Archive for December, 2010
Last Thoughts
Dec 18th
Well, it’s my last night here in Hawai’i. How depressing. I can’t believe a hundred and twenty something days have all passed already. I made through all of my classes (with As, I might add), and I had hands down the coolest final on Wednesday for my Hawaiian Ethnozoology class. Our class, which only consists of 8 people, went to Richardson’s Beach here in Hilo and had to collect different fish and sea creatures. Putting on a bathing suit, bringing snorkel gear, and spending a few hours at the beach for a final was pretty awesome. And we found so much cool stuff!
Then yesterday was my birthday, which I was able to spend at the beach for the first time ever. (And probably the last, at least for a very long time.) Can I pretend my birthday is in the summertime from now on? You can’t do anything outside when it’s cold out… And speaking of cold, I’m not looking forward to getting off the plane in NJ to freezing cold weather. It has been in the 80s and I have been wearing shorts pretty much every day here, so it’s going to be quite a shock in two days.
Well, that’s it. I’m pretty much packed up (Miraculously, everything appears to be fitting!), and unless something super exciting happens tomorrow or sometime during my flights, there will be no more updates here. This whole experience has been amazing and I have had the best time! I miss everyone back home and I can’t wait to see you, but I am also very sad to know that I’m not coming back here. It has, after all, been my home for the last four months.
Much aloha to you all. Shoots! <3
A Week Left!?!?
Dec 12th
I only have a week left here, and I don’t know how this happened. As much as I miss everybody and want to go home for Christmas, I really am not ready to leave here and not come back. It’s very depressing.
Anyway, I haven’t updated in a long time, like always. So let’s see…
Thanksgiving break Tara and I flew over to O’ahu to spend a few days in Honolulu. It was very nice to go somewhere with actual buildings and stores for a few days, but I’m very glad that I decided to go to school on this island rather than that one. Being in Waikiki with tons of tourists all around didn’t really seem like the real Hawaii experience, however enjoyable it was for three days. The beach was nice, but crowded, and the place actually came alive at night with everybody going to dinner and shopping. Along with going to the beach and doing a bit of shopping, Tara and I also went to the Waikiki Aquarium. It was smaller than I thought it would be, but still nice.
At the Hilo airport… I think I saw 25 rainbows on Thanksgiving.
Maui
View from the hotel room
Waikiki Beach
Waikiki Aquarium
This past week has been extremely busy. In addition to all of my normal classes and homework, I also had all kinds of extra things I had to do. The Great Leaps dance performance was on Wednesday and Thursday night, so I had a lot of dress rehearsals in the theatre (for my jazz class) and then the show. I had so much fun being in an actual show again, and I really need to find somewhere back home to take a dance class. I don’t want to give it up again. =/
Then on Friday all of the Hawaiian ‘Ohana classes got together, along with other classes and people, and we had a big party at Wailoa State Park, which is a park about a mile from here. There were a few hundred people there, and it was a good time. A lot of people performed hula, including my class, and there was lots of Hawaiian food.
Yesterday morning I had my final for my Hawaiian Language in Action class. This involved going to the Kipuka Center, which is a place on campus, and singing and performing all of the Hawaiian songs and chants that we have learned. Earlier in the week Kumu (teacher) had put us into groups to present on and make food from different countries that people are from. I ended up in a group with two girls from Japan, and we made mochi on friday night. So after singing and doing the hula, we presented in our groups and went around eating food from all different countries. It was a really cool experience to be sitting around singing Hawaiian songs with people from all over the world. I also ate a lot of new food from places like Japan, China, Germany, New Zealand, South Korea, France, Samoa, Yap, and a whole bunch of other places. At the end, we all sat in a big circle and everyone said what they learned/liked most about the class. Some people started crying, I got a little teary eyed, and it made me really sad and not want to leave. This whole experience has been amazing, and I’m not ready to not come back here. I’m completely done with three out of my six classes now, and it made me sad to leave. This next week is going to be hard.
