I’m on the last stop of my 8 day trip. Honolulu. Talking about ending with a bang. Honolulu is an amazing place. On one hand you have the buzz of a big city, complete with traffic, buses, people everywhere and food anywhere you turn. On the other you have the beautiful beaches, mountains, waterfalls and history. The temperature is a normal 80 degrees year around. I don’t think there is anywhere else like it in the world. And the people, so diverse! There’s Hawaiian (duh), other Pacific Islanders, mainlanders, Japanese, Filipino, I even met a fella from Belarus here once. Who knew this is what you find thousands of miles from any major piece of land. Here are some other cool facts about Hawaii:
~Hawaii is the only state that grows coffee.
~From east to west Hawaii is the widest state in the United States.
~The Hawaiian Islands are the projecting tops of the biggest mountain range in the world.
~There are no racial or ethnic majorities in Hawaii. Everyone is a minority. Caucasians (Haoles) constitute about 34%; Japanese-American about 32%; Filipino-American about 16% and Chinese-American about 5%. It is very difficult to determine racial identification as most of the population has some mixture of ethnicities.
~The island houses the world's biggest telescope and more scientific observatories in one place than anywhere else in the world.
It's a sweet place.
More recap on the trip thus far. I spent 2 nights in Guam. Both were fairly short lay overs. 13 hours and 1 hours. So I wasn't able to get out and explore to much. I was able to hang out with about 8 fellow crew members for dinner one night and with a fellow Seattle reserve on another. That was a intersting night. After a trip to the store we came back with some locally distilled Mango flavored vodka. Big mistake. That might be the most disgusting thing I've ever put in my mouth. Parents, do you want you kids to never drink? Make them try this stuff and I am sure you'll have no problems. It was terrible. Looking back I should have known better. And mixing it with mango and peach nectar probably wasn't a good idea either. Live and learn.
I spent the last night in Narita. Well, technically I spent last night in a 767 coming to Honolulu, but you get the idea. Ran into another flight attendant friend there and we had dinner and hung out for a bit. I regaled him with my tell of what happened on the flight up to Nartia from Guam. Let me share with you all too.
This sweet, young Japanese mother flags me down to ask me a question during boarding. She is sitting in her seat with a baby, maybe about 2ish years old and her husband. The baby is eating animal crackers. On them are printed the names of what animal they are. The mom holds one cookie out and asks me, "How do you say this word in English?" The word? Cock. For just a second I was taken aback as the slang use of the word is much more common than the use that it was here, on a chicken animal cracker. What could I do? I pronounced it for her and explained that it was a male chicken, but that the word rooster was much more common to use. I didn't feel it was my place to explain to her right there in the middle of the aircraft that in American slang it also mean penis. I walked away with that lost in translation feeling again.
What else, what else. I don't know if anything can top that story. This will be a good time to finally take that nap I've been needing all day since I'm going on 27 hours awake, with a 2 hour nap in there sometime.
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