Sorry for the absence of posts recently!

My Spring Break was amazing, intense, and involved very little sleep, being split between an Intervarsity retreat and visiting my grandparents on Oahu, and I haven't quite caught up yet.

Right now I'm waiting for my roommate to get back so we can all go to watch Merrie Monarch. Her cousin miraculously got me a ticket for 'auana night. I say miraculous, because it's the 50th anniversary and it's packed.

More on that later. :)

A hui hou!

Big wheel keeps on turning!

(Apparently this is my 100th blog post... I'm not sure if I should do something auspicious.)

Guess what we're playing for jazz band this semester? My housemate and I just had a miniature dance party to Proud Mary, and I'm hoping it will just be an amplified experience at our concert in May.

Jazz band is one of the most challenging classes I'm taking in my overly busy, overly stressed semester, but I can't imagine dropping out... even though I almost did. Twice.

Last semester, I went from hiding underneath the xylophone (it's comfy under there) when I wasn't playing to being on stage with a microphone. It was a big deal. This semester I have a compatriot, two solos, and four more instruments!

We lost piano players, so I'm also playing keyboards and and grand piano for a song. I also play the shaker and upright bells, which requires me to hit things with hammers. I do not mind this at all. Now, I've played piano for 16-17 years now. It shouldn't be a big deal. But when the conductor hands me 9 pages of music and tells me NOT to play what's written on it... I get a little anxious. Jazz is all about the improv. I can improv on a xylophone; I'm getting good at it. Piano is hard.

On the other hand, I feel like I've learned more about music in one and a half semesters than I have in 15 years of piano. This is NOT true, and I have an excellent background on theory and musicality that supports all this new thinking stuff... but it feels like it.

The other day I forgot music to a song, tried to play it from memory, and ended up accidentally improvising something that sounded pretty cool. I was shocked... and couldn't do it if I actually tried. Really, really frustrating.

Kapili is a little bit similar; I've been in choirs for forever, but I learn a lot about harmonies (being an alto) and how to make them by listening rather than being told what to sing. I've gotten a lot better just from being in chorus and voice class, and it's why I switched back to being an alto this semester - I want to practice singing soprano more, but I got bored. I like harmonies. And altos are just cool.

It's been a kind of intense semester, music-wise. Same with dancing. People tease me for not being a performing arts major, but I kind of like not being required to do something that I love for credits and grades and whatnot. And I don't have to take acting.

Besides, everyone knows Linguistics is the best major. :)

Over and out!

Because I do everything.

I've just been diagnosed with strep throat (or at least they're treating me for strep throat and I am okay with that because I have two credits dependent on me singing) and I now have a legitimate reason to sleep the rest of the weekend.

The reason I got sick was a little event called International Nights that happened last weekend.

It's a show put on by the International Student Association that showcases different cultures. I've been a part of it every year I've been here, previously for Swing and hip hop, but this year I was in two performances, one for hip hop, and one for Japan Club!

The week or two before the actual performance had me pretty much eating, sleeping, and dancing. There was some school stuff going on there too. We had President's Day off and had a 7 hour dance schedule that was fortunately only 5... it was intense.

So I was a little out of it. I was also a little in pain. Hip hop is more about not falling over and not smacking anybody in the face, but Japan club did a dance called Sooran-bushi that is very hard on the legs. I've been wanting to do it since last year, though, and I regret nothing... except maybe falling on stage after hurting my knee during practice. Minor details.

I stole this picture from Facebook. Obviously, I didn't take it.

I don't know if you can see it here, but I am the only person who is not Asian, and one of two who were not 100% Japanese. Everyone was super nice, though, and I have major cool points for when I go to Japan.

We also did something called zeni-daiko, which is related to taiko drumming somehow but consists of tossing bamboo sticks with coins in them to music. It sounds weird, but it totally worked. The sticks look like this:

We got to make them ourselves! And then give them back to the club...

One of the hardest parts about being in International Nights was giving up my Hawaiian class trip to Kiholo Bay. Not only was it a lot of points for me to make up, Kiholo is supposed to be beautiful, and I wanted to see parts of Hawaii I haven't seen yet before I graduate. (I still want to. I have a list. It's going to be a busy 2 1/2 months.)

The trip ended up being cancelled last minute, and we're rescheduling it for next month... which is sad, but I am so relieved I didn't drop out of dancing!

We're also learning back-bends and making our own skirts in hula, and I am slowly getting the hang of Tahitian.

I also am still the President of Swing Club. And occasionally salsa. People step on my feet a lot. There's also tango and waltz lessons I haven't yet been able to attend. Someday.

I just like to dance, okay?

But for now I'm going to make soup and watch TV for the weekend. Relay for Life is next weekend and I want to be better by then!!

A hui hou!

Lā Kulaia/新年快乐！

I decided to write a blog post because I am procrastinating dreadfully on finishing my final story draft.

First of all: Happy Chinese New Year! 新年快乐 literally means 'happy new year', whereas the traditional greeting (the one I learned is decidedly not Mandarin) is more of 'may you have good fortune'. There's two ways to say it in Japanese too.

I got to help out with Japan Club's Friday New Year event, which was mildly ironic. There was a koto player there, though, and I was happy. Koto is a beautiful instrument. I think it's called a zither in English? Anyway. It's not the first time I've seen one being played, but it's definitely one of my favorite Japanese things.

