Happenings on this Voyage

So August 25 comes around, I'm tired from the 2 weeks of CBI but a bit excited and anxious to actually start my program.  Mind you, I have no clue as to what the program entails. Remember that thing I said about ambiguity, yes, it's still lurking around on the first day of the program.  By now, I had already met most of the people in my program, but still a bit nervous.  This is the day of the actual program, we have gone over the self-introductions, we are beginning to figure out who we can joke around with in a certain manner, who is still kind of serious.  But all that aside, we walk in to our very first lecture, in the Pacific Room, which is organized very much like the UN General Assembly Hall, half circle shapes and each person with a microphone. Pretty cool huh. Then the lecture starts..... The Pacific Plan... I immediately panic. I skimmed through the plan and went through all the websites that were listed on the pre-arrival assignment and even took down s...

Thank goodness for fast internet connection so I can actually update my blog.  So..... I arrived on Honolulu on August 12, two days before my 28th birthday supposedly to start the Pacific Islands Leadership Program. I know it sounds very ambiguous, and believe me it still is ambiguous to me, a month later. But that's for another conversation, or it may very well pop up sometime in this post. Haha. Anyway, little did I know that I was arriving 2 weeks prior to the actual start of the program.  The first 2 weeks was spent participating in the Community Building Institute (CBI), this 2-week long thing where all the participants of any East-West Center program are to attend to get to know more about Hawaii, their programs, the center, and to mingle and network with each other.  So that was alright for the first week, and then the second week came along and it became more apparent that CBI had overstayed its welcome.  Assignments that could have been completed withi...