TravelStream™ news feed for member ejdonohu on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/ejdonohu en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Mon, 20 Jul 2009 04:14:26 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ejdonohu/1/1247558613/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ejdonohu/1/1247558613/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ejdonohu/1/1247558613/tpod.html Mon, 20 Jul 2009 04:14:26 -0400 Summer in Paradise - Oahu, Hawaii- Camp Adventure 2009

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Honolulu, Hawaii, United States



Aloha!

So this is quite a bit delayed because the week of the Fourth was a BIG week and I got a little snap happy taking pictures which take forever to load on our snail-paced internet here but here's a recap from the week of the Fourth…

I don’t think we could have packed more fun into one week! We only had 4 days of camp so we did our usual pool outings on Monday and Wednesday. A few of the counselor’s families flew out to Hawaii to visit over the holiday. On Monday night, I got invited out to dinner by Ashley’s family who were staying in downtown Waikiki. They were a ton of fun and even took me on a tour of their hotel room and it was top notch! It was on the 39th floor of one of the four Hilton Hotels and had a balcony that overlooked the Hilton village which consisted of 4 different water pool areas and a stage with live music. Definitely a place I would revisit!

On Tuesday, we took our kids to Kailua Beach again and we had heard that there
were a lot of jelly fish here because a kid from one of the other camps got stung by one recently. Evan just about jumped out of the water when he felt something brush his leg while he was in the water but fortunately no jelly fish incidents. On Thursday, we went to one of the other camps to watch a "Mad Science" presentation where the kids got to experiment with dry
ice and even made dry ice bubbles which were really cool when they popped. It actually kept me entertained and the kids LOVED it!

To kick start our weekend, Thursday night Suzanne, Ashley, Molly and I got dressed up and went out to Dukes for their famous “Hula Pie” – tips to Lori Yates for the advice because it was absolutely AMAZING! It’s a huge slice of vanilla ice-cream on an Oreo crust topped with a layer of hot fudge, whipped cream and sprinkled with macadamia nuts. YUMM! Us four girls had absolutely no problem finishing it off.

Friday morning we laid out on Waikiki Beach near the Hilton Hotel where Ashley’s
family was staying. We went for a long walk on the beach all the way down past the Royal Hawaiian so I took a bunch of pictures of all the hotels and cool things we saw along the way. Waikiki is a nice beach but it was super crowded especially since it was the weekend of the Fourth.

That night we decided that since Dukes was so good we would try it in out for
dinner. The waiter actually recognized us from the night before so he chatted it up with us and recommended the fish tacos which I ordered and loved! And of course, we had to do a round two on the Hula Pie. So Dukes is officially my new favorite restaurant!

On Saturday, the Fourth, we unfortunately had to work the big block party which
was taking place on base. Spending my whole afternoon in my incredibly gorgeous Camp Adventure uniform with stylin tall socks wasn’t exactly what I had had in mind for my attire for the Fourth. I was in the group that helped out with all the yard games which consisted of hula hooping, bean bag toss, playing 500 with a football and our favorite, throwing around an uncontrollable GIGANTO sized bouncy ball which would take off in the wind and literally wipe out the little kids one by one. Mean, I know but very funny to watch. It was pretty fun except for us being the only group not under a tent so it got a little toasty in those lovely tall socks of
ours. They also had a bunch of other activities and vendors all around us and had a stage set up with live music playing the whole time so it really wasn’t too bad. At 9 they shot off fireworks over Pearl Harbor so we got a good view from the balcony of our hotel to watch them go off.

Sunday was an AMAZING day! The new director for the Aloha Camp, the camp where they go and stay on the Big Island for four days overnight with the campers, decided to
take us on a field trip all around the North Shore. This was her fourth time being in Hawaii so she knew all the hot spots to hit up. We started out at Waimea Bay where we had gone before on our first weekend with the jumping rock. This time was a lot more exciting because it just so happened that a bunch of dolphins decided to swim into the bay while we were there! It was SO cool because they were literally like 300 yards from us and were actually swimming and jumping right next to the people who were swimming in the water. It was one of the neatest things I’ve seen! I tried to take some good pictures but I only got one or two that actually turned out.

