YFU USA HAWAIIAN EXPEDITION 2009

Feb 14th - Goodbye

2009-02-16T01:44:00.000-08:00

Wow... It's over... It seems to me that it started yesterday... but that's a good sign I guess!

this week was not like a journey or a normal trip, more like a part of my life, an unforgetable part, engraved in my heart.

Now, when it's over I realize it wasn't about visitng Pearl harbor, the Dole Plantation or such great places, No! It was about meeting new extraordinary people, in the best possible enviornment!

I know that I will NEVER EVER get anthing from this trip out of my head, neither the great views, or the amazing personalities I met!

If I would have missed that, I would have been regretting it for my whole life!

Thank YFU and BELO for the opportunity of this more than awesome experience which we together made to the "bestest" time EVER!

Kevin, Switzerland

Feb 13th 2009 - Pearl Harbor and our last day...

2009-02-14T02:07:00.000-08:00

In the morning everyone had breakfast as usual, accept today people were not as cheerful as usual. This was because it was our last day here in Hawaii. After breakfast we left the hotel at 9 o clock to visit the US Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. Once we got there, we were guided into the centre. There a guide explained us something about the attacks at Pearl Harbor and what really happend there. Then we got to see a movie about the attacks, it was an inspiring movie. When we left the movie theatre, we went on a boat to the cemetry to see the sunken Arizona and the huge memorial hall. It was pretty impressive to see how many people died.

After visiting Pearl Harbor we went back to the hotel with the bus. Then everyone had a few hours for their own to do some last time shopping, surfing, swimming, playing soccer on the beach, actually final things you had to do. At 5 o clock everyone gathered at the beach for a photoshoot. Carol took two pictures of everyone while the sun was setting.

At 6:30 we all left for a nice dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. Everyone had their own choice of real American food, like a cheesburger, a turkey sandwich etc. People took some last pictures together and we sang our last birthday carol for the week. Before we left people bought some souvenirs in the shop. Once we got to the hotel we got our last meeting together. Raphael opened the meeting with a very powerful speech. There we also saw a surprise: Carol made a slideshow of all the pictures from the photoshoot on the beach. All the people from every country got their picture taken with a big American flag and a little flag of their own country. We also had a surprise for Raphael: a t-shirt from the Hard Rock Cafe with all the names of the exchange students who joined the Hawaii trip on the back. After that we scheduled the departure times for the next day for the airport. Then some people got a little bit emotional because everyone got so close in this week, we are all friends and now it was time to say goodbye.
We want to thank everyone for the unforgetable week, it was an amazing week and everyone made a lot of new friends from all over the world. And remember: the people you meet, you will always see again, at least twice in life.
It is not a goodbye, it is just a see you later!
Written by
Jannika Schwaab from GermanyNeele Kunka from GermanyFernanda Gomez from MexicoStephanie Cootjans from The Netherlands

Feb 12th 2009 - Pali Look, Kailua Beach and Polynesian Cultural Center

2009-02-13T01:41:00.000-08:00

Aloha everybody!

Today was a very exciting day. In the morning we had our usual delicious breakfast buffet. Even though most of the people were still tired, because of the hard day before, we went on our way to KAIULA BEACH. As soon as we entered the bus it started to rain. In between we made a quick stop at NU’UANU PALI, known as Pali Lookout, to take pictures of the incredible view. As we arrived at the beach, those that didn’t sign up for kayaking stayed there, played soccer, football, swam or just layed in the sun.

Well, we went kayaking and it was awesome. We were headed to an island. As we finally got to the beautiful island everybody took a lot of sexy pictures at the rocky, sandy beach. Our kayaking guides showed us a natural pool on the island where we had a lot of fun jumping from the rocks. After a while we left the island looking forward to a hard kayak race. We by the way were the first mixed gender group to get to the finish line ;). After the race we arrived at the beach and everybody was tired and very hungry.

So we all had lunch, before we left for the polynesian cultural center. There we were able to experience the different cultures of Samoa, New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii, Tahiti and Tonga. We had an excellent dinner and went to a big polynesian show. They had hula and fireblade dancers. It seemed like everybody was enjoying it.

On our way home in the bus we had a funny hawaiian idol party.

You will hear tommorrow more from our great trip!
Aloha and mahalo!

Pauliina Lamsa (Finland), Kilian Toelge (Germany)

Feb 11th 2009 - Diamond Head Trail and Paradise Cove Luau

2009-02-12T01:35:00.000-08:00

We woke up and had breakfast at the hotel. We left the hotel at 9 o clock in the morning and headed to Diamond headtrail.

