It's off to work I go...

It is way too early in the semester for me to be this busy.

I am part of an exchange program with a school in Nagoya, Japan, and just looked at the dates to find out that the Japanese students are in fact going to be here NEXT WEEK. Thus I frantically sent out many, many emails. It's a two-part exchange with a research project, so I'll be going to JAPAN in October and doing a presentation among other things. It's a lot of work, but it'll be over well before finals, so that's a plus.

As if that wasn't enough, my classes are a bit difficult this semester. Even the ones that are fairly easy have a lot of homework involved, which I don't have a lot of time for.

My Hawaiian class is probably the hardest, although after the first week of overwhelming information it's actually really interesting and fun, and I'm looking forward to it. We have weekly quizzes on vocabulary, though, so there's a lot of studying there. It's just memorization, and quite boring, really, so I ended up watching movies with my Hawaiian flashcards. My teacher is very nice, and not too tough, although she doesn't go easy on us either.

And on top of that, I've started working at my job with the dining hall and juice bar. It's so much nicer to work when you don't have bronchitis, I've found out. 3 months of dreading working and it really wasn't so bad.

I start my other job tomorrow. It's 1-2 hours a week, and my boss is very sympathetic towards crazy people with too much to do. :)

Of course, if I start wailing and speaking gibberish, you'll all know why...

Ahi and Classes

Well, the first day of school is over! I have successfully registered for the last of my classes (which involved a lot of last-minute paperwork which in itself involved people at opposite ends of the campus who then sent me BACK where I had been five minutes earlier. I don't know how many people can say they've gotten a workout from paperwork.) and survived syllabuses flying and book buying and the internet not working.

I will be taking 19 units this semester, which I need if I want to graduate next semester. It really would only be 18 credits and not require an overload had I not decided to take elementary Hawaiian, which is 4 credits and messes up my count.

I also have two major requirement, only offered in the fall classes that are happening at the same time, so I get to be Hermione Granger-like and be in two places at once. :) Good thing I was homeschooled!

I've also moved into my apartment-style dorm, which has its own bathroom and kitchen and that is good enough for me. I've met my housemates, including my roommate who loves Hello Kitty probably more than I do, so we get along just fine. (So far.)

As for the ahi, I just finished off the last of it in my 5th ahi meal since I got here on Wednesday. For those of you who don't know, ahi is yellowfin tuna, a very delicious dark red fish that is really only good fresh. Seared ahi, ahi sushi, ahi salad, ahi poke...

I probably won't need to eat any more for a long time, which is good, since ahi is pretty expensive.

The internet is really fast here when it works, so I should be able to update this blog every once in a while. Should being the key word here...

A hui hou!

Oahu!

After a nicely uneventful plane flight from Sacramento on Wednesday, I am now sitting in lovely Oahu listening to the rain. There's a small hurricane approaching Hawaii, so I'm expecting more rain once I get to Hilo. It is Hilo, after all.

I think I do like Oahu better than the Big Island, although I may be biased.

We're flying into Hilo tonight, though, and hopefully will get things settled by Sunday night when my mom flies back out! I wasn't looking forward to moving, since I vaguely remember last year being miserable, but actually having a guaranteed place to stay and things to put in it is quite nice. (I also have a walk-in closet and hopefully more living space. And a kitchen, of course!)

I also hate packing with a vengeance, so having THAT over is a relief. Of course, I didn't pack very well, and staying 2 1/2 days in Oahu means that everything is now half-unpacked again...

But just in case anyone was worried, I did make it over here okay.

Vegans

First of all, my flight is leaving next Wednesday (the 17th) and my classes start the 22nd (a lovely Monday).

But before that is the fair! One of the reasons I stayed at home so long, besides a general tendency to procrastinate, is to at least help at the fair. It will be opening the day I leave, so I won't actually get to go, but I am both entering things and helping sporadically. I was able to help check in youth entries all day Wednesday, which is fun, and then organize them, which is exhausting.

The weekend is off, and starting Monday are the food entries! I've entered vegan banana muffins that are actually delicious and scones.
The book that the scone recipe comes from has a lot of off-the-wall recipes, mostly scones. It's from a tea shop, and a lot of the recipes are based on tea, which is why I bought it. These particular ones are peppermint stick. I've made them before, using almond milk so I could actually taste-test them, and was planning on entering them as such, and so put 'vegan' on my form. A few weeks later I realized that vegan actually includes eggs and started mildly panicking and looking up substitutes, some of which are quite interesting.

As it turns out, there are NO eggs in my scones, so they are still vegan (yay!), but we did run out of eggs this morning, which meant experimenting!

I recommend using eggs.

I'm not sure if it was a combination of 'interesting' pancake mix, almond milk AND half of banana instead of egg, but my pancakes came out thick, burnt, and just plain odd. I ate them anyway, which is why it's a bad idea to experiment when you're hungry.

I really don't understand why anyone would be a vegan by choice. I would happily eat their cheeseburgers for them. But maybe I'm biased.

Accomplishment

A lot of my summer is dedicated to not being bored. This isn't to say there isn't a ton of things to do around here (there are), but more that I'm realizing now that I have a month left in California and want to make the most of it. (Actually, there's less than a month now, but I'm refusing to acknowledge that. Yes, this is how excited I am to go back to school.)

Now that the goats are out of State Fair things have calmed down a bit, so I can start sorting out pictures, cleaning my room, and focus on not getting sunburnt. It's quite hot outside. It doesn't bother me, which is probably why I never remember to put on sunscreen.

But yesterday I went and helped my mom label many, many jars of honey. I've been breaking things left and right lately, so no broken jars and a stack of labeled boxes makes me feel very accomplished. :)

Number 50

According to Blogger, this is my 50th blog post. I'm sure there would be more if I actually updated this more than once a month, but I am lazy, busy, and forgetful, and that doesn't really bode well for blogging. It seems better to blog about a single thing than an update on everything that's happened that I forgot to write about... which is what I'm doing now.

My lazy summer is not so lazy after all, and it seems like I haven't been home for a single Saturday in two months. Last week Mom and I went down to San Diego for a week or so to help a friend move out, which was exciting since I had been wanting to visit there. It was nicer than I expected for a Southern California city! The ocean was really close, the air wasn't bad, and we didn't spend too much time in traffic (except driving home), so it was nice.
I still don't know why anyone would want to be in LA, but that's a different story.

We did go to Sea World while we were there! It was fun seeing all the animals, but the shows were a bit lacking at times. I think the seals and sea lions stole the show, really.

Me, me! Pick me!

Tomorrow will start the Travel Guide program for the Japan exchange in 4-H - I get to orientate a bunch of Japanese kids before sending them out to their host families. This is my second time, and it should be really fun! I just have to finish the last-minute presentations I was surprised with.

Next week is State Fair, too! That's even more exciting!

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...