After we left Waimai Beach, we stopped at Sharks Cove for a little bit where it’s known to have great snorkeling. I didn't go since it was so rocky and we didn’t have much time but the people who went said there was a lot more to see here than in Hanauma Bay. Then we headed to Turtle Bay which is more of a resort-like beach where we swam and hung out for awhile. After that we went to a place called Ted's Bakery "Home of the Original Chocolate Haupia (made from coconut) Cream Pie" and we picked up an entire pie, 6 forks and headed to Sunset Beach which was only about 5 minutes away.

So this was the best part of the whole trip, obviously, since it involved pie and a
sunset which Molly thinks I’m a little obsessive over, you’ll see from all the pictures. We all sat down on the beach digging into this extremely wonderful chocolate cream pie while watching the most gorgeous sunset go down over the ocean. IT WAS INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!!!! While the sun was still setting we went swimming in the ocean and it was seriously the clearest blue water I had ever seen. I could see the ocean floor from like 20 ft!

After watching the sunset, we took off to head back home and the color of the sky
kept getting better and better so we stopped on the side of the road and I took some amazing photos. Then we stopped to get dinner in the little town of, Hale’iwa where we had the shaved ice before, and we went to this place called “Killer Fish Tacos.” It was just about ready to close so unfortunately they didn’t have any fish left but I got the Hawaiian Pig taco and it was really good. Then we headed back to base and by that time it was about 9:00 so it was a very long and FUN FUN day! I don’t know when I’ll have my next post up because I am little behind and am already packing up to leave. AHHH! Crazy how fast time flies!






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Aloha All! This week just flew by and it definitely made a difference to have an extra hand. We met our new camp counselor on Monday night. This is how crazy Camp Adventure is: these first few weeks we have all been getting really burnt out from not having enough help so Camp Adventure sends us 6 new people after only giving them 4 days notice prior to hopping on a plane and flying to Hawaii. CRAZY! So there is now one extra counselor at each center to decrease our kid to counselor ratio which has been AMAZING! Our new guy's name Evan and he's from California. He was originally suppose to be in Sole, South Korea for the summer but Camp Adventure totally dropped that program last minute so he was put on the waiting list and now he's here. He's really nice but it's his first summer with camp adventure as well so he's got a lot to jump into. His name is Mr. Trail Mix at camp and the kids all love him.

This week of camp we had the usual schedule of going to the pool on Monday and Wednesday. Some of the kids got a little sunscreen happy on Monday so I have some funny pictures of that. During camp that day I had one of the little girls come up to me with a bunch of stapled papers folded like a book and on the cover in all colors of marker it said "The Box of Happyness and Painful," and she had a bunch of the other kids sign the back of it. She told me it was a journal where I was suppose to write all my happy times and painful times down in it. So I got a kick out of that!

On Tuesday they totally revamped our site, taking out all the rotting chairs that were stacked in the back for storage. We also got a bunch of new books and games so it was basically like Christmas at the Marina Camp that day!

On Thursday we went to the ocean at Hickem Beach which is where we went our first day of camp. One of the little girls was sick with a cold and couldn't get in the water so I walked on shore with her for most of the time. She insisted that we go crab hunting because all the kids had just seen a crab that another kid had found and, of course, she wanted one just like it. There was no way I was picking up a crab so I walked up and down the beach with her pointing out rocks and pretending they were crabs. She bought it and it kept her preoccupied for a good chunk of time so it was a win, win situation!

Thursday night we went to the Ala Moana Shopping Center in Waikiki which is the largest shopping center in Hawaii. We got there pretty late after work so we didn't do much shopping. Ashley and I were in the mood for sushi so we went to a restaurant there called Ganki Sushi. Its a place where you sit down and the sushi goes around on a conveyor belt thing in the middle and you just grab what you want when it goes by. How convenient!

