My trip to Hawaii!

 Hi guys, it's Silje - long time no write! 

In the spirit of school starting back up again, I figured it was the perfect time to talk about what I did this summer, just to hold on to summer for a little while longer. 

For most of the summer, I worked as a commercial Mortgage Loan Intern for a financial company in Bellevue - it was exciting to enter into the corporate world and build connections with business leaders to expand my network! If you can get an internship during your time here at PLU, I totally recommend you do so, no matter what you're studying. But, moving on to the fun part - my vacation. During the COVID pandemic, I wasn't really able to travel anywhere except for back and forth between Norway and the US for holidays like Christmas. So, I was really ecstatic to find out that my boyfriend and I were going to Hawaii! I had never been before, and our trip was booked to go to Kona, Big Island for 8 days! 

Horseback riding in Hilo, Big Island (The brown one in the
back was Kiwi, and she's the one who kicked me off. She
freaked out when a group of motorcycles rode by us.)

Our trip was full of adventure, and we were out and about almost every single day. We went to the farmers market and tried some fruit I never even knew existed (ice cream banana and strawberry papaya to mention a couple), went horseback riding on the other side of the island (and got kicked off the back of the horse), snorkeling (saw hundreds of Dory's), hiked up an active volcano (really hot over there), hiked to a waterfall (really hot over there too) and saw lots of beautiful sunsets by the pool. 

Hike (more like just walking up stairs actually) to the waterfall

  

One thing I noticed about Big Island was that there are a lot of lava rocks there - like, a lot. Big Island has 4  active volcanoes, and we visited Kīlauea which is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. On average, it erupts every two to three years, most recently a year ago (September 2021). What's even more interesting is that the different eruptions have caused the island to grow - just during the last eruption, it added one square mile of coastland - and this volcano alone has erupted more than 30 times in the last 60 years. That's a lot of extra coastlands. 

We definitely had a great time in Hawaii, and hope that sometime next year we'll be able to go explore another Hawaiian Island; Maui is on my bucket list. In the meantime, enjoy some photos of our trip! 

Until next time,

- Silje

Steam coming from the volcano 

The hiking trail up to the volcano 

Sunset view by the pool

No vacation without margaritas

Our view from the balcony (random lava rocks in the middle)

Beach day