it really put you in the mindset of what we were going to go see. I feel like otherwise, when we were in the memorial, I would have just had the feeling of "this is an underwater boat that you can't actually see much of. Cool" Anyways, it becomes a much more sentimental experience for everyone just of the meaning behind the boat. They really stressed multiple times the fact that we were going to a tomb. Thinking of the fact that there were so many people whose bodies still lie in the ship is really striking. There were a other ships that were hit during the attack on Pearl Harbor, and not only were the men who were killed had their bodies removed but the ships were able to be fixed in order to be continue being used throughout the war. But this ship, not only did they not retrofit the ship so that it could continue being used but they never moved the bodies that were inside. Now it has become a real sentimental thing, having had the bodies "go down with the ship" but I wonder how their families felt about it at the time. I don't know, just a thought.
             After the movie was over, you go out to a Navy boat that has Navy men and women driving it. You have to wonder if these people felt really lame spending their time in the Navy driving around tourists. Once you get to the memorial, you walk inside the white building. Each side of the building is completely windows, and you can see parts of the ship underwater. There are buoys that mark where the bow and the aft of the ship are, but you can really only see a few different parts of the ship that were the highest points of it. In the back of the room is a huge wall with all of the names of the men that died on the ship during the attack on Pearl Harbor. There are little stone blocks on the side, recording the deaths of men who were on the ship during the attack that did not die until later. I think they only start recording these fairly recently because most of the people had died in the last few decades. You have to assume that people died later during the war as well as just other times. After that, I was standing on the other side of the memorial, waiting for the boat to come back to pick us up. Every 15 minutes or so, the boat comes and takes everyone that is at the memorial and drops off a new group. So, you walk in the building on the right side, make it all the way to the back and then make your way to the front on the left side of the building. As I was standing in line, I noticed that there was oil on the top of the water. While standing there watching, you could see the oil coming, pretty consistently, out of the ship. Apparently, there was just tons of oil in the ship and they never did anything about it. So 65 years later, it is still coming out.\
             After we left the ship the bus took us on a tour of Honolulu, which was pretty boring. We went up to the Punchbowl Military Cemetery, which was pretty. They have a building in the front of it that has all of these deep meanings, like a specific number of steps for the number of islands and one stone pillar is bigger than the other to represent a father and son. Other than that, we just saw like the capital building and a bunch of high schools and elementary schools and stuff like that. Also, we saw the stadium where the Aloha Bowl is played. That obviously had huge significance for me! I spent most of the time during the tour on the phone, because I wasn't very interested. After we got back, we just went to the beach and then I took my first trip ever to Wal-Mart. It was quite riveting. After going to Wal-Mart we took the bus back to the ship and got on pretty early (around 6:30 or so). The on-ship time for everyone was at 9 o'clock, but there started being a huge line around 7:30 or so. Since you aren't allowed to bring any alcohol onto the ship, they said that people wouldn't get dock time for being late (the line took over 2 hours to get through) if they didn't find any more alcohol. Well, that made some people give up and they just chugged the alcohol in line. So, in addition all of the people that were drunk before they got in line, the majority of the 200 or so people that were waiting in line became drunk while they were there. People had some crazy ways of getting alcohol on the boat though. There were the normal ideas of putting just taping it to different parts of your body that no one should be able to tell (though I do know people that got caught doing this) but people also got really inventive. I talked to one guy at dinner who was completely wasted (he introduced himself to me as "Potato") and apparently him and his friends bought giant snow globes, emptied them out, and then filled them with goldshlagger (I know that is completely misspelled, but I get points for trying?). Anyone that was caught bringing alcohol onto the ship or being too wasted in line (they apparently had a breathalyzer out there they were testing on some people) was given 24 hours of dock time (time in which you are not allowed to get off the boat) in Japan as well as are not allowed to drink at pub nights from Hawaii - Japan. I definitely don't feel that getting dock time would ever be worth trying to bring alcohol on. I would be way too miserable just being stuck on the ship in some cool country.
             Other than that I've just been hanging out on the ship. We have our first exam tomorrow for Global Studies. Most people have at least one more test today or tomorrow, but I don't have anything. The oceans right now are as bad as they have been the entire voyage. I'm definitely starting to feel a little sea sick. A few days ago, they were remarkably calm. As far as you could look the ocean was just flat, like if you took a blanket and were shaking it slowly or something like that. Today I went up to the front of the boat and saw some flying fish, which was cool. People have been seeing them since we left Hawaii, but this is the first time I got to see any. Apparently, there was a whale outside one of the classrooms yesterday, I'm definitely sad that I didn't get to see it! A bunch of people up on deck got to see it to, but I think it would be especially cool to be staring out the window in class and suddenly see a sperm whale!
             Today I got a tour of the bridge, which is where the captain and all of the assistant captains and such hang out and do all of their boat directing. It was really cool! They explained all the different instruments that they have to direct them and things. After the tour was done, we could take pictures, sit in the captain's chairs, ask questions and thing like that. It was definitely fun. One interesting piece of information that I learned was that although they do have navigation stuff on the computers, they are not reliable enough because computers break down so they still do it on a paper map as well. And then I talked to the captain about pirates and we do not have sound cannons on board, but they have big grates to lock all the outside doors, fire hoses, as well as just the fact that we are one of the fastest cruise ships around when they put it in full gear.
             We land in Hawaii in two days, so I am just finishing getting my plans finalized (or as finalized as they are going to be!). I had a dream last night that we landed in China, my bus to the airport was leaving, and I hadn't packed my bags or gotten anything together. It was VERY stressful! So hopefully all will turn out better than that!

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