cale livingston

YWAM: The First Round

I guess I should start off by mentioned that I had a much more successful attempt at packing this time than when I left for Honolulu. *Special thanks to Kim for being so patient.* And I actually packed the night before for this trip. It was way easier since I already made most of the hard decisions the first time around. But I was certainly surprised how much stuff I ended up leaving even this round. Kamu inherited my entire Graphic Design PC, for six months at least, and I ended up leaving all my “dress” clothes. From my initial impressions of the campus and the people that was definitely a good call. This was even easily the lightest I’ve backed in a long time.

As I said in my tweets earlier, I feel like I should be some sort of indie artist/homeless person. Let’s just say I won’t get any flak for not shaving my beard any time soon!

Landing in Kona was pretty nice but I was surprised by all the bareness and lava fields. A large majority of the island is sparsely vegetated and mostly black. In hindsight, O’ahu is definitely the most densely populated island of the bunch. The weather was also emo-esque, just for me. There was a blanket of what might very well be volcanic ash but I’m just going to ignorantly assume it was fog/clouds.

I already went through the sign-in process which wasn’t too bad. But I knew I should have transferred my bank funds earlier since I ran into the problem of not being able to withdraw my money right away. I guess I get to leave some work for tomorrow, huh? I also had a quick peek at my room and it’s pretty much a Hume Camp Cabin with a nice kitchen and bathroom attached. There’s also no wifi there yet since the dorms are actually brand new. Again, just leaves something to look forward too. Oh, and my entire 50 person PhotogenX team is staying in these new dorms because our classroom is adjoined on the first floor. Short walk to class, awesome. Long walk to lunch, not so cool. Oh, did I mention that we all have work duties and I inexplicably chose 5:30-7:30am kitchen chores of 3:00-5:00pm outdoors work. It was such a tough call. Only time will tell if I made the right choice. Honestly though, I was leaning towards becoming a “normal” with my sleep schedule and I think this is definitely one way to jump start that effort, for better or worse. And, if you think about it, working outside during the hottest part of the Hawaiian day doesn’t sound very smart.

There’s probably some key points I’m leaving out but I’ll inevitably get back to those…

Lastly, for those of you who know my crush on Survivor: I’ve already made an alliance with some of the girls on my team and I think we’re going to win the first immunity challenge (one the them is really athletic). But I’m not sure who I’d vote off at this point. It actually feels pretty hard now that I think about it. Man, I really need to stop this comparison between missions and reality TV!