Her Update from Hilo

Hi dad, I have told you a lot about what is going on, but I will give you another brief summary.

So we just left Honolulu after bobbing in the port for a few days. We were trying to avoid a storm, but the skipper says we will hit some of it...good thing I took some Dramamine.

In Hilo my friends and I went to the downtown area and the best way to describe it is as Jordan said, "Hawaii's shit hole" that sounds awful but it is an extremely poor community and is run down, the main drag had 3 discount/ salvation army stores. We then took a cab (as we had to do the whole time because everything is so far away from each other) and we got 2 ladies- one old and one young I tried to convince them to throw a party for us and the old on agreed! We went to a black sand beach and got saw the wild sea turtles that live there. The beach was really small and overrun by SAS kids. We went to the beach the second day as well and saw whales breaching.   It was my favorite part of the the time in Hilo.

The next day, Jordan and I decided to go to the Rainbow Falls because some SAS kids said there was cliff diving there. We went, climbed some rocks to see the waterfall and it was beautiful.  There was no guard rail or anything to block the view.  It was slippery and kind of scary.  No cliff divers.   Next we decided to walk a mile up the road to the Boiling Pots falls...it was a humid trek and when we got there we were disappointed to find that there was no cliff diving there either...the locals warned us that people who just swim may get caught in the currents and drown.  Another  cab ride back downtown and found ourselves at the farmers market.   Lots of interesting fruits and vegetables so we decided to get lunch there....delicious tamales and a fresh avacado complimented by fabulous views of dumpsters and locals carrying dirty carts around.  It was very representative of Hilo. The cabbie driver said we were the most mellow kids they have had…surprising based on the lecture from the night before about how bad we were.

A lot of kids (1/3) of the ship rented rooms in a hotel.  Actually a pro-sports kid rented out nine rooms and had a huge party. They had to replace carpet because someone puked in the elevator.  Thirty IDs taken confiscated.  There were 40 cases of extreme intoxication, it was really bad.  It made me kind of sad because I have met so many people that are so interesting and are trying to help the world, and these people are not noticed. For example, my friend Jessica (her middle name is Lynne) is an extremely good balloon twister (you know the kind that make balloon animals and stuff) she is teaching a class about how to twist balloons so we can go to kids all over the world and make balloon animals for them. and we in turn have learned a new skill that we can make money.  I helped her promote her club by walking around with an duck intertube made out of balloons.    It is very cool.

Today we saw more whales and dolphins.  Just beautiful…I can’t get over it.

  

Thanks.   Love you,

Jessica