Voices

I made it back from Spring Break! As did most of the other students. People were trickling in all week. Most teachers were nice and Monday was a breezy sort of day, but then an exam and a midterm and various amounts of homework kicked in with a vengeance. I am not back into vengeance mode. This is a problem. I want to sleep a lot and read books and eat chocolate (which to some extent I have been doing... shh!).

I can now feel accomplished that my voice teacher forced us all to pick our songs for the rest of the semester/month! I have a nice song from Disney-turned-Broadway, so I'm pretty happy.

In the process, though, she mentioned that I was 'definitely a soprano', and I'm not sure how to deal with that. I am an alto. I've always been an alto. I like singing alto parts and can't sing above an E, which is pretty darn pathetic (and also, coincidentally, the highest alto note in our Kapili choir music).

However, after complaining to my friend with lots of experience with such things, she explained that the soprano/alto distinction is not based on range, but rather the singing itself: altos sing from their chests and sopranos from their heads. Which makes a whole lot of sense. I'm not sure if I should have known that already (I feel that way a lot in music classes), but it made me feel better.

It also explains why I have difficulty singing a large amount of the time, since my head is generally stuffed up with allergies. Stupid vog. Stupid weather. Stupid air.

We have a long weekend that I'm looking forward to... because it's Easter!!

A hui hou!

Research Break...

It's actually Spring Break, but I'm determined to make some headway on my research projects. It's kind of the last thing I want to do in between going to the beach and hanging out with my sister who came all the way from California to visit (and scare the living daylights out of me in the process) and staying with my grandparents.

We went to the water park, the beach, found the tea shop at Ala Moana (dangerous!) and had lots of delicious food, including Hawaiian food! I finally got to try kulolo, which was exciting, and got my squid luau. No one else wanted it, but once you've eaten raw seafood of all kinds and sea urchin, squid luau is pretty darn delicious.

Yum!! This is not my picture. Mine was all eaten.

My sister went home yesterday, so I'm finally starting on my homework. I have two tests on Monday (Who does that? Only language teachers.) and a midterm next week, so I have to do at least a little bit. It wouldn't be hard except one is Japanese and I have absolutely no motivation to study.

I have one paper on Japanese poetry, which is actually coming along quite nicely; I'm not terribly worried about it. I also am comparing Portuguese immigration in Hawaii and California and hoping to find something linguisticky to put in there. It will probably be Pidgin.

My last project is driving me insane. I have three potential topics and can't decide which one I would rather do, so I've been doing research on all three. The only problem is that I don't have access to the great and helpful articles I've found. My teachers all tell me to use Google Scholar or JSTOR, and it just makes me want to scream. I get very helpful pages on buying an article for 200 euros, or completely unrelated topics, or the ever-annoying Google Books result, where it gives you a preview that cuts off right before the part you need.

On the bright side, I think I've had my topics narrowed down for me. Apparently no one writes anything critical about dialects or the Channel Island languages. That works. (I don't think I could handle grad school, this is too stressful.)

We're planning to head out to the North Shore soon, and I will actually take my camera this time!

They don't have beaches like this in Hilo...

A hui hou!

Hunger Games!

For those of you who haven’t heard, The Hunger Games movie was released on Friday. I actually went to the midnight premiere with a friend, which is a bit odd since I’m neither a movie person nor a midnight person nor really a Hunger Games person. I am a friend person, though, so it worked out. I do realize now that waiting to watch new and very popular movies is a good idea, as the theater was packed. But I did know half of the audience! Oh, Hilo…

I was talking to a friend later about the books, because I happen to have all three, and a lot of people have asked to borrow them. It’s a bit strange to me, because they’re well-written and fascinating books on one level (Panem/America, social commentary, archery…), and I do like them, but I did not enjoy reading them. The fact that people do enjoy them kind of scares me. If you haven’t read The Hunger Games, it’s very violent and depressing. Harry Potter mania I can understand, Hunger Games I definitely do not.

It was a very well-done movie, in my opinion, although the person sitting behind me disagreed. I know, because I had to listen to her. AND it was someone I knew, so I couldn’t shoot disapproving shushing looks in her direction. There were some changes I didn’t care for, but not every deviation from the book automatically makes it ‘wrong’. (I had a similar problem when we went to see War Horse too, but it was much more annoying in a historical film. I happen to like history.)

I’m really more of a book person. Most everyone who catches me reading says something along the lines of oh, you’re so good, I wish I had time to read, etc, etc.

But I sat in the back of class today, and I noticed that half the people were on their iPads, phones, or computers, while I was the only one who was hiding a book under my desk. Hmm…

Well, Spring Break is officially here! I’ll be staying in Oahu for the week. Woohoo!! :)

Critical Thinking!

One week til Spring Break!
I am very excited because I've been very busy, partly due to suddenly working more hours at my 'other job', which is being an ESL tutor at the community college. They're in their Spring Break right now, so I went in to do office work that they really needed help with! I'm happy with it, because I like this job slightly more than cleaning blenders and mopping floors, but it does make my schedule even tighter than before.

Today I have nothing going on, so I am doing homework and watching movies in other languages!

My Japanese history teacher is big on critical thinking. VERY big. Which is great and all, but I find that I learn far more about the actual history from the readings than from the class, and I'm not that interested in writing reports about strengths and weaknesses of the textbook. I'd rather write about strengths and weaknesses of the Ashikaga shogunate, but that could just be me.

