Month: September 2008

Wiihoo! We bought a car! Just $500! Unfortunatly I got no picture of our cool car but I will upload a picture soon. It was our landlord who asked us if we wanted to buy a car from a friend of her so me and Karel went to Salt City and bought it! We all 4 in our apartment is sharing it, I think the insurance is going to be around $50/month but we are allowed to drive 30days without registration and insurance.

The car has a new cd-player, 105,1 is the hawaiian radio channel :) I didnt thought it would be so great with a car but it is super! We feel more like locals and can go to the nice beaches so convinient. Sarah just got a job in a surfshop so we can also burrow racks for free so we can bring our surfboard on the top of the car so we can go surfing wherever we like :)

This weekend we were at Northshore and to Sandy Beach.

I got 57pictures so far from my time in Hawaii…
Gallery(right hand upper corner) ->Hawaii Aug-Sep 2008

Soon it is also time for mid-term exams in school. Next week I will have 2 exams, 2 quizzes and 1 paper to write. I dont know why they give us so much to do! Anyway I guess it feels good to actually be learning something :P

This song should supposed to be one of the most popular songs on the northshore. I thought they would play more Jack Johnson here, but I havnt heard him so much yet.

Hey everyone!

Life in Hawaii is getting serious :) We got plenty of homework and most of it is just reading a book and then get quizzes on it… Since I read so slowly in English it takes forever and it is so many other things which is more fun than studying but i try my best. Compared to Sweden it is more homework and the result from the homework also counts in the final grade. Attendence is also important to get good grades.

This Monday I saw my first turtle in my life it weight around 90kg and were 80years old(a chinese guy at the beach told me) they are supposed to become 230kg and 500years old. Cool animal!

I also went the second time to Northshore. This time the waves had become bigger but not as big they are going to get in the winter… At the beach Oakley, Volcom and other brands have houses were the surfers can live while they are practising. Jack Johnsson is also living there :)

This weekend we are thinking about going on a fishing trip but not sure yet.

Oohh, big news! The food court I have been talking about have 50% off the last 15min before they close… which means super cheap food! guess who has been there every evening? :)

Yesterday when we went out surfing we saw 2 sharks just 10-15meters away from us! Scary!! They were not as big as the shark in the movie bellow but still, scary…

This week it has been 2 sharks attacks on Hawaii, normally it is just 2-3shark attacks per year and every 7-10year someone dies from a sharkattack…

In Hawaii it is possible to do cage diving with sharks for around $120(800sek), I think I am going to do it :D

Oooo! I had a very long day today… woke up with a hangover or still drunk I dont know but anyway went out surfing to try get fit, then I had school 13:00-20:10, the last 3 hours in school we had no AC and the fan was out of order so it was unbelievable hot… so it is very nice to be at home now, just eaten and taking a shower, now I just need some sleep and then I am back on track again :)

On saturday I was not supposed to go out because we planned to make a roadtrip on Sunday, but we met some norwiegans and went to their party just 3 floor under us, it was 30 Norwiegen, 3 Americans and 2 Swedes there. It is strange to improve norwiegen in hawaii, make sense? I can almost understand now :P But it is crazy with all the scandinavien so this week I tried extra hard to get know some non-Scandinaviens… and it works quite well actually! wiihoo! Didnt flew half the globe to speak Swedish :) Dont understand me wrong, many of the Scandinaviens here are really great!

On Sunday we(me and my roomies) rented a jeep and drove around the island… it was really a nice trip! It looks much different on the countryside compared to Honolulu. We visited Sandy beach, Northshore and made some short stops to just look around.

Beautiful scenery!

Tomorrow I will try to get up really early to go out surfing, hopefully around 7am, because then I can get the best surfingspots(where the waves breaks first), it is hard get a lot of good waves to practise on when it is a lot of people out there.

hang loose :)

Today we went to Ala Moana shoppingcenter to buy a Internet provider. Before we used our neighbours Internet but it is getting annoying that it doesnt work sometimes. In America you need a “proof of residence” to be able to get Internet. And of course they dont accept apartment contracts(always talking about their policies) and we dont have any electronic or gas bills which can proof that we live here. So the only way we are able to solve it is that Sarah goes to a Bank here in Honolulu and get a bank statement with our adress on it. So if Sarah wouldnt have lived with us it would have been impossible to get Internet here. The reason why they need the “proof of residence” is because we rent the Internet equitment from the company, we asked if we could pay a deposit but it was not possible according to their policies… yeye, not the best system but hopefully it will work out well so we have it next week…

Yesterday we went to the first friday of the month party in downtown Honolulu, it was fun, but as usual a lot of Scandinaviens! I wonder where all the Americans are? We were in a club which is called Nextdoor, and half of the club is outside, I like to have the sky as roof and it feels more fresch! :)

Here are two pictures with me and my broken surfboard… I havnt repaired it yet but I got all the things I need to repair it now… First I have to make the holes and surranding clean, then put on something that looks like glue in the holes and then put it in the sun for around 3 minutes so that it will get hard and finally use sandpaper to make it look good and become smoothly.

If someone would like to send me something(I do like presents:), my american adress is:

Anders Vastfalt
1684 Ala Moana Blvd.
Apartment 1052
Honolulu, Hawaii 96815
USA

Aloha!

Wow, first 2 days in school has been quite nice… just in 2 days I got classes in all the 4 subject I will study here. Principles of Microeconomics, Principles och Macroeconimcs, Communication and Culture and Intro to Communication skills. I have maybe a average of 2 other Swedish people in each of my classes and a total average of 5 Scandinaviens per class. Maybe 5 Hawaii locals per class and 3 Germans and 4 Japanese.The size of the classes is different from Sweden, just 20-30 people in each class so it is more talking in the classroom and attendence is very important here, especially if you want to get good grades.

A met a bunch of interesting people and that is great, I like! Yeserday we went to The Moose Bar, it is kind of a studentclub. It has a $5 entrance fee but then the drinks just cost $1. Not the best drinks but hey, one dollar! That is really cheap!

And the Ala Moana Food Court which I said I should write about in next post! So here it comes, it is the food heaven! Just 5min away from our house, when I first entered the place I became a bit shocked(in a postive way, of course :), it is soo huge! I would guess at least 35 restaurants and there is also coffeshops, icecream bars, a cinnamon bun bakery! A lunch cost around $7-$9(45-60sek) which I think is a reasonable price!

Tomorrow I have lessons between 14:05-15:30. I will just have around one and a half hour lessons on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays. I could change my schedule so I get 3 busy days instead but I dont know, it is nice to have classes everyday so I meet people, the other side of the coin is that it take 1hour to go to and back from the university with bus. I cant really decide how I should do…

Surf tomorrow, it is supposed to be bigger waves tomorrow and over the weekend so I am pretty excited about that. Have a nice day everyone! Aloha!