Summertime!

Well hello there! It's summer, and I conveniently forgot (or tried to, anyway) anything to do with school... which includes this blog. But I'm currently working out money and housing things, which is no fun, so I decided to do something more fun!

I completed my summer classes with considerably less hair-pulling and crying than I thought, and so far have a B+ in Pidgins and Creoles. I would be kind of disappointed in any other class, but here I'm actually kind of proud, although I did a miserable job on my final and could have gotten at least an A- if I had tried really hard. My other class hasn't been graded yet, it's taking its time which is fine with me!

So now I get to focus on summer things... like playing the piano, reading, cleaning my room, sitting around doing nothing because it's finally gotten hot...

And going to fairs:

Sunny the fair-travelling goat invades Stockton

This last weekend I went to an event in downtown Sacramento, which itself was pretty exciting:

Our state Capitol! I haven't been there since elementary school.

The view from the 15th floor of the Regency hotel :)

I have also learned that my camera's file size is HUGE, which makes it difficult to upload pictures anywhere. It takes good pictures, though, so I guess that's why.

Next stop: Bakersfield via 5 hour train ride! My last train ride of that length was Russia to Finland with 200 mosquito bites to keep me company. (No, I'm not exaggerating, it was actually 197.) Keeping me fingers crossed for this trip to be better...

Midterm week!

Since my summer classes are only 4 weeks long, I have two midterms on Friday! I will also be getting ready for a trip to San Jose this Friday, which is horrible timing. I wonder if my teachers will give us Memorial Day off...

I still don't really like studying about gender, but the class itself is interesting and not so bad, and the pacing is not too bad. My pidgin class, on the other hand, required me to watch 2 hours of video, review 2 lectures, and read 45 pages of text... and that just for Wednesday's assignment. Whew.

I might mention here that I got 4 A's and an A- this last semester, which means a year's GPA of something very close to 4.0. I am saying this now because it is looking to go down with this class.

The content of the pidgins class is a little disappointed, since it's now focusing Hawaii and hopefully getting around to the actual creole and how it's used in the islands. This is all very interesting, of course, and I am getting a crash course in Hawaiian history, but I liked my Jamaican English and Bajan accent studies. Although I should be grateful my professor didn't decide to add those on to what we're already studying...

Right now I'm trying to decide if Hawaiian-based terms should be italicized in my assignment. I think it looks pompous. But it is on history and Captain Cook, and he was a little pompous too.

Lalani kahle! (That would be Zulu for 'good night'. It's a very interesting language. Hi, I'm a Linguistics major.)

Summer!

Why yes, that WAS fast.

But I am safely home, despite a less-than-ideal plane flight, although a very nice woman sat next to me and chatted for the bits when I wasn't sleeping or looking half-asleep. It was cold and rainy at home (FIFTY FOUR DEGREES to be exact), but the sun came out today and was quite gorgeous, so I have ventured outside to the barns and pastures.
But mostly I've been sleeping a lot (which is part not having slept very much for a very long time, part jet lag, and part vague insomnia), bothering my family (they missed me, I'm sure), slowly unpacking, playing the piano, planning things to do when I'm more awake, generally recovering... and doing homework.

That's right, summer school started on Monday, so I woke up to a lovely syllabus and pile (figuratively speaking, it is an online class) of homework for Pidgins and Creoles, which is interesting but very confusing in a fast-paced class with a fast-paced teacher. I was fine with this until my other class suddenly woke up and added its work on top of everything.

THAT class is Language and Gender, which I realize now is sociolinguistics, a popular subfield which is probably 3rd on my list of least favorite. The first would be psycholinguistics, because it's psychology, and the second neurolinguistics, which is interesting brain stuff but overly sciency. (I could list all of these subfields and why I do or don't like them, but it would take a long time.)
It is my favorite teacher, though, and she did use the words 'let's have fun', so I'm not too worried.

But I have the feeling that my homework assignments will be subtly hinting at how much I dislike the assignments. Of course, this is only day three. Of course, we only have 4 weeks. Hmm.

Setting off

Well, here I am getting ready to go HOME.

I got all packed and checked out of my dorm yesterday (STRESSFUL), and my pocket feels so empty without my keys in it... I don't know what to do anymore!
Somehow all of my stuff is in storage somewhere, thanks mainly to wonderful friends who are sticking around over the summer. One of those friends fortunately offered to put me up in her family's rental house until my plane leaves tomorrow, so I'm now in Pahoa listening to the waves right outside the door...

And we had a lovely day going to UHH graduation... and not getting in because it was so packed. So instead we were eating spam musubi and mahi mahi and going last-minute souvenir shopping, then went to the beach to scuttle around on the lava rocks one last time. Okay, I scuttled. Everyone else sat.

Not too horrible. (I'm not being sucked in, Hawaii. I'm still going home.)

I am not sure if I should still update this blog since I am not going to be back in Hilo until (hopefully) August. Although I am taking summer school.