Before we left, we had a little bit of warming up because we will walk alot, so we prepared for that. This day was kind of the adventure day but still, there were lots of fun. We all were hiking up the worlds most famousvolcanic crater which is Diamond head. It took like 2 hours to get to the top. Wow we feel like take forever....

After we arrived at the top of Diamond head trail, we took little bit rest for pictures.

Many people who didn`t take pictures together took picture together.Carol who is take awesome picture for us, she wanna to take picture us.Raphael said, "Okay, you guys make sure your face go down and relax, after I count the number and head up and look at the camera."It was so fun, because all people face was same.how pretty the view!! we saw sea and landscape of Hawaii. After we done it, we walked down to the hotel.somepeople rode took the taxi and bus.It was so cool, also it was hard time to hiking.but we overcame our hard time to hiking, we had really really really really great time.

Wow Lu'au wow

We met at 4 pm to take the two busses to the Kapolel for Oahu's famous Paradise Cove Lu'au.
During the one hour ride we passed the microphone around so that we could hear or learn about other countries. It was very interesting to hear stuff from other people. When we arrived at the Paradise Cove, we all were looking very excited, because it was just an amazing pictures! Palmtrees, waterfalls and lot of nature. We got out of the bus and we took a group picture infront of the bus. We're all so glad to have such an amazing photographer on bord!
After we entered, we got a free drink and got a sea shell neckles. In the Lu'au were many activities for example to make a drawing on your skin, making a lei, dressing up like Hula dancer and much more.

About at 6 pm the sun started to go down. What a pretty view!! Of course everyone took thousands more pictures.

Before dinner some of us came together and were sitting in like an open theater because they showed us how they took our dinner out of the ground because the pig was in an oven. It was very different to see something like this.

Finally dinner started then each of us was veeeeeeeeryyy hungry after a loooong and energy using day. We were sitting at two long tables with just YFU students. But of course the young people were the last one..and so we got more hungry. We had an awesome buffet with salad,meat, pasta, fruits and caaaaaakeee and of course pinnapple:)
We all finished our food and our stomaches were full and after 8pm an Hawaiian show started. They were dancing Hula, singing and lot more.
All girls were looking at the good looking Hula dancer boys and the boys were looking at the normal Hula dancer girls. Of course the boys were looking better ;)
Three lucky students went up on the stage and were dancing in front of everybody. They're all soo good dancers. We are proud of our new friends!

Now we are all very tired and are excited for tomorrow. It will be alot of fun like ALWAYS!!

Good night everyone and we hope you're enjoying to read our new experiences!

Lea(Denmark) & Larissa (Switzerland)

Feb 10th 2009 - Aloooooooooooooooha Hawaii and the world!

2009-02-10T23:29:00.000-08:00

This has been our fourth day in paradise and we're loving it!

Today we first went a bit sightseeing with our great bus driver Marlene guided us around. We saw for instance the only PALACE in the nation of USA, except the one, which is also here on Hawaii.

Then we continued our bus trip to the north side of the island. There we visited the Dole plantation, one of the biggest pineapple plantation in the world. At the sight they also had one of the world's largest maze, which our four groups red, yellow, blue and green battled very hard to get through and see who the fastest were. The blue team won, however we have a strange feeling that they were cheating... LOL… We're not judging anyone, even though red actually were the winners. (!!).

Next on the list was a beach (Sunset Beach) on the north shore, however because of the huge waves we couldn't swim there. Therefore we took about a thousand more pictures and left the beach for another more “family friendly” beach. Beach-, soccer, -football, -volleyball, swimming and sunbathing was on the program for the next two hours. It was a lot of fun except the beach and the bottom was very rocky.

To end this beautiful day...we came back to the hotel after a long day and had some free time and then went to California Kitchen Pizza. We ate delicious pizza, compared to the one in Italy, than we had free time and “chill out”.

With that we say goodbye and peace out!

Ryszard Wimmer (Poland), Jakop Vorkinn (Norway)

Feb 9th 2009

2009-02-09T21:03:00.001-08:00

Aloha everybody! This is the third day of our Hawaii trip. It is still a blast, the weather is perfect, except for the little rain shower which the red and blue group experienced.

