Hi, everyone. You're listening to Women Who Travel, a podcast from Connie Nass Traveler. I'm Meredith

Carrie, and with me, as always, is my co-host, Balaericoglu. Hello. When we were planning for

this week's episode, we thought we all might need a little warm weather inspiration, but little

did we know we'd be recording in mid-November with

75-degree temperatures. Granted, we will take every bit of sunshine our guest, Nika Miller,

brings. Nika is calling in from Hurl and I on Hawaii's beautiful Oahu, and this week we're

chatting with her about everything it takes to be a professional surfer and stand-up paddleboarder.

Thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited to share my story with everyone.

So as someone who grew up in the center of a city and firmly surrounded by concrete, I'm very

interested to know what your relationship with water in the ocean was growing up

because I'm sure it's very different from mine. Yeah, so I am actually half black, half Mexican,

and I was raised with my Mexican side of the family. And my mom actually, she never learned how to swim. So she always

felt really sad and really like left out and just embarrassed, you know, every time they would go

to the ocean or the pool. So she was really adamant when she had kids, me and my brother, that

she made sure we knew how to swim. so she actually had me in little kids swim

classes um before i could actually walk like the little toddler classes so i feel like i've had

such a deep connection to the water since i was a baby mainly because of my mom and i, she'd take us to the beach all the time, me and my brother.

And yeah, I just really enjoy it.

I love it a lot.

And like I said, mainly because of her.

You didn't grow up in Hawaii.

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