Freeeeeeee, Freeeee Fallllllllllllllling!!

Gratitude 5/14-

I am grateful for Trained Instructors.

I'm 19, do you know what that means?! I'M GOING SKY DIVING!!!!! :D :D :D :D
[I know, you can go when you're 18, but I decided 19]

Today I went skydiving with a couple of cool kids (: Erica Andrus, Stephen Sloth, Alex Hotson... I mean Hodson and myself of course! & Michael Tovey drove us, I lo...like that kid! Anyway, Alex & I are pretty cool because we share the same birthday, down to the T! So in honor of our birthdays and being in Hawaii, we decided to go Skydiving! We've been planning this since fall semester when I found out we had the sameeeee birthday! It was great seeing it go through!

So you're asking "OMG! IS IT AMAZING OR WHAT?!"
And to answer your question: YES!!

Some pointers though:

• DON'T GO ON A SATURDAY OR SUNDAY! You'll have to wait 4-7 hours for your jump, even though they said usually you only wait like 20 minutes. LIES!


• Bring your own food, it's a LOT cheaper.


• Sleep before coming, or you'll sleep and miss your jump time & be pushed back. [Didn't happen to us, but it happened to another group that was there]


• Take a lot of pictures with YOUR camera. It's freaking $150 more for the profeshh ones. WASTE.OF.MONEY.


• If you have the option, go first! It's wayyy cool and you just get it over with!


• Wear shoes that won't fall off. Haha suckerrrrrsss!


• Enjoy God's beautiful creations!

So yeah, the overall experience was pretty shweet. It was fun and deffinitely a rush. To be completely honest though, I didn't like it toooo much because the cold air got into my ears so I got SUPER dizzy, and almost threw up- YUCK! But once we got outta the cold air and started "free falling" Papa Dop [my instructor] calmly talked to me and it was alright, it was fun swirling around and seeing the ocean and the greeeeeen grounds of beautiful Hawai'i.

In any circumstances, jumping outta an airplane is crazy frightening. Heck, if I were jumping outta an airplane in any other circumstances, I'd propbably pee my pants outta fright and then pass out! But I'm sooooo glad I had Papa Dop with me knowing what to do so I wouldn't die (:


It was also kinda of sad day even with the awesomeness of the event. David was supposed to be there with me :( Originally the plan was that he would fly in on the 12th, celebrate my birthday with me, share this amazing experience of skydiving, chill with me during my last two weeks here, then fly home together. But that was the plan four months ago before everything happened :/ My last thought before jumping outta the airplane as I reached out to grab Erica's hand for a little squeeze was, "This should be David's hand. sigh" But in the words of Katy Perry & AJ Rafael, In another life I would be your girl but you've got your life now, she better be treatin' you right.


So I am grateful for Trained Instructors.