The big photography day

Today I got up bright and early, on a Saturday, to go out and take pictures for various school projects. 

I chose to get up early (before 8AM!) to go to the Honolulu Ekiden relay race in Kapiolani Park. Its a relay race where the competitors run from the park, to the side of Diamond Head and back, in teams of 5. 

The reason I went to this race was to get some sports action photos for my Photojournalism portfolio, but I pretty soon found out that I  wouldnt be able to get any nice photos due to the massive amount of people, so I soon got distracted and ended up taking photos of birds. Oops.

After that failure, I moved onto Waikiki Beach, where there was a beach volleyball tournament going on.

After the beach volleyball, my next mission was an environmental portrait, and a cat-hunt! I have decided to make stray cats my mission for a project in Creativity where we have to create a video for a cause that we would like to submit to Travel2Change. I chose to go to Hawaii University of Manoa to find stray cats, because they have a setup where they feed the cats in the area to keep control of them, so I knew I would find some cats there for my project.

 This fella was suspicious but laid back, he just kept an eye on me at all times.

 Kitties!

Some strange fruit or nut on a tree. I have no idea what this is but its huge! Anyway, that was my day today, now I am exhausted, its going to be an early night! After some bbq dinner!

Chocolate and fire

This past weekend we had very few plans, but ended up doing some interesting stuff anyway! On Friday we went to a street food truck rally, with a chocolate theme! 

This is apparently an event that happens a few times a month, where a company called Street Grindz gathers a bunch of the food trucks in the area in a large parking lot for the night, usually with a theme. Food trucks are vans or trailers outfitted with kitchen, where vendors sell freshly made food from, while being able to easily move locations.

We decided to head there after school, and spent a couple of hours admiring the different foods and selection. It took us some time just wandering around the area to decide what we wanted to eat, my choice was pulled pork grilled cheese, while the others went for BBQ ribs.

Pulled pork grilled cheese, ooey gooey mess basically. It was delicious, though a bit too soggy to actually eat properly, I ended up fishing out all the meat and cheese with a fork and dipping it in a BBQ sauce.

After eating we decided that we obviously needed desserts, so we did the rounds again and came out with S'mores BBQ bananas and mini donuts!

 Grilled bananas with chocolate chips, mini marshmallows and chocolate syrup. Tasted like a little piece of heaven quite honestly. Looked a bit like something not so nice.

 Art stuff, they had some strange things, including a teddy bear in a jar specimen.

Then the sky did that thing again, and the time had come for us to move over to UH Manoa's campus and a free showing of Catching Fire from the Hunger Games trilogy! All in all a pretty good Friday if you ask me.

Turtles!

This post will have some borrowed pictures, because the only underwater camera I have is the disposable kind, and it still has quite a lot of pictures left before I can develop it!

On Sunday last week we went snorkeling with turtles! Our school had made a deal with a company that does tours, and we got a discount for a trip with their boat to Turtle Canyon, a ridge in the ocean outside of Honolulu. The turtles come here once in a while to have their shells cleaned by fish that live there, quite a harmonious relationship. The boat took us about 5 minutes outside Waikiki beach, and into the water we went!

 The boat getting ready!

Honolulu in the distance.

I borrowed two photos from Ole and Gina to show you the turtles, and I will try to make a post with my own once I get them!

For me, the snorkeling was the most challenging part. Im not a natural in the water by any means, and there  was so much to keep tabs on. I ended up borrowing a pool noodle (a long foam tube that keeps you floating) so that I wouldnt have to worry about constantly keeping myself floating on top of the challenge of breathing right, steering myself towards the turtles, taking pictures and making sure I didnt swim into someone or something. I had a blast! I saw 3-4 turtles, one was really close to me and covered in fish. At one point I was completely surrounded by the black fish in the pictures above, some actually touching my legs as they swam off! We're probably going to do a similar tour later, because since this was a HPU arranged tour, Cecilie couldn't join, being that she's studying at UH Manoa. Im definitely looking forward to seeing more sea life and turtles!

Lanikai beach

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Okay so a bit late, but Ive been busy getting sick and doing too much homework. 

Last weekend! On Friday we met up with a friend of Gina who was here for a few days before heading to South Korea where she was studying, and her boyfriend who was studying in Japan. We decided to go to The Cheesecake Factory, which we had heard a lot about both before getting here and after coming here. We were warned that the wait to get in was long, and they were not exaggerating! We waited for 1.5 hours to get a table, and hunger kicked in for full! We were 8 people, so I suspect that didnt help us in getting in early either. I ordered a Pizza Margarita, and it was pretty good, much better than some of the other pizzas Ive had here so far. In addition, I ordered one of the best Mojitos Ive ever had. At $11 it wasnt cheap, but it was well worth it!

After a nice dinner we all went out, and ended up having a great time. We didnt get home until almost 2AM, and tumbled straight to bed, because the next day we had big plans of doing very little!

