To start this trip, I had to actually fly separately to SFO because they didn’t arrange travel from HNL.

I felt like this made me a little ‘extra’ busy but I couldn’t complain that much as I didn’t plan anything else when I think of it.

The only thing I really had to figure out was my Nugget and Onyx.

I have a hard time leaving them and my home but I think it might also be partly because I got really sick after a competition I was in. One of the girls gave it me and I have been stressed about getting well and traveling for more than 24 hours.

I am not sure what I am feeling but chatgpt continues to be my favorite travel guide. It really makes me feel much more confident navigating my way around places and at least plan a head now that I know where I am headed!

Though I use ‘plan ahead’ very loosely, I mean it more logistically and helping me navigate.

Once I made it to SFO, I had to get my bag and figure out how to get to the Condor International Terminals. Thank you again chatgpt, I will stop saying this now because I use it every day and know I could say it every day, lol.

Pro – made it to SFO, SFO AirTrain got me from baggage to arrivals with no issue. There are a lot of options in Terminal G I read in my app for food. I might try going there once I charge my devices. Tried it out, it was closer than I expected and could charge in their food court.

Con – Finding bathrooms were way harder on the gate side but easier in Baggage Claim. My airline doesn’t open till 1p and I got here at 8a.

Then the flight left an hour and a half late so I was freaking out about making my connecting. Luckily I was still stateside so I could use my phone plan prior to takeoff.

Once in the airplane I purchased their data plan in the air. Unlimited internet and text! Text was different so I was able to keep in touch with some of the family while I was in the air, flying to Europe.

I spent most of the day in the San Francisco airport waiting for the Condor counter to open.

I didn’t really attempt to find food right away but found Koi Palace Express and got shrimp har gow and next to it, a vegetable and chicken soup because I missed breakfast hours. On air-side (past TSA, by the terminal gates) I found a Proper Foods, I liked them because their foods were clean foods, for lack of a better way of saying it. Also, I should have went sooner, I could have hung out there more and charged my phones at one of the tables that had a plug.

I had a hard time finding a water refill station but was able to by still water refillable bottles. I think those will come in handy, if I can get large bottled waters to refill later.

So now to the inner journey that I am thinking about right now.

It started almost two years ago, I started feeling like something was not right in my marriage – not wrong perse, just … off. At the time I couldn’t really explain it but there was preoccupation and disinterest in trying anymore. It made me realize that I wasn’t okay and tired of trying and not feeling like it was worth it because it wasn’t appreciated. I stopped feeling ‘met’ and there was reciprocity.

This translated into a larger ‘why’ for me. Why am I working at this when I can do it all myself? Why did I need him? Even if harder, I could still do it for and by myself. I didn’t need someone, so there had to be a reason why I wanted them there. The thought still pains me but only because it was a good man and a good relationship. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it was the right love for me anymore. And that hurt.

I regretted the time spent, not because it was all bad because it was hardly bad. That is what made it harder. I hurt someone and wish I had known in the beginning that it would eventually end with me hurting someone by breaking up with him. Not because I didn’t learn, grow, and love him, but because in its end, I hurt him.

I know what hurt someone’s heart feels like and tried my hardest to never hurt someone else. The saving grace for me was knowing that in the long run, staying wasn’t going to fix anything, I/my love had already changed. Staying would have made it unfair to him and potentially harder to always keep love in mind which was my mantra, which I learned early on making this relationship work.

So I did the hard thing and made the divorce happen. It was finalized last year.

[Insert, going to Narita and starting hula to do something creative for myself with more meaning, then traveling with a friend for her birthday to Rarotonga, Papeete, and Auckland, lost that friendship and another that got me through the divorce though I never found out why.]

In Spring of this year, my father passed away. It was sudden, he didn’t know he was that sick and passed in a week’s time. My relationship with him was hard, it is like that with both my parents for different but oddly similar reasons. But at the end I wasn’t there for me, I was there for him and wanted to make sure what he wanted after, happened.

[Insert performed in the hālau at a few random performances – trying to build the muscle a little based on my past professional theatre experience – and competition where I stayed in the hotel my grandmother used to own a unit in.]

Which brings me to now, in SFO, heading to Prague, Vienna, and Budapest. With a text from my Auntie as I left HNL, that said grandmother asphyxiated, and learning today, as I am about to leave to Europe, that the Dr. has given my grandma, who has been in the care of a third-party homecare prior, a couple days to live.

TMI