Day 7: 1/15 Land Ho!

                From talking to a friend who did SAS in a previous semester, she suggested seeing the sunrise and watching the land emerge in the horizon in every port.  This idea really sounded like a cool thing to do for all of the ports, so today I started my day early (or what I thought was early enough) to see the sunrise and look for land.  When I got up to the 7^th deck, the land of Hawaii had already made its debut in the horizon, but the sun hadn’t risen yet.  Unfortunately, there were so many clouds that there wasn’t a very good sunrise; hopefully the other ports will be better.  In any case, it was very exciting to see land for the first time in about a week!  But what the majority of the people on the 7^th deck were doing, and seemed the most excited for, was using their cell phones since we now had service.  It was quite amusing to see how attached people (including myself) became to their cell phones for the time we were in Hawaii.  I think one of the things I’m looking forward to during this trip is not being so dependent and attached to technology, but for the time being it was nice to be able to call and text people on this trip and people back home.

After eating some breakfast, we had to wait for the immigration process to begin.  It took a good 2 hours or so to go through immigration which kind of worried me since it was just into Hawaii.  I wonder how long it will take for other countries.  How they did it is they call up every person to go through customs (in groups) and then we are let off the ship.  First they called up faculty, staff, and lifelong learners to go through customs, then they went through each “sea” starting with the 2^nd deck and moving their way up to the 4^th deck (my sea was last to be called).  All we did was go up to the faculty/staff/LLL lounge, picked up our passport and showed it to a Hawaiian Customs person, and then gave our passport back to a worker.  It seemed like it was pretty quick, but there were a couple of people who didn’t go up and so everyone had to wait until they went up there and went through the process.  Once everyone was cleared, they allowed people who were signed up for field programs (trips planned through SAS) to get off the boat first because many of them were on time constraints. 

I signed up to go to Volcanoes National Park through SAS because I didn’t know anyone who was planning a trip up there, and it was something I wanted to do while I was in Hilo.  I mean how many times in your life can you go see an active volcano? Then again this volcano wasn’t erupting or anything (I didn’t even see any actual lava), but in any case the volcano is active.  When I got off the ship, I had to wait for the bus that would take us up to the volcano, and while I was waiting I noticed that I was swaying.  It was the weirdest feeling to be on solid ground, so my body was swaying from habit of being on the ship.  I don’t really know how to explain the sensation but it was a wild feeling!  I finally got on the bus and our first stop was the caldera of Mauna Loa (I think that’s what it’s called) which was pretty cool and pretty impressively large.  In the middle of the caldera there was a spot that steam was coming out, and just below the steam was where lava was trying to surface.  We then went to a spot where a large amount of lava flowed many years ago, and now the lava has hardened into lava rock.  It was wild how much lava had come out of these fissures because there was a large amount of land that was covered by this lava.  Our guide told us that it was probably about 10-12 feet deep.  We also saw some molds that were formed around trees; when the lava flowed and moved around trees, the difference in temperature of the trees and the lava caused the lava to “freeze” and turn into lava rock and the tree would burn inside of the lava so there was just a mold of what used to be a tree.  During this part of the tour it started to rain pretty hard.  I was wearing a light rain jacket, but it wasn’t enough; I was so soaked that the rain permeated through my jacket.  We then made our way to this area that was almost like a rainforest that contained a lava tunnel in the middle of it.  The lava tunnel was made when a lava river flowed and melted through a rock, forming a tunnel.  It was really cool to go through, and apparently there are a bunch of them around the world and some can be miles long!  During this, I ended up wearing one of the ponchos that the bus had, which was a one-size-fits-all deal, which means it swallowed me up.  It was pretty funny to see some people who were probably about 7 feet tall wearing the same ponchos and having them come to just above their knees, and then mine coming to maybe the middle of my shins.  The interesting thing about the Big Island of Hawaii is it is in the middle of trade winds so it has many different climates all across the island; one side gets a lot of rain while the other side is more barren (I find this pretty fascinating but that could just be me).

When we got back to the ship I went to take a shower since I probably smelt like a wet dog, and then I waited for Jillian and Shelley to get back to the ship so we could all go to Walmart to pick up some snacks and last minute things we forgot.  While I was waiting I got to facetime Keenan which was really nice.  I don’t know how I would function on this kind of trip if I couldn’t email or skype with people back home.  If I had to rely on letters I don’t know how well I would do with homesickness.  When we went to Walmart, it was a pretty typical Walmart with the exception of a Hawaiian souvenir section and that the McDonalds in the Walmart sold taro pies (like their apple pies but with taro).  I got one because I was curious; it tasted really good but was kind of odd looking because the inside was a purple color.  We stocked up on some snacks (which I highly recommend for anyone who is going to go on this trip because you will get hungry in between meals on the ship) and we got some coloring books (which I also recommend because they are awesome!).  We decided to stay on the ship for the night to save some money.  When we got back from Walmart, we just unpacked our new items and then watched Ted and colored.  Surprisingly, I was the last one awake.  For anyone who knows me, this is very rare for me to not fall asleep during a movie.  For the past few nights I haven’t slept great, so maybe that had something to do with me not falling asleep.