About a year before my departure, I started organizing my semester abroad at Hawaii Pacific University with the help of your website. The enrollment part at the university went relatively quickly. I would say it is enough to start 3-5 months in advance. It took a little longer with the student loan because I got every form sent back at least once to add something.
University
When we arrived in Hawaii, one week before the start of the semester we had an introductory week in which we were introduced to the campus, etc. The person responsible for the German exchange students at the HPU, Stephanie Denim, explained everything to us very well and it has to be said that she was so saved some stress.
The campus for us business students is in the downtown business district in Honolulu. In principle, the 4-5 lecture hall buildings are all on one street in the middle of the city. Not super nice, but nobody complains in the weather!
I took courses in finance and marketing. Since I’m still a graduate in Germany, I had to take master’s courses, which didn’t make things really difficult. You have always had something to do with presentations and papers there, but if you are clever you have 2 days of the week completely free and on the other 3 you have to go to the university for a lecture and maybe 1-2 hours beforehand Do homework. Compared to Germany it is about the same effort, but at the HPU you have the guarantee that you will get a good grade! The professors are mostly super nice, but not necessarily as ambitious as my German ones, so the lessons are very limited to the basics!
Hang loose! That’s the motto in Hawaii and so are the people there. In our free time we often went surfing on the various wonderful beaches or just went sightseeing in jungle areas. Barbeque on the beach or just walking up and down Waikiki in the evening was also popular.
You can go out anywhere in Waikiki. You get at least 2 flyers in your hand when you walk down the strip once, with “the party” of the evening.
Living
We had an apartment right in Waikiki. $ 2400 a month was quite a lot for a 2 bed flat share, but you only live once! You can definitely get a room for $ 800 if you look around. Beware: In Hawaii you often hear that foreign students are being ripped off again and again. So it happened to us too. Our landlord did not return our deposit on the grounds that we did not have our visit approved in writing. Long story short: he ripped us off and told us bullshit because he knew that we had no time for discussions because we had to go to the plane. I don’t know what I would do differently next time, but you just have to take the risk and hope that you get to fair people. The problem with us was that we were only subtenants.
Travel
Like most of the other study abroad students, I flew to other islands to visit them. The first island next to Oahu was Kauai. Kauai is very famous for its rainy weather, and unfortunately it was no exception during my visit, but we still had a lot of fun. We hiked a lot and had incredibly cool views there. The first night we stayed in a hostel. In the second in a hotel that was hardly more expensive, so I recommend everyone to take a hotel. For Kauai you should definitely get a four-wheel drive car, as you can go off-road very often and it increases the fun factor if you can heat along muddy trails.
The other island I’ve been to is Maui. Unfortunately, we had a lot of bad luck with the weather there and it had rained a lot, but it wasn’t that bad because you should do the Road to Hana on Maui anyway and sit in the car a lot. It is a very curvy, shabby road with a lookout for great sights such as waterfalls every 15 minutes or so. We also harvested a coconut on Maui and cracked it. Tasted good, even if it took about half an hour to open.
Conclusion
For me, Hawaii is the number 1 emigration option 🙂
