Tea!

It seems I haven't updated my blog since the first of the month. This is partly due to health reasons, as the lovely Kilauea has decided to make new and exciting lava flows, which dumps a huge amount of vog on us up here.

But today was exciting enough that I felt the need to blog about it. The Women's Center on campus had an event for the 100th women's day, which was an international tea party. Pretty much nothing could keep me away.

They had tables for Japan, Korea, Taiwan, India, England, and Hawaii - all with different teas! The English table was set with cookies (biscuits) and saucery cups, and the lady serving was actually British, so that was really exciting. The chai was delicious too.

They also had someone there with cute little tea trees who grows his own tea, speakers on tea and women and sometimes combined, including the owner of a tea plantation right here in Hawaii! There was also a booth with beeswax things made from the school's bee stuff out at the farm, which I will someday be able to visit. They gave out samples of stuff. Not that I can't get it from home already, it was just cool to see and bother them with questions.

And we all got plastic teacups, a honey straw, and teabags to take with us! It was very exciting. The last 'speaker' was actually a koto player, one of the international students from Japan. I really love the koto, so getting to see it played again was really nice!
For anyone who doesn't know, a koto is a traditional stringed instrument from Japan. It kind of looks like a long narrow table with strings on top, and I could go more into how it's played, but I think this blog is long enough already. (This is why I shouldn't write these things late at night. Oh well.)

So that was fun. Then this weekend is the Relay for Life. I will be helping my friend with her team and possibly staying up helping her man a booth. Swing dance club is also part of the entertainment, so we'll be doing that too! I keep getting people that recognize me from our last performance, which is a little odd.
The event lasts from 6 PM to 6 AM, but I've stayed up that late/early before unintentionally, so it's kind of exciting to do it on purpose.
But I might just sleep, because sleep is nice.

I have a Phonology test tomorrow and am supposed to write a speech (!) for Japanese. But it's on sheep, so I should be fine.