Friday we went with our camp to the theater to watch the movie "Up." Cute movie for the keiki (which means kids in hawaiian) but I'm thinkin Pixar is getting hard up for ideas these days. You’ll have to watch it and give it your own review… On Saturday we went to Hanauma Bay again, the place where we went night snorkeling before, and we went day snorkeling. It was a really pretty beach to see during the day but the snorkeling wasn’t the best because I guess it’s a pretty popular place and it was really crowded. On the way back from snorkeling we stopped at this local restaurant called Dixie’s and it was really fun! It kinda of had that Joe’s Crab Shack feel but everything on the menu there was made from scratch. The bathrooms there were the best part. As you come in the women’s bathroom there’s this dummy dressed up like a man and he’s using a fake urinal in the corner and on the wall there’s this big list of “You know you’re a redneck when…” I took some pictures so you’ll have to check them out.

Sunday we went to a local church that was SO good. Everyone there was extremely welcoming. I guess in Hawaiian culture its customary to greet people with hugs instead of handshakes so we got a bunch of hugs while we were there. Later that day Suzanne, Karla and I decided to go on a hike to Maunawili Falls. It was about a 2 mile hike up through the mountains of the southeastern part of the island and it was literally like walking through Fern Gully the whole way. The jungle scenery was incredible with vines and really cool trees whose roots grow from top down. There were a few times when we had to cross a stream and the rocks were really really slick because it had just rained but fortunately none of us bit the dust, or should I say water.

We had a little trouble finding our way to the water fall because I guess they don’t like to mark a lot of directions here in Hawaii and rather watch us tourists wonder around aimlessly as all part of the experience, but we happened to find some people who looked like they knew what they were doing and eventually came to the fall. The water that comes down from the fall is all fresh water which makes it super cold all the time but that didn’t stop us from getting in. There were a few locals jumping off from one of the ledges on the water fall so me, who had just been sky diving the weekend before and ready to conquered the world, decided I wanted to try! I climbed my way up the outside of the fall which wasn’t that bad but then to get to the jumping ledge, I literally had to scale my way up a steep wall of rocks and once I was part way up it was impossible to go back down. So as I was standing on the ledge looking down I realized, “Wow, this is a lot higher up than it looked from the bottom….” and thought to myself- CRAP! So with Suzanne and Karla counting me down and a bunch of tourists below snapping pictures of me freaking out, I closed my eyes and jumped off the ledge. The plunge wasn’t so bad but the huge wedgie and burst of water up my nose was enough reason to only conquer this feat once.

Next week is the week before the Fourth so camp will be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, we have to work the block party that’s going on at base on the actual Fourth of July but we get Friday off so it should be a pretty good weekend ahead! More to come next week, although I don’t think it will involve anymore jumping off of things…
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WOW! What a week! The second week at camp went A LOT smoother than our first. The kids were all use to our routine and we are getting better and better at learning how to control them. On Monday we took the kids to the pool. Little Trevor decided to put on another exhibition for everyone to see so we are teaching him that pools are for swimming and locker rooms are for changing. On Tuesday we went to the Imaginarium, which is like a mini space museum connected to a big room where they can project the stars all around you. It was pretty lame but the star room was pretty cool. Either way it kept the kids entertained for a couple of hours. On Wednesday we went to the pool again and then we went to the Kailua Beach Park on Thursday (we spend a lot of time in the water as you can see). The Beach was SO pretty at Kailua. More of a white, fine, sandy beach and the waves were really big which made keeping track of the campers a lot more difficult. One big mammoth of a wave would come along taking Andrea and I out and just SWAMP the kids. I was expecting them to come up just bawling but they would just bounce right back up laughing and smiling just to get creamed all over again. It definitely kept me entertained the whole time. Thursday night we had a staff BBQ despite it sprinkling on us most of the time. Made some grilled chicken which was really good but definitley wasn't the same as dad's. On Friday our fieldtrip was another day at the Marina for Boating Adventures. A lot of the other camps were there from the different sites so there were a lot of kids running around. Since my group is so young they can't ride all the boat stations so we had to fill in a lot of free time to keep them occupied. So I let them just wade in the water, which of course turned into them fully swimming in the only clothes they had for the day. It was really funny because the other camp's kids right beside us were all so well behaved waiting for their turn on the next boating station, while my bunch of hooligans were neck deep in water, throwing sand and running around. Hey, as long as they are having fun and all alive, it has been a successful field trip! Friday night we also learned that each camp site would be getting another Camp adventure staff member to help out with everyone being so burnt out already. They were just told as of Thursday and will be here to work this Tuesday already. So I am really excited to meet our new person!