After the amaaaazing breakfast we went to the most beautiful beach of the whole island, Hanauma bay. We split up in to two groups because we were too many to go snorkelling on the beach at the same time, because it is a preserved area.

One group started snorkelling in the morning while the other drove around to the wet side of the island by bus. We stopped at famous places to take pictures, there was a splashing thingy, unfortunately we forgot the name, but it was very impressive J

Around noon we switched and the other group went snorkelling. We saw a lot of colourful fish and some of us were lucky to see a sea turtle.

After the snorkelling we all went back to the hotel to take showers and get ready to go shopping. We had an hour and a half to take showers, because the girls need a lot of time to take a shower…

At five we left to go to the Ala Moana mall, it was a huge and confusing mall, were you were able to spend a lot of money on Gucci, Prada, Louis Vitton, Chanel etc..

At eight we ate dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company were we had an awesome and fun meal. The whole restaurant was inspired by the movie Forrest Gump. It had a lot of pictures, quotations and elements from the movie hanging on the walls and written on the tables.

The people who hadn’t seen the movie before weren’t able to answer the questions the waitress asked. But the people who had seen it won a lot of fun stuff, like t-shirts and stickers.

Because it was Veronika’s birthday we all sang birthday songs in our different languages and she got a big birthday cake. HAPPY BIRTHDAY VERONIKA!
It was another great day on Hawaii and we are all already hekka sunburned, but excited for tomorrow!

Feb 8th 2009 - Full day in Paradise

2009-02-08T23:18:00.000-08:00

Even it’s Sunday, we had to get up early in the morning, due the fact that we are so many students, the we had different groups at different times. My group was the first, 8o;clock in the morning, after an enormous and delicious buffet breakfast! I was surprised in such a good way. That’s how a day is supposed to start: very warm temperature, clear sky, little fresh breeze, a great breakfast and a surf lesson. I was truly happy!

Afterwards, we went to the beach, the water was fresh, the sand warming up, the beach empty. We met these 3 teachers, nice Hawaiian residents, which started immediately with going to the sea, waiting for nice waves to surf on. I had an immense amount of fun, even I fell over and over, it was relaxing and super fun, the sun was shinning constantly and burning on my skin, luckily there is sunscreen, even I guess some people haven’t realized that yet, as I saw later in the day.

After this fun activity, we had the opportunity to have a catamaran for us alone, twice, each time 40 students. Driving away from the island, out to freedom, beauty and peace was such an amazing feeling I missed, it was like to get something back, a reason why you worked for so long, like a dream becoming true, indescribable and great.

We had the possibility to jump into the sea from the catamaran at the end of the journey, the water here is so nice, clear and clean. It’s really comfortable to swim in it.

Then our official program was basically over, we had time till 6.30 o’clock till we would meet again for dinner. In the main time I went walking around and ate in Hawaii’s best burger place; Cheese Burger, In paradise, and swimming in the sea, just being in the salted, warm water, just enjoying it.

After this tough time doing nothing, but eating and hanging out, lying around, we had to go back to our rooms and get ready for dinner.

We met at the lobby and went to Tiki's we had a salad as appetizer and chicken with rice as main meal. After the fine and easy dinner, we sang happy birthday for Matthew and Maria in about 20 different languages, it’s great how such different cultures found each other. Dinner was over, they had their little birthday ice cream and after Raphael explained the program for tomorrow, people started going to the hotel.

I went to some little stores with some friends and ended up at the beach, talking and making jokes. At 10.20o’clock we got our snorkel equipment for tomorrow and hang out in the hotel.I guess that was it, I have to go to bed, it’s going to be a fun but long day tomorrow, I’m really looking forward to Monday, and not only I don’t have school and I’m in Hawaii, but cause I know YFU is doing a great job entertaining us and helping us to discover more and more of the Hawaiian culture!

Kevin, Switzerland

Feb 7th 2009 - Aloha from Hawaii !!!

2009-02-08T03:09:00.000-08:00

Aloha from Hawaii

So, our first day is about to end.

This has been an amazing day where we’ve met a lot of new people, all exchange students.
I⁄Rikke⁄Reggae woke up at 4am and was ready to go to the airport at 4.40am. I was flying from Sacramento to LA to Honolulu where we arrived at 12.30. I have been looking forward to this trip in I don’t know how long, so I was so ready and when I met Sofie Dam Christensen in Sacramento we were proud because we were flying ALL by ourselves. So cool! Everybody we met during the trip was really nice and helpful. When we arrived to Hawaii it was all humid and hot and SWEEEET! OMG! We were really amazed and excited. We took a lot of pictures during our trip and had fun with playing card games, writing stories, eating Twix and Pringles, talking, reading magazines and watch a movie.

