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.