❀ Aloha Friday ❀

Aloha!

So this weekend has been kinda crazy. Friday, we went to the beach (again). After about an hour we decided we weren't getting any real sun so we packed up our things and trekked back to school. I know I say trekked making it seem like this long, hard, walk and I guess at times it seems pretty tedious how far away the school seems, but this "trek" is about a 15 minute walk. So in all reality I need to count my blessings with blessing number 1 out of many being that it only takes me 15 minutes to walk to the beach. And I can go whenever I want. Anyways, after coming back we ate dinner and started to prep for the opening social. The opening social is a dance put on by a club here at BYUH. The club that held this year's opening social was the New Zealand club. Yup, there is a club for people who are from New Zealand. It was a really fun no pressure dance. Towards the last hour, the club did a little flash mob. It was so cool! Apparently whoever hosts the dance has to prepare a flashmob. It was cool to see how they integrated their culture into their dance. I can't express how much I love the culture here enough. It completely fascinates me to be surrounded by so many different people with different backgrounds. I love feeling like some exotic creature because I'm from Boston. I can't count how many times I've said I was from Boston and the reaction has been something along the lines of: "Oooh!" or "That's so cool!" or "Wow! That's awesome!". It's fun being special because of where I come from :) I love being able to represent my favorite city (and the best city) in the whole world.

Saturday we woke up, determined to get to the beach and catch some sun. When we got to the beach right before 11 in the morning, we were very pleased with how empty it was. There was plenty of sun, not very many people, and the perfect weather. Since I have to come home to below freezing temperatures, I figure it's my duty to come home and have something to prove I soaked up my time in Hawaii. So what better way than a good, natural tan? The advice here is: WEAR SUNSCREEN. You can achieve a tan with sunscreen! And it skips the whole painful part of a sunburn! I was out in the sun for 5 hours. The sun in Hawai'i is stronger too, or so I've heard. So I was at a huge disadvantage right off the bat. Being light skinned and fair haired it's as though I'm holding a sign pointing to myself advertising to the sun that I'm ready to get a good sunburn. It didn't help that I was pretty nonchalant about sunburn before hand, I was always just like "eh, it's not too bad. It'll just turn into a nice tan afterwords!". Never ever ever EVER justify only putting on SPF 5 at the beginning of a beach trip. Take that SPF 30 and love it and cherish it and use it to your advantage. Take me for example:

10:53- we arrive at beach

11ish- ask to borrow "sunscreen" (anything below SPF 30 should not count as sunscreen)

12ish- get in water

12:30ish- go and lay out (probably texting Logan)

1ish- really feeling the heat of the sun

1:15ish- get back in water

2ish- go lay out to dry, trying to gain optimum sun exposure (Bad Idea)

2:30ish- notice shoulders are getting pink

3ish- get back in water 

4ish- realize sunburn may be occurring, leaves

Unfortunately for me, I was right. I had gotten EXTREMELY BURNT. Like if I was a slice of bacon I would probably be that one piece that got a little too much heat and is now black and shriveling off to the corner. I looked like a good ole lobstah. I'm pretty sure I got some sun poisoning because man my shoulders are killing and they're blistering a little. The first few nights were horrible, I could barely sleep! I kept waking up in the middle of the night because I would try to switch positions in my sleep but the new position would cause excruciating pain that woke me up. It's been pretty manageable these past few days but holy cow did I learn my lesson. Never again will I underestimate the power of the sun.

Now it's back to classes and homework (ew) but it's nice to start to get into the full swing of things. I'm in the middle of orientation for my job and I can't even begin to put into words how incredible the PCC is. I didn't really realize how lucky I am to be able to work somewhere so cool and powerful. I'm really looking forward to it, even if it just is a table setting job :) 

♡,

Nina