Lā Kulaia was the same day, earlier in the morning. It's the celebration of our college's namesake, Princess Ruth Keʻelikōlani (even though her birthday was on Saturday), and 2nd year and above students are required to attend. There were speeches, a hula, and our class performed a song. We all had to make our own ti-leaf leis, and since it was my first time I ruined a few batches of leaves and made a lumpy lei and an absolutely beautiful lei poʻo (head lei). I am so proud.

I'm not the best with Hawaiian history, but Keʻelikōlani was a pretty amazing woman. We have a story (and chant) about her lying in front of a lava flow that was threatening Hilo (the 1886 Mauna Loa flow that stopped just mauka of the school that they don't tell you about when you apply here) and it stopped.  It's one of my favorite chants.

We were required to kneel for the entire event, and it ended up being rather painful, so we got to reflect on the struggles of Keʻelikōlani and how we can be inspired by her example in a physical sense. Everyone kept saying 'kūpaʻa, kūpaʻa!' I know, I know!

It was still a really good experience.

I've been really busy swimming through homework whilst preparing for my third and final International Nights! Japan Club is performing as well as the hip hop group. So far I have fallen several times, smacked myself in the face, gotten bruises, kicked myself rather hard in the leg and ran into the wall. (IN my defense I wasn't wearing glasses and apparently I really am that blind.)

I've also gotten accepted to be published in the school's academic journal for a Linguistics essay. So I'm really excited. By the way. I meet with my editor this week!

再见！

On books. And reading.

Procrastination now equals blogging! Yay!

I'm taking Fiction Writing this semester, which is 100% not counting for anything at all and is for my enjoyment. It's an upper division class though, so so far it's been rather intense. My teacher is wonderful and also terrifying.

Besides writing (I'm on drafts of my first short story right now, which is another thing I'm procrastinating on), we have different readings of short stories, which we analyze, like good English students. But instead of a literary analysis, we have to look at things from an author perspective - structure, word choice, backstory, flashbacks, all that good stuff. That's where it gets tricky.

Today's stories were written by Joyce Carol Oates, including Zombie, which was later turned into a novel. If you don't know what it is, please don't read it. It's disturbing at the very least, and it made me feel sick, make weird noises, throw it across the room, and resulted in enough distress to keep me from retaining much of the next story, which was a nice simple piece about remains found in a landfill.

But!

Today was one of the best discussions we've had. My group tends to butt heads a little bit - we had a full-on shouting match last week, but I was totally right - and it helped that I stopped interrupting people. I think because it's not a story you're supposed to like, we didn't get caught up in discussing the elements of the story from a thematic perspective. We were too busy asking 'why' and trying to get an answer and bouncing ideas off of one another, even if they weren't always good ideas. ("They're both dead, that's the connection!") I ended up catching myself saying the words 'I love this story' (referring to Landfill), not because of its miserable characters and vividly gross descriptions, or even the moral or lack of it, but because the whole thing is written backwards and that's just really cool writing.

Zombie I still haven't forgiven. I ended up in a confused mush. (This happened after this, but this is the present, so this is the past and this is the future past...)

We have a mean teacher.

That's my two cents for the day.

A hui hou!

Jobs

Aloha!

It's Friday, we just finished our third week of classes, my flu is all gone (except for an occasional cough and sniffle - it's persistent), and I am tired. I have fallen into the unfortunate habits of not doing my homework and not waking up in the mornings, mostly because I've been sick and tired, but I'm starting not to be able to use that excuse...

One of the not-so-great things that happened while I was sick was suddenly and unexpectedly losing my ESL tutoring job. The program I worked with lost their funding for tutors, so everyone was suddenly unable to tutor. It was all fast and out of my bosses' hands.

However!

The ESL tutoring center at UH contacted me to start working with the same students there, so I got to start work today! My hours are a less-than-impressive 2, but I don't mind. My first hour was today, and there were a grand total of zero students, but I won't let that get me down!

I'm still working at the gym as well, but had a nice relaxing break due to a high fever and a holiday.

I think I'm getting spoiled...

Tomorrow I have to get up at 4 AM to go on Whale Count. I'm excited. And sleepy. Will I get up in time to get on the van? Will we be rained out? Will we actually see any whales this year?? Tune in next time...

A hui hou!

I know you. And you. And you.

Hello!

It is Friday, the second week of classes are over, and things may or may not be settling down soon. I had the misfortune of catching a minor stomach bug and then a rather violent flu that made me regret my 8 AM class, but it seems to be mostly gone now. So long as I'm not forced to sing anything. That was most definitely a Bad Idea.

Most of the last week and a half went by in a sad, congested haze of germs. I don't even remember half of my classes.

But I did make a new friend! We had a couple of new members audition for jazz band, including - gasp! - another mallets player. She's also a soprano in Kapili, and since I am now a soprano in Kapili she sits right in front of me, so we're now music buddies! It's nice, especially since two giant xylophones tend to cut you off from the rest of the band.

This week she wasn't feeling great (everyone is getting sick, everyone) and I walked her out to find her stepdad, who said hi to me and thanked me for rescuing his stepdaughter and also for... buying his wife's salsa.

It turns out that my new music buddy's mom is also the wonderfully nice lady who sells excellent salsa at the farmer's market and says hi to me whenever I come and asks how I'm doing. We're actually Facebook friends.

It was a little scary. It's crazy how many people you know in Hilo. Small school, small town.

(Kapili is for some reason singing It's A Small World this semester. I refuse to start singing it, but it's a little ironic.)

That was all! Until something else exciting happens... then I can sleep through it.

A hui hou!