Friday night we went to the Country Bar which is on base. It was a totally blast! There weren't many people there so all of us Camp A people had a ton of fun making fools out of ourselves trying to learn how to line dance.

Saturday was D-day for sky diving!!! It was INCREDIBLE- craziest thing I've probably ever done! Although the company we sky dove through were complete jerks, making us wait around for 3 hours before we jumped and charging us way more than we thought, it was an amazing experience! 13 of us Camp A staff decided to go and none of us had ever sky dived before so there were a lot of nervous first timers.

We met our diving buddies that we would be strapped on with right before heading out to the plane. My guy was named Dan. You could tell he was an adrenaline junky because he had done over a thousand jumps. He was really nice and kept joking around the whole time telling me if I got separated from him on the way down that the gate at the bottom was our meeting place, ah ha, ah ha…very funny. We did a few test run throughs and he told us we would have 60 seconds of freefall before he pulled the shoot and then we would have a good 3-5 minutes of gliding before we landed.

Three of us could go up together at a time so Suzanne and Karla went up with me along with our three camera men and diving buddies. The plane was really small inside with all 9 of us packed in it. The ride up was about 10-15 minutes and it was incredible how far up we were. I looked out the window and we were crazy high above the clouds! At the very top my diving guy, Dan, strapped me on, which was way awkward, and my life strapped to my back. I didn't start getting very nervous until I watched Suzanne, the first to jump, basically have to be pried off the sides of the door before she jumped. I was next in line and putting my heels on the very edge of the 5 inch wide metal ledge, I looked down 14,000 ft. beneath me, said a Hail Mary and took the plunge. AHH! The first 60 seconds of free fall was not as enjoyable as I had hoped it would be. Picture yourself sticking your head out of a car window going a 120 mph with half as much oxygen as your use to and that’s basically what it felt like. I pretty much felt like a fish out of water and hyperventilated myself down those 60 seconds of free fall while trying to smile for the camera man in my face- pretty terrifying. The coolest part though was coming down through a cloud right before we pulled the shoot. It was like a complete white-out of mist and then POOF all the sudden it was clear skies. The jerk from the parachute wasn’t bad at all but the pressure change over that much altitude just absolutely KILLED my ears. Once we were gliding and I had pop my ears a little, the ride down was AMAZING! The view of the bright blue ocean of North Shore was so incredible, you could literally see over 40 miles to Waikiki, SOOO cool! Our landing was perfect and it was fun seeing Suzanne’s reaction when we got to the bottom. We were both like, OMG I can’t believe I just did that!

Everyone was so wiped from the adrenaline rush we had all just experienced that almost all of us were sleeping on the van ride back. This didn’t stop us from having even more fun that night though when a bunch of us decided to go down town Waikiki. A few of us went to Dukes, a famous restaurant right on Waikiki beach, for some appetizers to just relax and recover from the crazy day.

On Sunday, one of my Camp A friends, Molly, hooked us up with one of her Hawaiian friends she worked with to take us jet skiing. The beach she took us to was called Sand Island Beach and it was in more of the industrial part of the island. There were dozens of jet skiers with their families grilling out and having a good time. It was mainly a locals’ beach so we stuck out like a sore thumb but everyone was really nice to us and offered us grilled steak and some great big sushi thing with Spam wrapped in it called "Spam Musubi," which was surprisingly, really good! Jet skiing on the ocean was a BLAST jumping the huge waves, and they had really, really nice 3 seater jet skies which made it even better. That night we went to a movie at the on-base theater to unwind from the weekend and it was only $3 so I’m going to really miss all these military benefits when I get back home. Next week won’t be as crazy but I’m sure I’ll have many more stories to tell. Until next week!