I⁄Sara woke up at 7 am but wanted to turn off my stupid alarm clock because I thought I was going to school, but I wasn’t, I was going to Hawaii!! Finally! I met Fernanda Gomeyz at the airport and we were both so exited! We were very bored and just wanted to get to Honolulu. When we finally got there a lot of people were waiting for us.

Now we’re all together! Or at least the first 30 people to arrive. We drove to our hotel in a big yellow bus. Everybody was talking to each other and it was nice to talk to other exchange students and hear about their stories.

As soon as we arrived and checked in at Pacific Ocean Hotel, we all changed into our bathing suits and ran down to Waikiki beach. It is so cool, because just when you step out of the hotel, there’s only a street between you and the beach.

We all threw our stuff down and went in the ocean and the water was SO warm and clear and there were little fish swimming around. We could see the surfers further out catching all the good waves and we couldn’t believe that we were finally here.Apparently everybody was craving Mc Donald’s, because no American people like it, but all of us exchange students love it, so it was the first time for all of us where we walked into McDonalds in bikinis and bare feet.

Then we tried to get a tan and people slowly began to go back to the hotel, but we stayed as long as we could.

At 7pm we met in the lobby to go get dinner, but a lot of peoples flights were delayed, so dinner was postponed to 7.30. In the mean time we went out on the streets that’s closed right now due to the Pro Ball games that’s getting played here in Honolulu, so the streets are filled with people and nice little shops. We went and bought the classical flower necklaces… and it was real flowers!
Now it was dinner time and the last people had arrived. We are like 80 people on this trip.

Dinner was served and Raphael showed us a PowerPoint, video and pictures with information about our trip, other trips, Belo etc.

We are both overwhelmed by all the people, because it is too many new names and faces to remember, but it is really fun to meet all these nice people from around the world.

After dinner we decided to go back to the beach and hang out until we had to be back at the hotel… Live music was playing in the background and we already feel like natives… or something.

Now we are sitting in the lobby and listening to people who are playing cards and talking about the election. Our curfew for tonight is 12, which is good because we are leaving at 9am tomorrow, to go surfing and sail on a catamaran. That is going to be so much fun and we both have a good feeling about this upcoming week. It can’t be anything but great.

Mahalo for today.

Written by Sara Wide Gustafsson from Sweden and Rikke⁄Reggae Romme from Denmark.

Feb 7th 2009 - WELCOME TO HAWAII

2009-02-07T08:32:00.000-08:00

Here it is, the Hawaii Expedition 2009!

The US newest state. This year, Hawaii has its 50th anniversary being part of the US.

It is interesting for all of the students, that they will be flying, flying and flying... and suddenly, landing in US Territory. We could say that it is the same flight time going to Poland from NY.

When people mean that Hawaii is a Paradise, they are not lying. It is very early in the morning and the temperatures are around 70 F (or 25C).

My name is Raphael and I will be the trip coordinator. I've been working with international students since 1999, when I first joined Belo USA Travel! Let's welcome Lynda, Michaela and Ryan, our YFU Chaperones, also our Belo Monitors Brittany, Arnette and Aysel and our official photographer Carol.

You will be able to joing this experience in our 8 days expedition, with pictures, videos and lot's of comments from the students. Thanks for joining us and hope you have a great time!!

We wish you all the best, or as we say in Hawaii... ALOOOOOOOOHA!!!

Raphael
Belo USA Travel Team

ALOHA FROM HAWAII!!

2009-02-06T12:18:00.000-08:00

Get ready for a week in paradise...the Hawaiian Expedition is here! With its breathtaking natural beauty, its never-ending list of fun and exciting things to do, and its spirit of "aloha," Hawaii is a dream destination for anyone!
We will be staying in beautiful Waikiki on the island of Oahu, and we will spend each day exploring a new and fascinating aspect of Hawaii's unique culture.
Join us as we test our surfing abilities, celebrate in a traditional luau, and hike to one of the island's best-known lookout points. We'll come face-to-face with Hawaii's rich history...and maybe even a sea turtle or two! And along the way, we'll get to know each other, forming friendships to last beyond our week together.
This will be our day-to-day journal... each day, you'll get news, information and pictures from the students. Join us on our adventure! Have fun!!!