Endless Summer Tiny World

hey everyone! I made it! I am in Cape Town, South Africa! The flights were both super long, 7 hours and 11 hours. But I was happy to get a window seat on the 11 hour flight so it was a little easier to sleep with somewhere to put my head. My layover was in Amsterdam, which I have now decided is my favorite airport so far. They have a library, a kids playing area, comfort chairs to sleep in… even a meditation area! I love it! Last night I got in really late so pretty much just looked around, checked out some information and then headed to bed. I can definitely tell that my sleep schedule is off cause it is super hard to fall asleep, but give that a day or two and I’ll probably be back to my old ways of being asleep in minutes!

So far I don’t have too many plans at all…I can already tell that Cape Town is going to be super expensive, as a city bike tour is about $50, but oh well. I might just do some kind of tour anyways, just to ease myself back into this travel thing! Thanks so much everyone for your emails and your comments! I love hearing from all of you! I am off to some breakfast and then off to do a couple essential things before heading out into the city!

I am about five days out from leaving!!! I just got back to Appleton to September’s house (where all my stuff is) so that I can repack and pack for my trip! It is kinda crazy and overwhelming how much stuff I need to do, but also if some of it doesn’t get done it’s not the end of the world!

I am super super excited! I can’t wait to go, but at the same time I am getting “cold feet”. I’m mostly just a little freaked out  about traveling by myself. Not for the fact that I have no one with me, just that I have never done it before and so that is the unknown and for right now it is out of my comfort zone! But I will cure that quickly come Saturday when I land in South Africa!  But for now I need no worries, only encouragement! And I don’t doubt I’ll have a great time, everyone who travels by themselves says they think it is great, so I think I will too. My worry is if I still have the ability to make new friends out of strangers. It is funny but it feels like it has been so long since I have done that, that maybe I don’t have that ability anymore, though I guess I just went through making all kinds of new friends on ship! And what if no one likes me! haha! I know this seems ridiculous, but these are things going through my head as I pack and before I leave!

Anyways, I made a reservation for my first three nights in South Africa and my shuttle to the hostel. My first night will be spent at the Backpack and Africa travel centre. It is supposed a very highly rated hostel and I look forward to it. You ask what will be the first thing I do and the answer is I have no idea. I get in so late the first night that it will just depend on how much I wanna sleep the next day!

Since I’ve left Hawaii with my mom I have been very busy visiting family and friends! I went from Hawaii to Denver where I met up with 8 other friends and headed to a condo we rented in breckenridge! Highlights from the weekend were being able to snowboard, making a nutcrackers arm fall off, our superbowl party, the packers winning the superbowl and of course being able to spend all that time with my friends even though it may have been too brief for the visiting the girls who live in Colorado!

I went from Colorado to september’s in Appleton and spent the week visiting with high school friends and preparing for september’s bridal shower! The bridal shower was a great success with about 20 – 25 attendees! I think I kept it unusual with non-traditional bridal shower games! From there I went down to Illinois to spend a couple days at greg’s and then head to my dad’s for awhile. September also came down to my dad’s for the weekend as well which was great! We had a good week visiting grandparents, a huge euchre tournament and of course karaoke! Last Sunday I headed from my dad’s up to Minneapolis, this may not have been the best idea ever as there was a terrible snow storm in Minneapolis, so the trip went from a 7 hour drive to an 8 hour drive with some terrible driving conditions! But I made it safe and sound thankfully! And also made it to lots of white snow that I have been missing from my life for awhile! I was able to stay with my friend bear for awhile and I am now at my bff’s house trying to recover as I have been feeling a little under the weather! Overall it’s been great! We’re headed to bar bingo tonight and I’m sure we’ll have lots planned for the weekend, maybe some cross country skiing in that white stuff!! Next Sunday I’ll be headed up to Duluth for about a week before heading back to Appleton to repack for my first leg of my adventure! I will also spend a couple days in Chicago to meet up with friends from the ship and then fly out of o’hare!

I have a lot to do before I leave, but mostly thinking of packing is the most overwhelming thing for now! Hopefully I won’t get too out of hand and everything I want to bring will fit nicely in my pack!

