Hawaii Trip Photos

After my midterm exams, I had a five day break before I had to go back to school (which was extended to six thanks to some snow). So, we flew to Hawaii! I'm going to make a separate post for food, since there's enough photos and things to talk about to do that. The watermarks on the photos are all over the place -- most have this blog and bluemozaik (my photography tumblr) on them, but my selfies and haul photos have my personal tumblr's. ;; There are more pictures posted to both my personal tumblr and bluemozaik, and more will be up as I watermark them.

I also made a teaser video like I do for my convention vlogs, which can be found here. The videos themselves aren't as interesting, unfortunately;;

This was my first time really flying over the ocean! (I might have done it before with flying down to Florida, but I don't remember it.) At first it was a scary thought, but once we were up in the air it wasn't that bad. It was also my first time on a larger airplane that had a middle row, and my first time eating a full meal in the air! 

We stayed in Waikiki, on the island of Oahu. It was so warm -- it felt like May or June here around DC! Hawaii is also five hours behind EST, which made it a little difficult to communicate with everyone back home, and we always woke up before the sunrise and went to bed early. 

Waikiki was super pretty! There are palm trees everywhere, and there was really only one day where it got cloudy in the afternoon.

I had to get new sunglasses on the trip! I never wear them here at home, but it was so bright in Hawaii that it was kind of hard to get around during the day if you're squinting all the time. My friends seemed to think I'd come back with a tan, but I burn so easily that I was always covered in sunblock. 

It was fun to watch the waves break on the North Shore, and to watch the surfers. I got lots of video! 

The birds are fearless. I probably could have reached out and grabbed that bird if I wanted to. They'd always just walk in front of you and not fly off unless you were about to step on them. 

Some of the birds were cute though. One thing that stood out was that everything was translated into Japanese, and then often Korean and Chinese as well. Hawaii gets a lot of Asian tourists, so it was common to see tourist booklets and tour buses with Japanese all over them. 

A lot of the corners along the "main drag" had paved stones with words in Hawaiian, with an English translation underneath them. It was interesting to see how much of the Hawaiian language was used everyday in addition to English. Almost everyone greeted you with "aloha", the flight attendants always ended their announcement with "mahalo" (thank you), and I saw a lot of advertisements referring to children as "keiki". 

Looks like this belongs in an aquarium, right? Or in a reef off shore? Wrong! It was around the docks near the Aloha Tower! 

We also had long layovers in Los Angeles -- overnight on the way out, and a six-hour break on the way back. While I don't have any good pictures from the first visit, I did get some good ones when we visited Little Tokyo. Sadly we had to be back at the airport by 10am so most of the stores were closed :( I'd love to go back though, and visit all the places I've heard about via online sempais. 

It was kind of hard to bring back all of the stuff I brought ;; We had packed only in carry-on luggage since we were flying through two different airlines, and we didn't have too much free room to begin with. However, I didn't buy as much as I thought I would! I was worried I'd spend all of my money on the trip and have nothing for Katsucon next month, but that wasn't the case. 

This is all the stuff I bought for myself! The rest were souvenirs for friends. I haven't really gotten to use any of the things I bought yet. I also wasn't expecting to buy hair accessories, but they were cute!