I'm also taking Critical Applied Linguistics, which is one of my hardest classes only because no one can really define what we DO. It's taken until our midterm to actually figure it out (and I got a really high score, mostly because I studied like a maniac), but it's a very eye-opening class about politics and language and cultural identity. I'm actually enjoying it, which is a surprise, but it requires a lot of thought outside of class as well as in it. And I have a presentation this week. My group happened to pick the longest of the options and now have to sift through 30+ pages on minority groups in Finland. Ahhh, high-level classes. Such fun.

We did learn about Mayan writing systems one day though, which was quite fascinating. The Mayans basically used rather complicated pictographs (much like Chinese and Japanese kanji), with combinations for different words. However, if I remember right, some pictures would have meaning while some would have sound, and there were several variations of each picture and their combinations, depending on who wrote it. Back then you had to be an artist to write anything... and it was through stone carvings, too! Deciphering Mayan writing took many, many years, as you might imagine. Our class focused a bit more on the reasons for its abandonment (Spanish conquistadors banning language use) and its revitalization (Mayan kids writing little iguana heads and sun-circles on their papers), but it was a very interesting topic!

I have no idea what this says.

But I was watching The Road to El Dorado today in Latin Spanish (because watching it in Castillian doesn't make SENSE!) and saw an awful lot of Mayan influence. And then the critical-thinking-college-student brain took off, which tends to ruin movies for me, but that's okay because I get good grades. Or something.

Someone asked me the other day about the Mayan calendar and the end of the world, too... those Mayans.

And now off to make muffins... with bananas, because those are from the NEW WORLD!

Kokoleka!

Today I would like to talk about... chocolate. And other things. But chocolate.

It's a very stressful point in the semester, and about the time that I throw up my hands and wait to go home, but in the meantime I consume quite a bit of tea and chocolate.
Chocolate tea is a lifesaver. (And slightly less fattening.)

It's also been pouring down rain, which is typical for Hilo, but it has been pretty sunny up until a few weeks ago, so it's quite a change. It gets cold when it rains. I know it's snowing in California, but it's still cold when you don't have a decent jacket and tend to wear shorts and are stuck in classrooms where the A/C is STILL blasting away.
Thus, hot chocolate!

Of course, if I eat TOO much chocolate, I may not be able to fit into my Kapili dress anymore, and that would be sad. I've only worn it once, for our concert in Honoka'a on Monday night with a Norwegian youth symphony orchestra. They were quite amazing. We were pretty okay.

I am ashamed to admit that I skipped class today. It's something that has happened far too often this semester, but I decided to go to work instead. The program leader was swamped with testing and paperwork, so I was helping him out with things. Their schedule's a bit different, so it's finals week for the ESL students.
Today I also had my Japanese midterm, which was hard, and needless to say I was very happy to be over and done with my oral interview. (I also came out of Hawaiian class into the midterm, so that was stressful too. But I love Hawaiian.) Between that and the chocolate from one of the very nice ESL teachers (New Orleans chocolate, no less!), I felt like I was almost floating on air.

Now to study for my final midterm... a hui hou!

Gloomy Sundays

I just read a blog post about these kinds of days, where you sit around doing nothing but trying to focus on homework/paperwork/housework/big important things and end up doing about 5% of it.

It's a holiday tomorrow so I'm still safe, but there was still a lot of chocolate consumed. I was thinking about giving up chocolate for Lent. (I'm not Catholic, but neither are my friends who give things up for Lent...)
Now I'm not sure if I can handle it.

Last night and Friday were UH Hilo's International Nights performances, in which I performed with my friend's dance group. We represented USA (again), but there were really amazing performances from all over the Pacific, as well as Japan, Korea, Ireland, Norway... of course Hawaii was there too, and I was very excited to recognize words in the chants.
Both of them were VERY long (3-4 hours each!) and we had been practicing hard for the week before, so there were a lot of late nights.

Next up, Kapili choir will be performing with a youth symphony orchestra from Norway! This is exciting and huge and not a little terrifying as we are really not very ready. The songs are difficult. Latin masses are HARD. Even the Hallelujah chorus is hard, and I've sung it before!

So there is just a small update... I'm sure things will slow down. Eventually. Someday. It could be worse.

Happy President's Day!

Valentine's Day!

I haven't been terribly active, which is mainly because I am ridiculously busy and not quite sure why. I am performing in the school's International Nights (representing America... again), so that's a huge part of it, with 2-3 hour dance practices every day for a week...

But in the meantime, it's Valentine's Day! Otherwise known as the day of chocolate. One of the Hawaiian teachers brought candy to class and shared it, and it ended with getting chocolate literally thrown at me. Mostly from other happily (or not) single people like myself. I even got a real rose! One of the clubs did a fundraiser, so there were roses floating about everywhere. It was quite lovely.

Of course, when you're stressed... you should eat chocolate. So I'm set!

I also got the most amazing package from my family, including a box of cookies!

 

 

 

It's official... my mom's cookies are the best.

Not much else interesting is going on, aside from too much homework and schedule conflicts.

I'm going to drink some tea and watch the rest of The Slipper and the Rose.

Happy Valentine's Day!