Hey everyone. My name is Gabe Cochran. I am originally from Oklahoma State University. But, as you can see, I'm no longer in Oklahoma.
I'm actually studying at University of Hawaii at Manoa. So that's on the island of Oahu. And I'm here with the NSE program. NSE stands for National Student Exchange. I actually am at Waimea Bay right now on the North Shore. So here's a quick pan. It's actually surf season right now. So at beaches all down the coast we've been able to see surfers and we saw a Volcom surf competition earlier. It was really cool. So I'm here with NSE, that's actually how I got to the North Shore today. But, um, I'm here with NSE, the National Student Exchange. Um, I actually decided to do this because I went into, I knew that I wanted to travel, I knew that I wanted to experience different cultures and so I went into my schools study abroad office and they actually, the girl that was talking to me had just gotten back from a semester on the Big Island.
I originally had wanted to go to Europe, but I changed my mind because NSE offers programs that are semester long at schools in the United States. So I didn't have to deal with passports and that kind of thing. I just came to Hawaii. It has been awesome so far because the Hawaiian culture is a lot different than any culture on the mainland, not just from Oklahoma. But um, we actually went to some sacred grounds today and got to look at like the birth place of like, this very important people in Hawaii. And they told us about the science behind it and how people navigated using the land and the stars. And it was very cool. And Anyway, yeah, I'm really thankful for NSE, really glad to be here. I'm about a month in and I have three more months left to keep exploring and keep checking out views like this. Got a lot of adventuring to do.
Gabe Week 1