So, until next time, a hui hou!

Finals week!

In between the finals, trying to pack up my entire dorm room, planning for next semester and trying to get all that stuff done that we never got around to doing during the semester, it's been a nice and stressful lately. Kind of like it has been for the past I-don't-know-how-long...

I think it's funny how the last day of class is always more fun (unless your class is just THAT bad), and you realize that you might actually miss your teacher and classmates. It tricks you into forgetting how much you hated the homework. The exception would be Japanese, because it is hands-down my favorite class, and probably everyone else's too.

On Thursday we had the end of year picnic for the Hawaiian language college, and since Linguistics falls under Hawaiian for some reason we were able to go and perform! We sang a song from East Timor, being the only ones not in Hawaiian, and considering we had barely practiced I think we pulled it off rather well. I missed half the other groups while we were practicing, but the rest were very good! I am excited to take Hawaiian next semester... I might actually understand something next time.

That night our Japanese teacher had a class party at her house, which is in a beautiful rural area south of Hilo, so we all carpooled and had sushi and yakisoba... and pizza. And played games, some of which were suspiciously close to our homework.
One of the sushi types was unagi, which is the Japanese eel. I had been craving it for a while, but I took a bite and all of these facts about eels went flashing through my head, and it was a bit overwhelming. But delicious.

Now to work on my impossible phonology paper until I have to go back to work in an hour... so much for a restful weekend.

PAU!

Of all the Hawaiian words I now know, I think pau is the one I use most often, especially after being around some of the girls I work with who have pretty awesome accents.
I realized yesterday that I will probably get home and say things that no one else will understand. Oh well.

Pau means done, although I'm not taking Hawaiian yet so no one has actually explained this to me. The first time I saw it was my Linguistics teacher's 'pau!' sign for our presentations (which she needs when classmates go over 20 minutes on 8 minute presentations), and this semester I've heard tons of people use it, so it has rubbed off on me. I like it. It's a good word. And you can say things like... pau with school!!

Okay, tomorrow's the last day of classes, but aside from finishing up the last touches on my history journals and phonology presentation I am DONE with all of my hard homework!!
Today was our Japanese progress interview, which considering that I was VERY tired and didn't get much chance to practice went rather well. I got two topics on goats and sheep and one more that I forgot halfway through, but then got a chance to explain rather confusedly that no, I don't really want to be an English teacher in Japan, at least, that's not why I'm in this major, I don't really know WHAT I want to do but I want to intern with LABO, which is sort of like being a teacher but it isn't, really.... all in Japanese.

And then there was an Aquaculture final/test that I think I did rather poorly on, but I got an A on my species synopsis that I nearly died over, and I did study very hard when I could, just... not the right things.

I really like my Aquaculture teacher and the other students, though. It was a super fun class. I'm very sad that I can't take animal science next semester.

I am looking forward to sleeping a lot this weekend. Finals, what finals?

Research Break

I promised to blog, so I thought I would do it before I forgot. (And tomorrow's Saturday, so I don't know when I'll wake up...)

I appear to have caught a cold (either that or my allergies have crossed some sort of weird threshold), after having some laryngitis for a week, and actually being vaguely sick for a month or so. I'm sure a lot of that is due to stress, but being sick is stressful too, so it doesn't help.
I have been trying to avoid stress and get better by not focusing very hard on school, which has involved skipping three classes this week and calling off work for Saturday. Unfortunately that has backfired and I have a large amount of paper writing to do before next week and have to do it now (in between sneezes). I'm rather confident on two of them, but my Phonology paper doesn't even have a set topic yet (I asked for an extension) and my Aquaculture synopsis is going to be tough. Doable, but tough.

And in the midst of this I am supposed to be signing up for Summer and Fall classes, which is a bit difficult. I have decided as of now to double major in Linguistics and Japanese Studies (because I don't like the JS major anymore but don't want to waste all of the classes I took for it), which means I am dropping my Agriculture minor. That brings my number of Happy Classes down to one... which is Japanese, so I guess I'm doing something right there.

I'm also looking at taking Hawaiian for my Linguistics requirement. It's either that or Spanish, just because Spanish would be easy.

I said I would talk about my Aquaculture tours from last week, but I've already written a lot... so it will go fast.
We have two classes a week, so we used the class times to go on tours of the university farm and Pacific Aquaculture and Coastal Resource Center. It was very exciting! The farm had sturgeon and tilapia, as well as some gorgeous carp and miscellaneous fish. It was pretty small, but nice! PACRC was much more intense, with not only fish but oysters, microalgae, and hydroponics systems. They also have huge tanks that were meant for raising ahi, but it's difficult to raise marine fish in captivity. And apparently ahi die off from running into walls, so that didn't work so well.

Tomorrow is Earth Day at the farm, and I was hoping to go, but between being sick and homework it doesn't seem like a good idea. If I do go it will only be to see the goats anyway. I think that is reason enough.

A hui hou!