It was a beautiful day to visit Pearl Harbor today, the sun was shining and the breeze was blowing off the ocean, probably much like the morning of December 7, 1941. Pearl Harbor is very interesting to go to, extremely sad and definitely a must see for a trip to Hawaii, but so sad and I am not sure I could do it more than once. The most heart wrenching stories were of the men who saved the soldiers trapped in the sunken battleships. I had a hard time getting through the videos of the men who served and survived to tell the stories. 

Going out to the USS Arizona was very emotional as well. I loved how they ran the whole thing, making it a place of silence. It is terrible to see the wall of  names of all the soldiers who went down with the Arizona. I think the whole place is great, very interesting and as they say something we should never forget and should learn from.  I got a couple of great quotes and think they are things we should all learn from. One is: “Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men died to win them” by FDR and also ” Dear Lord lest I continue my complacent way help me to remember somehow out there a man died for me today. As long as there be war I then must ask and answer Am I worth Dying for?” which is a poem Eleanor Roosevelt kept in her wallet during world war II.

I think these both put people in a reality check as does the whole memorial. Definitely something I suggest every person visiting Oahu does once, and I am happy I finally got to go!

So it’s a little strange thinking that tomorrow I am leaving the state I have kinda come to know as my home. But I am not that sad, the hard part is over – saying bye to all my friends on ship. I will head to Colorado tomorrow, and I hope eveyone makes it. There is going to be about 9 of us and one is stuck in Texas tonight, where the snow may hinder them, and another has gotten sick! So hopefully all works out fine and we will have a great weekend in Colorado!!

We have been having a great time in Oahu. We have hiked to the makapu’u lighthouse, pali highway look out, driven the whole island and we have been joined by my friend Lange from the ship. We have a four bedroom house in Wahiawa.. so it’s a little extreme but still nice with a great view of the mountains. The other day we were driving around the southeast end of the island and I convinced Lange to hike up to the top of Koko Crater. It is 1,048 steps up! I almost died, once you start heading up the stairs the elevation hits you and it is terrible! But once you get to the top the view is all worth it! We spent an entire day at the Polynesian Cultural Center, which was cool because Lange had a friend who worked there, so it was like having a personal tour guide to take us around. Today we went cage diving with sharks. It was great! Four people at a time get in the cage and when we were in we had about 6 – 8 sharks swimming all around us. Some of them close enough that you can almost touch them. It was so cool! The tour guides told us they were sandbar sharks. They were probably 4 – 8 feet long. We were unable to find bigger sharks because they were being hunted by pilot whales but im just happy we got to swim with these sharks!

Tomorrow we will hit up Pearl harbor before preparing to say my goodbyes to the beautiful islands of Hawaii and return to the mainland for awhile!

I am finally off the ship and am now on vacation permanently…. for at least a year I hope!! I ended up my contract in a bar I had been in for four months… which gets tiring, it’s like having ground hog week over and over again. That is the reason I didn’t have many posts. I worked my bar all day and had no more than two hours off during a day but had the nights off, so my adventures consisted of dinners out. It is very strange thinking of being done. I am not really sad because I still get to see everyone last week and this week while I’m in hawaii with mom, and I am too excited about my trip around the world to be very sad. But I will definitely miss all the great friends and people that I work with on ship. That is the hardest part about leaving is saying bye to all the people. But I know I will keep in touch with them, and when I am back and settled I will visit people and have people around the US to visit!

After I got off ship my mom flew out here to hawaii to visit cause she has never seen any of the state. So I have been here in hawaii for two weeks and have one more to go before I go back to the mainland. Last week we were on the big island staying in Kona at a very nice resort. The surf out here has been huge this winter, so a lot of the beautiful beaches north of kona were closed. But we definitely were still able to find things to do. We took a boat out to where the lava flows into the ocean, unfortunately the lava wasnt flowing into the ocean, but we still saw some lava and some trees spontaneously combust into flames since the ground they were on was too hot! It was very cool to do. We also went to the national park and to the macadamia nut farm. Luckily the ship was in port that day so we were joined by some of my ship friends. We also spent our days driving around the island and even drove up and down the waipio valley…. which was crazy since it is such a huge hill and you can only make it up and down in four – wheel drive. We also drove up to the top of Mauna kea the large volcano on the big island and saw people snowboarding on the island of hawaii….kinda strange!

