expatriate jen: Aloha

So after Australia, I returned back to America, land that I love.

Well, technically, I was in America.

Woohoo! I am back in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Yeah, I was in the 50th state which is like how many thousands of miles off our coast. (How we justify that Hawaii is part of our "eminent domain" is beyond me, but it's a great vacation spot!) But yeah, I was back in America, using dollars and my California driver's license and got to stop spelling everything with "-our" and "-ise".

I planned to meet my cousin Michelle in Hawaii, but what we both didn't realize is that I was crossing the International Dateline so I left Australia on the 12th evening and arrived on the 12th morning. We thought I was arriving on the 13th so Michelle bought her ticket for the 13th. So I considered, hey, I'll go chill on another part of the island for a day before she comes, but luckily I didn't follow through on that because I thought Honolulu was on the Big Island (because it's the capital), but turns out it's on a little island called Oahu. SO, if I had booked myself a hotel on another part of the Big Island like I was thinking, I would have ended up with no way of getting there. Yeah, I admit it, I'm American and I don't even know U.S. geography, but Hawaii's confusing!

Anyhow, so when I was in Sydney, I ended up meeting a fellow American in a pub named Scott and it turned out that Scott is in the Air Force and stationed in Oahu! What a small world?! So Scott drew the map of Hawaii out on a napkin and explained to me why I'm an idiot. Anyhow, so since I was there a day earlier than planned, Scott showed me around the Pearl Harbor military base area. (There's a few bases all connected to one another.)

A really old tower from WW2 days.

U.S.S. Missouri where WW2 ended.

The Freedom Tower

U.S.S. Arizona Memorial - The U.S.S. Arizona is underneath this structure. It's so crazy, but the ship sank during the attack on Pearl Harbor and they never could get it back up or something so over 1,000 men were trapped inside and drowned. They're still down there. It's crazy, but this is their grave. The irony is, there are SOO many Japanese tourists in Hawaii and they come here to see Pearl Harbor.

U.S.S. Utah, the lesser known ship that also went down on December 7, 1941 (The Day That Will Live in Infamy). There were fewer casualties (I think it was around 60). See the American flag in the background? I'm in America!

Just a pretty site on the base.

Commercial airliners flying into Honolulu airport. The airport is adjacent to the airport so the commercial planes fly right over head. Reminded me of planespotting with Magda's brother Maciek in Warsaw.

Scott was a great history teacher, and since I was with him, I was able to see parts of the base not open to tourism and see different memorials (like the Utah and there's a little war exhibit on base). I didn't take pictures since we're on a base and I don't want to be blamed for giving Al Qaeda images of U.S. bases, but it was really interesting. We saw a lot of the places that the movie Pearl Harbor was shot and stuff, too.

BUT the infuriating thing was that we were driving around base and I saw like 2 golf courses just for the troops as well as a gymnastics arena and a huge mall, just for the base. And it's like...hmmm...who's paying for this stuff? UHM...US! Honestly, I'm all for our troops and what not, but I think golf courses and a mall is a bit extreme, no? Especially when our country is $4 trillion in debt and we can use that land for public schools. I really don't want to pay taxes anymore.

Seeing all this defense spending going to waste really made me feel like I'm back in America.

So I only have half the pictures we took in Hawaii since the rest are on my cousin's camera and she's technological challenged. So here are some of the ones I have. We had a lot of fun. We went swimming in the ocean in the middle of the night, did some shopping, went to a luau, took a surfing lesson (we were good! although I wiped out and exposed myself to the entire beach.), and what vacation with Michelle would it be without grubbin!

Michelle and me at the beach across the street from the mall.

On the tram on the way back from the mall.

The beach. This was actually the one cloudy day we were there so this picture sucks. Michelle has the previous days which were sunny and stuff.

Waikiki is so crowded. Yeah, it's a nice beach and there's a lot to do and it is more beautiful that Thailand, but Phuket was so much quieter and less crowded. And you don't have those huge buildings.