Aloha! Thanksgiving in Hawaii was one that I will never forget because it barely felt like Thanksgiving at all! A group of ten of us attempted to sleep out on the deck the night before pulling into Honolulu so we would wake up to the sunrise…but it wasn’t quite that successful. I think we tried going to bed around midnight, and it was WINDY. I could not fall asleep for the life of me…and I was awake as I slowly but surely watched the flies drop. First Chad, then Steph…awhile passed before Greg, then Peter…a little while longer and Mitch and Shannon went in. Around 330am I called it quits. I still wasn’t really tired, but I wanted to sleep, and it wasn’t going to happen out there. So I went down to my cabin and got my find and started walking around the ship seeing if we could pick up land signals yet. No dice. But I was extremely surprised at the number of people who were up and about at 4am. The computer lab was almost full…and people were in the dining halls hanging out, playing games. I was shocked. Well I crawled into bed a little after 4am and woke up at 620 to see the sunrise over Honolulu. Turned out that Ben, Erica and Lacey lasted sleeping out. Ben and Erica had sleeping bags so they weren’t cold…and Lacey had a fleece blanket that she just buried herself under. We all watched the sunrise together and it was beautiful. We grabbed a quick breakfast before all showering and running down to start making phone calls!! For those of you who know me…you could only imagine how exciting this was for me. I sat up on deck 7 with just about everyone else on the ship with my phone glued to my ear until the ship was cleared, which in total gave me about 2 hours. IT WAS AWESOME to talk to my family and a couple of my friends before I even got off of the ship. I knew that this would result in my phone being dead probably by the end of the morning, haha.
I had signed up for the Salvation Army Thanksgiving Dinner through SAS, and that was from 10-2 so I would have a solid break (probably while most people at home were eating dinner since I was still 5 hours behind) so that worked out well. We got on a bus and our driver, James, gave us a little city tour of Honolulu. It did not feel like Thanksgiving at all. The weather was sunny and in the high 80s and everyone was wearing bathing suits. The dinner (or lunch in my mind) was being held at an arena in Waikiki, and we got there around 1030am. There were only 20 of us from SAS, and we were designated as Beverage Servers. I would say that there were probably around 500 people who came to get meals that day, and we were in charge of a specific section of the arena. I have no idea how many volunteers there were, but everyone was in such a great mood and the volunteers and the people eating- everyone was so nice. They had some fun Hawaiian entertainment going on up on the stage- some dancing, singing, etc. that was fun to watch. I more or less walked around with pots of coffee for two hours just chatting with people and making sure they had all the hot coffee they wanted! Almost everyone was finished eating by about 130pm, it was a quick process with so many volunteers helping. After cleaning up, we were offered our very own Thanksgiving meal to eat! This we were not expecting, so we were extremely happy that we would get to eat some turkey on Thanksgiving! The food was really good (much better than the Thanksgiving meal that the shipped served to us a few days later) and it definitely made my day! I’m really glad I did the service project- it made the day actually feel like Thanksgiving and I knew I would still have time to go to the beach. It was a rewarding experience to help give a Thanksgiving meal to those that didn’t have somewhere to go on Thanksgiving.
From there James brought us to a Safeway because he heard us all talk about how excited we were to buy American snacks to bring back on the ship for the rest of the trip. Since we were in Waikiki and that’s where most of our friends were (I was with Lacey) we told our trip coordinator that we were just going to find where they were and not head back to the ship with them. Steph said that they were at the beach by the Hilton so I asked a man if he was familiar with the area and could point us in the direction of the hotel. He said that in about 3 minutes him and his wife would be driving right by the Hilton and they would be happy to give us a ride. They were a nice older couple from San Jose on vacation for Thanksgiving and it was very nice of them to give us a ride to somewhere that was about ten minutes away, so it saved us a cab ride! We just keep running into these nice people everywhere we go who are willing to help us out- it makes me think that there is some hope in this world…
Well we called Steph and she said that they were actually at the Hyatt…which was quite a ways down the beach. We weren’t in any rush so we both just pulled our phones out and walked along the water and made some phone calls. We finally found them and immediately we dropped our stuff and ran into the ocean. (SO unlike me..I never go in the ocean) but it was SO calm and not that warm, but warm enough. It was really nice and relaxing and felt so good to be swimming in the ocean in Hawaii on Thanksgiving Day! After a little while they all decided to leave and go to dinner somewhere and go to Wal-Mart to get groceries, but Lacey and I just stayed at the beach and enjoyed the day. She bought her first legal drink in the US, since she turned 21 while we were in Brazil, which was pretty exciting and we hung out with other SASers on the beach and watched the sunset…it was beautiful. Obviously, my phone battery died- what a surprise. But I got to talk to a lot of people and told others I would call them later once I was able to get on the ship to charge my phone. We just hung out for awhile..on ship time as 9pm, but they were as always, encouraging us to get on early…to the point that they were giving out free internet minutes if you boarded before a certain time. We figured that would get a lot of people back early so the line wouldn’t be too long by the time we got there. We caught a cab around 730 and were easily on the ship by 745pm no problem. I plugged my phone in and jumped in the shower while it charged- then made my way up to the 7th deck to once again talk until it died. However, by the end it was almost 2am at home…but my friends (and brother) were so wonderful that most of them answered anyway. It was a nice, short visit and nice to get off of the ship…
Well, now that I am posting this mid-December…and ready to get off the ship the timing isn’t quite accurate, but that was my Thanksgiving in Hawaii!!!
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