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Aloha all! This is a bit delayed because things have been just a flying by but this is just a recap of last week:

Monday we spent all day preparing our campsite so that it looked more like an actual camp facility than a warehouse. In the morning a guy from the MWR talked to us about all the outdoor recreational activities and equipment that were available for us to use. Snorkeling, surfboards, bikes, canoes and camping gear were just of few of the things that we get to use at little to no cost while working for the military! He also gave us a connection for where to go skydiving and I already have 13 people signed up to go with! Can't wait!

Tuesday: Day one of camp- AHH! We've been training umpteen hours for this day, practicing a bazillion camp songs, games and "attention getters" and it all comes down to me trying to compete with an all-so-intriguing, dead bird in the middle of the lawn, for 10 5,6, and 7 year-old's attention...let's just say the bird won. It definitely is a lot more challenging than I had thought, especially trying to keep track of 20 squirmy bodies swimming in an ocean for our first field trip out, but I think I'm getting better at developing my hawk-like vision.

For each camp, the counselors come up with a theme and our camp chose cereals names so for the rest of the summer I will be known as Ms. Trix and my camp director, Andrea, is Ms Kix. By now I would literally respond to "Ms. Trix" if someone randomly shouted that name in public -this is what my life has come to...But its funny messing with the kids because they wont know our real names until the end of the year and they're dieing to find out even though I've slipped up a few times already.

We broke our big group into two smaller groups of ten so I am in charge of the 5-7 year-olds. I love this age group! There is this one little boy named Trevor who has the biggest brown eyes and dark brown hair, and makes this funny scrunched up frown whenever you tell him to do something he doesn't want to do, which is quite often. I also have this other boy named Svante, and he's quite a handful but he really started listening to me by the end of the day and even held my hand when we were walking back from the beach. All in all, day one was a success.

Thursday and Friday were two very, very exhausting days. The harmless little fieldtrip to "Glow Put" turned into every counselors nightmare after trying to take 20 bouncing-off-the-wall kids through a crowded mall, up a set of escalators, and into a dark room with metal putter and ball. Really hoping this field trip only made our list once this summer!

Dinner Thursday night more than made up for the crappy day. Our Camp Adventure staff went to an all you can eat seafood buffet and it was AMAZING! Quite pricey, but we stuffed ourselves to the max with crab and lobster and made it worth our money.



Friday's field trip was way more organized. We went to the Marina Bay Boating Adventures, which is literally connected to our camp and the kids took turns riding every kinds of boat you can think of: kayak, paddle boat, rowboat, outrigger canoe, sailboat (my personal favorite), and a motor boat pontoon. Although the field trip went well, when we got back to camp the kids were just wound for the weekend and we ended up writing 11 incident reports by the end of the day. Nobody could have been more happy than me that it was Friday!

Saturday we got up and went to the Swap Meet, which is this great big giant flea market where you can buy 8 T-shirt for $20 at every corner and they also sell Hawaiian jewelry and all kinds of souvenirs for cheap. Then that night we took a staff field trip night snorkeling at Hanauma Bay. The snorkeling wasn't the greatest because it was hard to see in the pitch black water just using and underwater flashlight and there weren't many fish, although I did find 2 dollar bills floating around and one of the Camp A counselors saw small shark-yikes! But the view of the night sky was gorgeous! Hawaiian nights are amazing because the stars look so bright here. The bay looked really cool with all of the underwater flashlight beams glowing up the water. It looked like a bunch of lighting bugs swimming around, wish I could have gotten a good picture of it.

