Tsunami? Or not.

This past week I visited Oahu, Hawaii with my boyfriend and four other friends. The week was going great. Spending time at the beach in Waikiki, visiting the North Shore of Oahu (surfing!) and just soaking in the culture. Its strange to think that your still on American soil yet learning a different language at the same time. By the second day hello was replaced by aloha and mahalo had taken the place of thank you. It was great to be disconnected from the world, aside from occasionally posting a picture I had taken with my iPhone. On our last day, Saturday, we were supposed to attend a car show in the morning and head to the airport shortly after. My boyfriend and I were abruptly awoken by our friend Troy who yelled "Theres a tsunami coming! This is real!! Get out of bed!" Not exactly the most pleasant thing to wake up to.
So, we woke up. Packed our bags and were ready to move if necessary. We woke up at 4:30AM Hawaii time and didn't sleep a wink after that. Instead, we found ourself doing the one thing none of us expected to be doing on vacation... watching television. KHNL was great about covering what was going on. To think that without television we all would have been pretty clueless about what was going on. The tsunami warning lasted until about 3PM Hawaii time when Hawaii officials notified the media it was safe to resume normal activities. Now, without the media nobody in Hawaii or on the mainland would know what was going on. And the fact that the officials of Hawaii trusted the media to pass on the message really says something about their impact and ability to reach out to many people at once. I am thankful that we had a television in our hotel room, without it we probably would of been a lot more worried than we were. The media let us know what to expect, what time, and when it was safe.