HER view

The plane ride didn't seem like five hours with my new ereader. My sister gave it to me last night and told me to download a few books for the plane ride. She knows how much I love reading so I gave her a big hug and made my way to gate 35. This was my first time traveling alone and I was glad. I was happy that my parents trusted me enough to let me go alone. I grabbed my bags from luggage claim and headed toward the doors. I was starting to regret coming alone. What if I got kidnapped? What if I was in the wrong place? What if people try to talk to me? AGH. I'm a friendly person when I want to be. I prefer making friends when I want new friends. I don't really like it all that much when people try to talk to me. I was just starting to imagine a whole bunch of horrible scenarios when I saw a lady holding up a sign that said Ke'alohilani Pukahi on it. I walked up to her and her smile widened.

"Well, hello there darlin'. Is this you?" She pointed to the sign with her index finger but her eyes never left mine.

"Yes." I was raised to answer everything with 'yes.' Other words like 'yeah' and 'uh huh' were basically swear words in my house.

"Well that's great honey. Now... how do you say your name?" She looked down at the sign sheepishly and back at me. I wasn't surprised. A lot of haole people had trouble with my native hawaiian name.

"It's pronounced Ke-a-low-he-lani, but you can just call me Lani." She thought for a few seconds and then shook her head.

"I guess it's better for me to call you Lani than to butcher that beautiful name of yours." She seemed genuinely nice but I still wasn't sure. "Follow me this way dear. The shuttle is just outside."

It turns out I was the first one to arrive to the shuttle. I gave my bags to the driver and picked a seat in the middle. As we picked up more kids, I started to get the feeling that they all knew each other. Everyone was talking to someone else and they were all laughing. One girl with bright red hair came running to the shuttle looking a little sick, but a girl in the back called her over with a smile. Why was everyone so comfortable with each other? I looked around and I was the only person not talking to anyone.

It felt like a million years but we finally made it to our hotel. I grabbed my luggage from the driver and thanked him before I went inside. There were so many teenagers. I looked all around me until I saw a check-in desk. There was a nice