Every Sunday through the MWR they have a surf and lunch program that you can sign up for where they take you out to a beach owned by the military called White Plains Beach and provide you surfboards for the whole afternoon and feed you lunch all for $10! 5 of us girls filled up the last 5 spots and had a BLAST! The waves were really high so I got tossed and rolled a few times (nothing better than a little salt water up the nose) but I managed to get up once or twice. It's amazing what a workout surfing is on your body, definitely felt it the next day but I'm pumped about doing it again! Next week-SKYDIVING!!!!!
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Things in Hawaii begin a lot earlier than they do in Iowa. Sun rises around 5:00a.m. and by 5:30a.m. people are up and at 'em. So getting up to run Tuesday morning, I quickly learned that 6:30a.m. is rush hour here on base. Another thing that I learned here is that everyday around sunrise and sunset they play the song, "To the Colors" on a trumpet for the raising and lowering of the American flag. If you're outside at this time, you are suppose to stop immediately at attention and face the flag. This caught me by surprise the first time I saw it happen; everyone around me was stopped dead in their tracks including an entire navel crew and of course, I was still walking. I've caught on since then.

The base seemed really confusing at first but I've been discovering more and more things on each run I've gone on. I found out that there's a bowling ally, a theater (only $3 to see a movie), a YMCA, a really nice restaurant (which we found out the hard way, closes at 5:30p.m.), a church, and RACQUETBALL COURTS!! So I'm super excited! Wednesday we got access to the fitness center which is awesome! Its a huge lifting center that has about 10 of each kind of lifting equipment imaginable and I Watch out Steven, I'm coming back with some guns! There's also a lot of activities that the MWR (Morale Wellness and Recreation) offers such snorkeling rentals and camping equipment.

This first week with Camp A was orientation and preparing for our camps which start this Tuesday. One downer I learned during orientation was that we weren't allowed to bring anything with peanuts or peanut butter in our lunches, NOOOO!!!! I guess it's precautions in case some camper had a severe peanut allergy and decided to eat your lunch. We covered everything from the rules on the military base and how to program our camps to "effective coughing techniques" and where the best sushi on Oahu is located. We also learned that being called a "haole" by the natives is not another form of saying hello. It basically mean "hey white boy/girl!". We've been doing a lot of team builder activities which reminds me A LOT of RA training but its been fun getting to know all the other counselors. There's a few people from Ohio and Florida but most of us are all from Iowa State, Iowa, or UNI.

Amos, the head project director, is a ton of fun; showing off his Jamba dance he does when he goes to Jamba Juice and his secret offices he holds around Oahu (a.k.a. Starbucks). We've all decided that riding is Amos's van has probably been one of
the best parts of camp. Partly because he drives like he's still in
Kenya and you don't have to be in the van getting lost behind him, and
mostly because of his awesome African music that we jam out to! He likes to tell us his African stories and he's big on getting the most out of our experience here on Hawaii. He has planned a lot of fun outings for all of us to do together during the summer, like camping out one night on the beach and going night snorkeling. Can't wait!

Wednesday night we went down to Waikiki. For some, it was their first time seeing ocean so of course, we jumped in. The water was unbelievably warm and it was a beautiful night with the full moon. Some of us walked along the beach which was alive with music and entertainment. We walked down past the famous pink hotel "The Royal Hawaiian," and got to see the Polynesian dancers perform with fire and their hula dancing. While walking down the beach, two really nice kids (so we thought) came up to us putting leis around our necks and took our picture. Being the naive Iowa's that we were, we began walking off when the stopped us and told us to give them $10 for them. So we gave them back and that's how we got leid and unleid all in the same night!

On Friday Angela (my camp director) and I got to see our campsite for the first time. It had been previously used as a storage shed so it will definitely be a fixer-upper. It doesn't have any AC but its nice because it has a huge open lawn behind it for the kids to play in.

On the weekends we get to do whatever we want but we have to find our own transportation to get there. The bus system on Oahu takes you about everywhere you want to go its just a matter of figuring out the routes. On Saturday, we planned a group outing to Waimai Bay on the North Shore so we got to use the vans to drive all 25 of us out. It was a beautiful drive to the beach with the mountains alongside. We drove past the Dole pineapple fields and a bunch of coffee bean fields. When we got to the beach it was GORGEOUS! The ocean is so blue here. On this beach there was also this great big lava rock that you can jump off, so of course I had to jump. It was a ton of fun besides the massive surge of saltwater up the nose. Then we went to Turtle Beach to see a bunch of lazy sea turtles who were very camera shy as you can see in the pictures.

