As time has passed, and I’ve had the chance to reflect on the Huakai 2011 trip to Hawaii, I have come to realize that it was a truly life changing experience. On the islands of Hawaii, I made new friends, had many firsts, and pushed my limits, making the trip a truly enjoyable and challenging experience. My most memorable experiences included seeing the sun rise above the clouds on Haleakala, tide pooling, and an unexpected treat that I experienced throughout the duration of the trip.
Seeing the sun rise above the cloud line on Haleakala was a beautiful and unique experience. I feel so blessed to have seen something that only a few select and brave people have the privilege of seeing. The night before, my friends and I attempted to pull an all-nighter, with the idea that we would sleep after we returned from Haleakala. It turned out to be a complete fail, because we could only stay up until midnight, despite our best efforts. We ended up crashing on the couch and floor of our condo. Then, only two hours later, I had the wonderful job of waking everyone up so we could meet Uncle Dennis at the hotel lobby. Once we all dragged our tired bodies to the lobby, I had the privilege of riding in the front seat of the van driven by Uncle Dennis. I had the hardest time fighting to stay awake. The land on Maui is so beautiful, and I wanted to enjoy every second of it, but I couldn’t stay up to see it all as we drove to Haleakala. Sometimes I wish that I went to bed early so I could stay up to see everything that Maui was willing to show me. We arrived at the top of Haleakala a bit early, and because the high elevation makes the air so cold, we decided to stay inside the van and take a quick nap before the sun came up. About a half an hour later, I woke up and noticed that we were only a few minutes away from seeing the sun rise, so I shifted around in my seat with the hopes of waking up Uncle Dennis. It worked, and he told all of us to hurry up to the highest point on the volcano. We did, and while we were there, we saw the most stunning sight that I have experienced. The sun came up so quickly! The sun started as a tiny sliver of light in the east. Within two minutes or so, the sliver grew and grew into the full circle of the sun. As the sun came up, the clouds started to color as the sun’s rays hit them. Seeing the sun rise like that above the cloud line is an experience that I want to relive sometime in my future. Waking up at two in the morning was definitely worth the trip and the beautiful view.
Another unique yet fun experience that I had in Hawaii was the tide pooling lab. So much was going on at the time and there were so many things to learn in a short amount of time. The tide pooling lab started out with a somewhat short bus ride to the tide pooling location. Once we were there, we gathered up the equipment we needed to do the lab. The night came quickly, forcing us to walk over the ‘a’a lava in the dark, using our headlamps to see where we were stepping. It was really frightening to walk over that lava in the dark. I didn’t want to fall and get “bitten by a lava snake”. Half way to the tide pools, we gathered our buckets and nets . Then, we wandered over to the tide pools to catch creatures. The first animal I saw was a brittle star, which I thought was some type of annelid. Kumu Mari immediately corrected me and found a brittle star to show me my mistake. Then, I found a Wana, or a sea urchin. Those are poisonous, so I didn’t bother trying to catch it. As Madeline, my partner, and I moved along the edge, we stumbled upon something weird. I asked Kumu Monica what it was. She told me with excitement that it was a good sized sea cucumber. Sea cucumbers are the neatest things ever! It was hard to pull off of the rocks because it has little feet which it uses to hold on to surfaces. Once I pulled it off the lava and could really look at it, I noticed it was shooting water from it’s back end. I handed it to Madeline, and we both got a chance to really study it. I have never seen anything like it before. We put the animal back where we found it, with the hopes that other groups could see our little discovery. After finding and recording several other animals, we stumbled upon some strange annelid that nobody has ever seen before. The next day, we looked at the pictures we took of it and found out that it was a banded ribbon worm. The whole first night of the lab consisted of this cycle of exploring, discovering, and recording what we found by taking a picture of it. In the morning, we returned to the site again to finish the second part of the tide pooling lab. We found many more animals, including flatworms, colonial anemones, and sea squirts. The worst part of the lab happened when we returned to HPA. We had to record, classify, and draw all of the animals we found. The lab itself took forever! I stayed up late to finish that lab, because I didn’t want to do it the following morning before classes. It was quite a struggle to do the lab with so many distractions such as a pool table, friends, computers, and a ping pong table. Despite how boring the paperwork was, I still learned so much from that lab and I’m glad that I had to opportunity to learn about invertebrates in a hands-on environment. The experience of a simple lab really enhances the learning experience exponentially.
My surprise treat of the trip, and the biggest highlight of the trip for me, happened on a daily basis. The treat was unexpected yet truly enjoyable. Classroom work at school in Indiana and in Hawaii is interesting, and I try my best to understand the material given, but I discovered that learning isn’t the same unless you get outside and experience the topics that you’ve learning about. I understood the differences between the types of lava, and the formation of the islands, as well as what types of animals there were and what traditions existed in Hawaii. But I didn’t truly comprehend what we talked about in the classroom until we experienced things first hand by vising a newly formed beach with was extended by a recent lava flow. Learning about what ideas like Hawaiian religion before visiting a heiau really enhanced the experience of the visit and allowed us students to better understand what we were looking at and how important it was to Hawaii. Without classroom time, we wouldn’t have understood what ideas, history, and objects we were looking at. And without activities related to what we learned, we would not have fully understood what our teachers taught us. I believe that what I learned in Hawaii will stay with me for the rest of my life. Classroom time was balanced perfectly with labs and educational visits to landmarks. Pictures and talking story can only teach us students a limited amount of what there is to learn. Experiencing what I learned my have been the most valuable thing that I have gotten from this adventure in Hawaii.
Within just over two weeks, I have seen what others cannot, gone out into the field to complete my favorite lab, and learned more than I could have possibly imagined. I have also pushed my limits, made new friends, opened up to people, and many more great things that I would not have done without this trip. I hope to visit Hawaii some time in my future so I can relive these experiences that have changed my life so much. Mahalo Hawaii, for sharing your stories with me and teaching me more than I could have ever imagined.
