Ambassadors Ball, Hawaii, and Beyond!!

We just left Hawaii a few days ago and now we’re headed to San Diego. Hawaii wasn’t really anything special, it was….Hawaii. We arrived in the early morning, everyone was off the ship by 8 or 9 a.m. and everyone headed to the beaches. We docked in Honolulu which is on the island of Oahu. There’s not a whole lot to do in Hawaii except lay on the beach and go shopping, neither of which I was very inclined to do. I ended up hiking Diamond Head with Aaron, which is a very short hike. But at the top there’s a really good view of the whole island, you can see how blue the water is! That took us a whole 40 minutes (we thought it would take at least a little longer but it didn’t). We headed back to Waikiki and Aaron headed to the beach and I just walked around Waikiki for a bit. It was quite weird being back in the U.S., all the signs were in English, everyone speaks really good English and we didn’t have any trouble getting around.

I just finished my last final about an hour ago (as of writing this) and I passed all of my classes. It was quite hectic on the ship the first few days after Hawaii with everyone studying and getting ready for finals. But now it’s quite a relaxed mood and it’s weird that we’ll be forced to leave the ship in San Diego a few days from now, it still hasn’t set in all that much and it probably won’t until we’re actually off of the ship in San Diego. The past three months have gone by a whole lot faster than I ever expected them to. It feels like we haven’t been on the ship that long and things are just getting started. But at the same time it feels like it was 3 years ago when I was at the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas, and every port since then seems like it was so long ago. Everyone I’ve met on the ship, I don’t know them all that well, I don’t even know most peoples last name and I’m still having trouble with some first names but it really seems like I’ve known all of them for at least five years. We’ve gone through a lot together. It’ll be a bit weird just leaving all of them once we get to San Diego, we’ll all be going our separate ways, but we’ll probably all keep in touch. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I really do not want to leave the ship. I’d much rather stay on it and go around to more ports. But this adventure is quickly coming to an end, which must mean that a new one will be beginning soon! I know I’ll miss the ship, it’s become my home, I’ve caught myself in most of the ports saying, “I’m going to go home now” meaning that I’m going back to the ship. Just being out in the middle of the ocean on the ship is AWESOME! Being surrounded by nothing but water surely puts a few things into perspective for you. Plus I could sit out on one of the decks for hours and just watch the waves, flying fish, birds, the clouds move by, and the occasional dolphin, and I would never get bored. That’s what I’m doing right now as I’m writing this! And at night you can sit out on 7th deck and see ssssooo many stars, the only comparison to it is standing on top of a mountain looking up at the stars. I’ve become accustomed to the rocking of the ship, I’m able to move with the waves now and run into a minimal amount of walls while walking through the halls. And the rocking is very soothing at night when you’re trying to fall asleep in your room that’s pitch black because there aren’t any windows and you can’t even tell if your eyes are opened or closed! OOOHHH the things I’ll miss. Plus with the games of hide-and-seek at 2 a.m. sssooo much fun!!

This trip has been awesome, I’ve met tons of people, visited a good amount of countries and I’ve been going around the world at 20 mph for the last 3 months while on a ship and while going to school. I must say before I went on this I was very skeptical of being in this type of closed environment with people and especially with teachers. But living with the teachers has been a very cool experience. You get to see more of a personal side of them, you get to see that they are more than teachers. I’ve eaten meals with some of my teachers and their families and with the deans and such. I’ll play some board games with one of my teachers kids every once in a while, which is very fun. And playing with Baby Ryder is a blast! It’s fun hearing the teachers personal stories of how they’ve gotten where they are and all of that, the stories of the countries that they’ve been to. I’ve always known that I love traveling but this trip has only reinforced that and it has built up my confidence of being able to navigate countries without being able to speak the language and also getting along with the locals, I know I’ll be doing tons more traveling to a lot more countries in the future!

Basically the gist of all of this is, this voyage is coming to an end all too fast, we’ve been going around the world at 20 m.p.h. for the past 100 days, we’ve seen amazing things and done tons of things, some of which I never thought I’d do!

Here’s a list of some things that I’ve done over the past 100 days, it certainly won’t be a complete list, but it’s just a peak at a greater list that’s in my mind. It may not make a whole lot of sense to the people who are reading this, but hey, it makes sense to me!!

I’ve filled up my hard drive with 35 GB of pictures (my hard drive is officially full) which comes down to over 8000 pictures and it might even be over 10,000 pictures! Rode and elephant, rode a bullet train, walked around aimlessly and got lost doing it, met a Nobel peace prize winning Archbishop and lived with him for 100 days, shot an AK-47, saw a Japanese soccer and baseball game, kayaked in a bioluminescent bay, visited 10 countries, circumnavigated the globe going 20 mph on the M.V. Explorer, saw monkeys, ostriches, zebras, elephants, pandas, and all kinds of crazy animals. Sat on the decks of the ship for hours on end starring out into the endless ocean, passed 4 classes I didn’t think I was going to pass, learned more in the past 3 months by visiting these countries then I have throughout all of high school and college combined, met a wide variety of people (both on the ship and in ports), and there’s tons more stuff racing through my head but I don’t have nearly enough time to write all of them down.

I’ve heard a lot of people talking about how this trip has changed them and all kinds of stuff like that and I’ve been wondering, how has this trip changed me?? I’m not really sure yet how it has, but just from being in Hawaii I can tell that I’m looking at all kinds of things completely differently than I was before this trip. But I’ll definitely still have the same personality and all that stuff but who knows, maybe other things about me have changed.

Now all I’m wondering is who all has been reading this blog??? So everyone who has actually been reading it should post a comment (complete with your name) on this post so I can see about how many people and who all has been reading it!


The pictures are of the ambassadors ball, where we had a really fancy dinner and then dancing and such and everyone wore their suits/dresses that they got in Vietnam! It was kinda like prom, but….better? There’s a Chocolate Taj Mahal, made out of chocolate, and a chocolate eagle and a castle, and fruit flowers (flowers carved out of fruit), a butter dragon (a dragon made out of butter)(all of these creations are part of the ambassadors ball), and also some pictures from Hawaii. There’s also a picture of Baby Ryder and I, he’s probably the smartest and cutest baby ever (he’s 10 months old and he can say, “Ryder, bye, bottle, hat” and he can wave, clap and blow kisses to you).