 We went to a beach on the Windward side (like north-east of the island, about 40 minutes by bus maybe) called Lanikai. The weekend before the others went to the beach next to it, Kailua beach, pictured above, to watch a kiting competition, but this time we went solely for the relaxation. We spent the entire day just tanning, reading and swimming, on one of the most amaaazing beaches Ive ever experienced. Someone on Facebook compared the beach to walking on marshmallows and we thought it simply was an analogy for a really soft beach, but it turns out it actually literally feels like walking on marshmallows. The beach has such fine sand that it feels fluffy and it gets everywhere. The water was completely clear, with large formations of coral (I think it was at least), although it is, sadly, only the boring grey kind, not the colorful kind, Ive yet to see that! I brought my new snorkeling gear to practice a bit, because for Sunday we had scheduled a boat trip through school which would take us out to a place called Turtle Canyon. Being a total noob with snorkeling, I felt I needed the option to place my feet on the bottom the first time doing it, before going out in 6-7 meter deep water. I also finished up the Hunger Games series, and started the Mortal Instruments series (a young adult fiction series about demon hunters, just up my alley!), so its fair to say I got nice and relaxed! 

Some pictures, obviously. These are all taken with my phone, my camera doesnt get to join in such sandy affairs, which is good because everything I brought was covered in teeny tiny sand grains when we got home.

This is Kailua beach, we're definitely going back to both of these beaches later! As you can see, they do get pretty full, this was just after noon on a Saturday though, obviously not the ideal time to arrive.

Clear skies and blue as far as we could see.

Another shot of Kailua, as you can see this beach is pretty long, and the waters are shallow and clear.

After arriving in the small town near the beaches, we decided to walk to the beach because the next bus was a while away. We ended up walking past Kailua, and saw a myriad of houses plucked straight out of movies and TV shows. The beaches are very animal friendly, in fact it seems like most of Hawaii is, there are dogs joining their owners pretty much anywhere. We saw one owner trying to teach her pooch to swim, but she ended up just sitting in the water with the poor puppy clinging to her instead haha!

We passed Kailua and went further down the coast to Lanikai. We went down towards the water a bit too early and ended up on this rocky bit, below, with fishes and crabs everywhere!

The islands in the background are apparently called the Twin Islands, or Nã Mokulua, and are a protected sanctuary for birds, supposedly off limits for humans but it seems people sometimes do go on there.

Finally we found ourselves a spot and relaxing commenced!

 Another view of the Twin Islands. Quite idyllic! And you can see how fine the sand is here.

You kind of ended up looking like you were wearing dust slippers because it was so fine.

This little fellow kept investigating our stuff, the entire day it kept coming back whenever one of us went to swim, to scour our towels for crumbs. 

So the entire day, the clouds were in this sharp line just behind the mountains behind the beach, keeping the beach in clear skies with sun, but at the end of the day, sadly, they crept in over the beach as well. It created the most amazing light, but also meant that our stay was coming to an end.

A sign its time to head home. 

Red-nosed and happy, a perfect day off in paradise! 

On the way home, we stopped to get pizza, realizing that none of us felt like making dinner after so many hours in the sun. The pizza was perfectly greasy, the best one Ive had here so far! To be honest, I dont find the pizza here very good, so this was a pleasant surprise!

And that was our Saturday! And part of our Friday :3

Pictures

This week has been a mad rush of school, dentist appointment and lots and lots of homework. For the first time in a couple of weeks we also had a lot of sun and high temperatures! Im really starting to notice the rush of schoolwork, but so far, so good. Its all just a matter of keeping on top of it all and not falling behind. 

So this weekend I havent done much exciting stuff, the others went to a beach to watch a kiting competition but I opted to stay behind to relax, because of the aforementioned rush of everything. I needed to chill out for a bit! Like mentioned, I had a dentist appointment on Wednesday, because my glued retainer had snapped, and this added to the stress of homework and projects, so I was in need of some time off.

Anyway, a sprinkling of pictures from this week

Someone at our school was selling Krispy Kreme donuts for fundraising, so I bought a box, obviously. I do think they would have been better fresh, and chocolate coated, but still, very very good!

The Olympics started, and Obama had a serious chat with us. This is the first time in years I havent been able to keep up with the Olympics at all, most of the sports are on in the middle of the night, quite literally, with most of the cross country skiing and such starting at 1am. Not that Norway has been doing that well in that anyway, but it feels weird, Im used to spending hours in front of the TV watching sports during the Olympics!

Dance competition or show at Ala Moana, there were hundreds of women in beautiful dresses and intricate hairdo's all over the mall!

But most of all, this has been my week:

Trying to motivate myself with rewards for an assignment, turns out I wrote it wrong as well, meaning I had to rewrite it after writing over 7 pages in a complete panic mode.

Entertaining myself in that same class the next day, that note says 'No rewriting!' which is exactly what I had done! 

The view from the library, its not the worst view to say the least.