We are now in Kauai and have been enjoying the sun and almost secluded beaches a lot! We have also taken a boat out along the napali coastline and have driven to waimea canyon and the kalalau lookout. Today a bunch of people from the ship are going to come and visit and hang out with us and tomorrow we will bike the coast trail by kapa’a. We head to oahu on saturday for our last week and will be seeing the island there. I then head from there to Colorado for a weekend and then back to wisconsin. I only have about 6 weeks until I am off on my first part of my trip and I can’t wait, but I have lots of stuff I need to get and lots to prepare for, some I am able to do from here, but not all! I also have a bridal shower for my sister to plan, so I think I am going to be very busy visiting everyone before I leave and preparing for the trip! I am so excited though!

Wow! It’s been awhile since I’ve posted but mostly because o got a new bar where I work all day long so that means a lot less time for adventures. Having a new bar is good and bad, I was super bored at my old bar and this one is much busier and more responsibility so there is more for me to do, but like I said earlier less time for adventures!

But the big news I have is that I bought the first portion of my round the world ticket!! I leave put of Chicago on march 11and get to capetown south Africa on march 12… Then make my way by land up to Kenya and fly out of Nairobi on may 22 and go to Dakar Senegal where I will travel around Mali as well. On
June 11 I will fly to Casablanca morocco and on June 18 to Cairo eygpt where I’ll spend a month exploring eygpt. On July 9 I fly from eygpt to Istanbul turkey and then fly from Istanbul on July 23 back to Chicago where I will spend a couple weeks for my sisters wedding!

So that being said anyone who finds themselves in those areas please let me know so we can meet up or if you find yourself wanting to travel to those areas please come meet me. I know everyone’s big question is who are you going with and the answer is I’m going by myself! Yes I will get on that plane alone but I don’t plan to be alone too long! When traveling you make friends easily and of course you all know me, I’m really good at making friends!

I’m six weeks from being finished working and then I’m on permanent vacation! 3 weeks in Hawaii, 4 days to see my friends in Colorado and then home to see family before seeing the world! I can’t wait for 2011!

So on Tuesday a group of about 6 of us headed to try to walk to walk to the lava and where it pours into the ocean. I have done this about a year ago when I went out w my two friends. That time we just walked right out to the smoke and the ocean, so this time I was thinking it would be the same. Well we drove out to the road and apparently the locals have gotten very particular because they have seen the as a way to make money! The lava has destroyed many of their homes and their land so technically when you are walking out to it you’re on private property, so now you can not get off the quarter of a mile paved road without getting on private property and chancing a ticket from the police! When we got to the end of the road where the lava had taken it over there was police waiting to give you a ticket. So needless to say the trip was not as cool as planned because we didn’t get to see the moving lava. Just a lesson learned that next time we’ll definitely have to pay a local to take us out there!

So we went to the black sand beach nearby after, which was super cool! The waves were huge and so cool!! We all crawled back into the suv with matt sitting in the trunk and headed home.

All in all this has been a great week, I’ve been to the fair, celebrated a friends 30th Bday at 3 am and hung with friends on a mini road trio and spent the day at the beach all day today with a late start to work so I got to hit up happy hour! Life is good this week!! Hope everyone home is doing just as great! I miss everyone!

Today was the last day of the Maui county fair and about 10 of us went over to join in the festivities. I had gone last year and made sure to go this year. We had. Great time eating some good Hawaiian food, playing games, looking at livestock and looking at different booths! I had so much fun and it’s great to be able to do normal things and seem normal!

One of my roommates went on vacation so now I just have one. A quirky restaurant server, I hope it stays that way for awhile, it is nice having only two in a room. I am hoping a trip to the lava is in order for Saturday so hopefully that means I’ll have at least photos and maybe video of the lava soon!!

Yesterday I went snorkeling in Maui. We were supposed to go to molokini crater but ended up going to a spot off the coast. For some reason this happens a lot when trying to go to the crater, their excuse is wind or bad visibility. But I also think it’s a good thing too because the crater has too many trips to it each day and that contributes to the death of the coral. Also, I thought the spot they took us was better than the molokini crater! It was pretty amazing, a huge coral field that looked like an underwater forest. There were also large patches of sand throughout so the water had the best aqua and blue colors when looking at it from the boat! We also saw an eel which was pretty cool! All in all it was a great day at sea with awesome fish, food, friends and sunshine!