On our way back we stopped for some shaved ice. It's that "must try once" kind of thing on the island so we waited in line for over an hour to "try it once". You can get it with ice-cream, black beans (I know sounds gross and your right), and sweetened and condensed milk. I got it with ice-cream and it was pretty good. After we all got a good sugar high going, we jammed out in Amos's van all the way back to base. On Sunday we got up and went to the church on base. They were really friendly and gave leis to all the newcomers and they also had BBQ after the service (Yay free food!). Then we took the bus to Chinatown near Waikiki and spent the day looking around. All the cheap fruit and produce there was really nice, the smell of raw fish and chicken feet, not so much.

Well it sounds like we've got a busy week ahead of us. Tomorrow we will be doing all the last minute preperation before our first day of camp on Tuesday. I'm really looking forward to finally meeting all the kids. Should be a great summer!


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Aloha!
So I came here thinking I was going to be living in the barracks, three or four girls stuffed into a tiny dorm room fighting over one bathroom, but I was way off! This place is better than I could have ever dreamed! Stepping into my own room with a 32in. flat screen TV, queen sized bed with a plush white down comforter, a fan (how did they know?), room service, free laundry, free HBO, and complimentary breakfast every morning, I am having a hard time finding one flaw in this place. Well perhaps an air conditioner would be nice but there's a constant Hawaiian breeze that flows from from one end of my room because the walls are basically windows, (the pictures will better explain), other than that, absolutely amazing!
The flight here- word of advice for for next time: pay the extra $25 to get the 50lb body bag of a carry-on checked in! Would have saved the dirty looks I got after bombarding some not-so-happy passengers, as well as saved my shoulders. First flight- easy breezy, Second flight- 91/2 of the coziest hours of my life sandwiched between two very well fed men, screaming children, but all in all, not bad (Northwestern Airlines has an AWESOME food service and it was all free, I could get use to this whole complimentary thing :))
The instant we landed in Honolulu we were hit by a rush of tropic, humid air and the smell of fresh plumeria ahhh...we were then greeted by our camp director, Amos. He said he was originally from Kenya and had been a camp director here at Hawaii for 4 years. He's SUPER nice and seems really laid back. I also met my project director, the person that I will be working with at the Marina Campsite, and she also seemed really nice. Her name is Andrea and she told me that just she and I would be running our camp of 20 kids from ages 5-9. I found out the camps in Hawaii are alot different from many of the other camp adventure sites because we get to go on field trips almost everyday so I'm way excited!
On Hawaii, there are around 40 total camp counselors that are spread between 8 different sites. The camps are located in different areas all over Oahu and range between 20-80 kids at each site.We have two vans that our directors drive that are used as transport on and off base and to some of our organized trips that we will be taking later on. For my camp, it looks like we might get bikes to use as transportation - this might come in handy to do some exploring around the island as well!
All of the camp counselors I have met so far are really nice. Most of us are from Iowa but there are a few from Florida and Ohio. We all live together in the same military hotel called the "USS Utah" and like I said before, it is pretty close to heaven. My room is located on the 9th floor and out my west window is a perfect view of Pearl Harbor. We took a little tour around the base to check it out and we got some strange looks from the military guys who we past (maybe it was my whole camp adventure getup?). We were told on base that there are basketball courts, baseball fields, an aerobic center, rock climbing wall, a subway, piza hut, taco bell and other buildings that we can go to. Right now the base seems really confusing because all the roads wind off in different directions and I really don't know where base starts or stops but I heard we will be getting the "official" tour sometime tomorrow.
Well I'm going to sign off now to get some rest for the start of orientation tomorrow but this place is truly paradise, just hope I still feel this way come day 60!

P.S. my address is:

C/O Navy Youth Programs
4655 Catlin Drive
Honolulu, HI, 96818
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