02/06 — Aloha!

It’s about 5:40 a.m. here in Hawaii and that means it’s time to get moving. I’ve got a busy Wednesday ahead and really haven’t had a chance to breathe just yet.

I flew out of New York on Monday with my parents, and then caught a connecting flight to Honolulu out of LAX. When I walked on board, someone called out my name. I turned around and spotted a Washington Redskins cheerleader. Tiffani, who has been a Redskins cheerleader for eight seasons, had a Pro Bowl manual and looked to see who the New York Jets girl was and she called me. We exchanged greetings and she actually sat a couple of rows behind us.

When we landed at Honolulu Airport, my parents went off in one direction and I went with Tiffani in another. We received leis (colorful strands of flowers that symbolize peace and friendship), got our luggage and then waited because a bunch of girls were arriving a half an hour later. There were fans already lined up because a lot of the players were also flying in at about the same time.

Once we got settled at the hotel, about 10 of us went out to a local grill. We got to know a little bit about each other and I learned a lot about the teams, and I can’t wait to come back and tell everyone about it. Later in the evening, a few of us went back to the hotel lobby just to refresh for practice the next day before crashing.

By 5 a.m. Tuesday, the alarm sounded. My roommate, Melanie, is a Sea Gal, a Seattle Seahawks cheerleader, who’s also a rookie so we're both experiencing everything for the first time. We talked Tuesday when we got up and got to know each other. We’re around each other a lot and have had a good time.

After we had a breakfast where we met the other girls and directors, we had Pro Bowl photo shoot. I already have a copy of it and it’s awesome.

The bulk of the day — nine hours — was spent practicing. I’ve never practiced that long before, but I don’t know why it seemed like it went very, very fast. I definitely prepared myself perfectly because there were no surprises and everyone’s at the same level.

During the last hour of the night practice, they sat us all down and one by one we got up and talked about ourselves and really got to know everyone. Some of the girls have some amazing, amazing stories. We got back to our rooms probably at like 10:30 and I tried to get the Internet working, but it wasn’t!

We also found out yesterday that we’re performing in the halftime show with the group Lifehouse, so it’s really exciting because usually the cheerleaders don’t perform at halftime. We’re going to learn that routine at practice this morning. We’re scheduled to have a kickoff rally this afternoon where we’ll get introduced to everyone in Hawaii and we’ll do a little performance. It’s basically the first time we get to interact with the crowd and the fans and stuff. They say the cheerleaders are like the biggest celebrities here — maybe even bigger than the players.

While one AFC group and one NFC group are going to a hospital today, my group actually gets a break from 1:30 to 5 p.m., so we’ll have some free time to go look at Hawaii or even pop over to the beach. Then there’s a luau party tonight.

It’s been kind of drizzly here lately, but it should be nice today. I think temperatures have been in the mid-70s, so you have to take that in February. This is awesome and I look forward to sharing my experience with you guys.

Fatigue won’t come into play. The girls who have been to the Pro Bowl before told us that you don’t sleep this week. This could be your only time in Hawaii, so just keep going and you can sleep when you get home.