Pictures!

I usually put pictures of my random stuff on Facebook, but I've been growing less and less impressed with it lately. I only put up with it because of my friends there... not just the people I see every day or can pick up the phone and call, but my host mom from Japan who I haven't seen in 4 1/2 years. That's pretty awesome.

Since I can't even access the photos on Facebook at the moment, I'm doing a non-special update on this lovely overcast Sunday morning. We finally had a Saturday that was not horribly hot and sunny (only because I work Saturdays and have to walk up to the gym and it's annoying when it's hot), but then it rained and I ended up soaked and shivering in the corner of the juice bar. I don't know why people order smoothies when it's actually mildly chilly out. Really.

I love the rain though! I can drink lots of tea. I drink lots of tea anyway, but now I have an extra excuse. Especially with my new KETTLE!

I went on a mini shopping trip with my housemate. We bought cool stuff... like tiny pony figurines.

On Tuesday my Japanese class surprised me with a birthday party for me!!! I actually got an email about it, but I forgot. It was nice because students actually showed up! One of them told me straight-faced he only came for cake, but I think he was joking.....

 Japan club (the class is part of the club) gave me this super-cute uchiwa, or non-folding Japanese fan. I think it looks like Ponyo.

And then this morning I made peach bread! With frozen peaches, just because I felt like baking, even though my housemate made cookies twice in the past week and my Hawaiian class had two days packed full of delicious food presentations like poi mochi (!)and after all that we went to 'visit' a friend who works at Baskin Robbins. Peach bread is a must.

Om nom nom.

One of my friends says banana cake instead of bread, and I really think he's got the right idea.

Now I will get ready for the many tests I have this week (it's only 3 days, really?), mostly my final geology test on Ways Hawaiian Island Vulcanism Can Kill You, resuming the losing miserable battle with next semester's classes, and get ready for.... Thanksgiving!!!

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday (probably), and I'm lucky enough to get to go to Oahu every year to spend it with my grandparents! I may even... take pictures!

But until then, a hui hou!

4-Hers!

Since my little brother just won the National Avian Bowl competition in Louisville, Kentucky this morning, I figured this would be a fitting post. :)

I went to a scholarship banquet on Tuesday to meet my donors and get free food (catered by my employers, so that's always nice). The donor wasn't there, but I've met him last year when I was granted the exact same scholarship. I ended up at a table sitting to a lot of people who grew up in Hilo, including a super nice staff woman next to me who told awesome stories and was in 4-H!

She was a little embarrassed telling me, saying that she never did livestock but did sewing instead, to which I said WELL! 4-H is more than a goat on a float! (That's a long story, and I didn't actually say that, but it was along those lines.)

One of my classmates was at the same table, and when we told her that we had been talking about 4-H, she revealed that she was also a 4-H alumni.... after which the girl on my other side whipped around with a 'I was in 4-H too!!'

It was a pretty awesome feeling. I'm sure it was just TOTAL coincidence that we were all there for scholarships...

They also had a lot of those basic speeches that you give at such events, things about opportunities and futures and all of our hardworking and deserving students, and it made me realize how lucky I am. I'll be honest, this semester has been somewhat less than spectacular, but I truly love Linguistics, and especially after talking to unhappy pre-med majors, I'm really grateful to get a scholarship for doing something I actually enjoy.

I'm trying to hold on to that feeling as I look at the class schedule for next semester and try not to scream. It's rather difficult. We'll see...

A hui hou!

Still alive

And kicking (hooray for Swing Dance!).

I have been meaning to write a blog post but can never think of anything interesting to write about.

My radio appearance was fairly uneventful and went well, I think. I learned a lot about radio and got to listen to a lot of Hawaiian music. The DJ also turned out to be my ethnozoology teacher who is very nice and let us speak English. Whew!!

I am another year older, having had my birthday just over a week ago (it seems like it was yesterday, which is how busy I have been since then). Lots of cupcakes and happiness all around. And Hello Kitty. I am a Hello Kitty addict. I'm not really sure why, but I even like pink now:

Everything was bright pink!

It's been getting into the finals-crunch of classes as we realize that, hey, there's only 3-4 weeks left of schools. This is slightly terrifying. And stressful.

I'm in very real danger of getting a bad grade on my fish class, which is ironic considering my 21/20 quiz scores. But I missed the field exercise because I work weekends, and not having a car to take me to the ocean for a makeup (not to mention the danger of trying to go by yourself) plus having my snare fall apart on me has left me very frustrated.

It's also difficult trying to be in 3 different places at once. I was trying to count all of my clubs with a friend, and got up to 9 before we stopped. (Technically I'm in the Magic club. Not actual magic, but the card game. I don't actually know how to play. This is what happens to me.)

I'm very happy for an extra day off from school (I get a 2-day weekend like the normal people! Woohoo!), and I spent a lot of it doing research for my Discourse Analysis class, which is advanced Linguistics or something. It's basically semantics and syntax and everything all rolled up into a ball that is people communicating with each other, and we analyze it. I love that class. I fall asleep in that class a lot... but I love it.

My paper is (hopefully) going to be about poetry, specifically in the difference between written poetry and performed poetry. The thing I have learned today is that poetry is not nice, poetry is fickle and ornery and doesn't take kindly to being analyzed, and poets can be pretty snarky themselves. My sources currently stretch from William Shakespeare to Relient K. It's a fun paper.

(We also talked once about the discourse of blogs, so now I'm analyzing my writing as I write and giving myself a headache.)

On a somewhat related note, I found a most fascinating video on the original pronunciation of Shakespeare's plays. It went through some of the puns and rhymes that are lost in modern English, and it made me excited to be a Linguistics major. Who else would read textbooks for someone else's class?

Happy Tuesday!