Nerd to the nth degree.

I adventured up to the Punahou Carnival today.

I enjoyed some delicious carnival food.

I filled up a bag with all sorts of fantastic books like Pippi Longstocking, Ruth Benedict, Jonathan Swift, Freud and some others. This is the nerdy part. There are no pictures to explain it. 

Rather serendipitously, as I was trying to find the bus stop to return home, I caught the tail end of a Chinese New Year parade. 

(Tail end. Get it? Ahaha. I am so punny.)

I also ran and caught the head of that particular dragon. Apparently it is a tradition to stuff the dragon's mouth with money. I think I'll volunteer to be the dragon next year.

That was pretty much it for adventures today. There is an excess of pictures today to make up for the lack of posting last week, due to junky internet access, a silly computer and being busy beyond belief. 

Life is good. 

Weekends?

I thought I would get a break. Hah. Definitely not the case.

Instead of relaxing a bit, I talked to a couple of professors, went to the Anatomy of Peace workshop here on conference for four hours each Friday and Saturday, had some of the African Club over to cook for the opening social, went to the opening social, wrote my response paper to the workshop and then decided not to work on homework anymore. Instead of continuing to be responsible, I watched a movie and ate half of an extra large pizza.

Also, my current irritation is that the school isn't offering classes during spring and summer that are supposed to be available, so I have to rework my map. Admittedly, I spend more time than the average student looking at my map and moving classes around, so it isn't tooooo terrible, but unless I can rearrange everything just within the terms, my semesters are going to be crazier than they were going to be already. We'll see how this goes.

Lessons from EXS 177

My required gym class was definitely not one of my favorite classes, but I did pick up a couple of useful things from it. Throughout the six weeks of the term, I went to the gym at least four times a week, making me spend more time specifically on exercise than I have since I graduated high school. (I keep planning on starting that up again, but I have to find my expired student ID in order to get a new one in order to go to the gym. It'll happen some time.)

The thing I'm thinking more about in terms of helping me survive this semester is the principle of spending at least half an hour a day doing something I enjoy, as a stress reliever and a break from work and school. Yesterday, that extended a little beyond a half hour, into say... eight hours, but holidays are meant for breaks, right? Besides, those eight hours of fun will neutralize the eight hours I'll be spending at work tomorrow.

A few friends and I headed up to Waimea and spent a lovely couple of hours watching the waves pound, listening to the lifeguards tell unexperienced surfers, body surfers and bodyboarders to get out of the water at least every ten minutes and trying to still get some school work done. Reading Tolstoy has never been more enjoyable than it was there. After a while, we headed back down the shore a bit to grab acai bowls in a little place that used to be a secret little hole in the wall, but is now frequented by every BYUH student and their mother.

Our last stop before hopping back on da bus was Pupukea, which may be one of my favorite beaches now. Observe:

White sandy beaches and palm trees get a little old after a while, it's nice to have some variety.

And there was a pretty little garden just up a little bit.

A sun-BEAM, a sun-BEAM!

During Primary (Sunday School for four to twelve year olds) singing time every week, the three most energetic songs were always "Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree," the Snowman song, and "Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam." All three usually involved lots of jumping around and more yelling than singing, which probably explains why they were, and still are, so well loved among Mormon youngsters.

A day or two before the semester started, I woke up at o'dark thirty to go watch the sunrise at the point with a friend and took a series of pictures of the sun moving up in the sky. It was slow, and I was cold and tired but still so glad I decided to get up. It felt like it took forever and a day for the sun to come over the horizon, but once that giant ball of gas was up, it sure moved quickly.

I've been trying to put into words what looking back at these pictures made me feel, but after having this post sit as a draft for several days, I don't think that's really going to happen as well as I would like it to.
Basically, we all have the opportunity to bring light into the lives of others, through big ways, but I think, more importantly through small ways. A smile goes a long way, a genuine caring conversation to see how someone is doing, spending a few minutes helping out by reading over a paper or saying I love you are all easy things to do, but I know personally that I spend far too little time doing those things than I should.

Chances are...

...the dang kid won't even see this, but I wanted to let the world (or at least the three people that read this blog) know how awesome I think my little brother is. He found out yesterday that he'll be spending the next year as a Rotary Youth Exchange student in Taiwan. To do that, he's graduating high school a year early and already went through a series of club and district interviews. On top of taking advantage of one of the coolest opportunities presented to a high schooler, he has his black belt in kung fu, is almost done his Eagle Scout (okay, so maybe he's been "almost done" his Eagle for like a year...) and is an all around incredible person. Generally, I'm pretty happy living on this lovely rock in the middle of the Pacific, but if there were one thing I would go back to the mainland for, it'd be this dude and the rest of my family.

My year as an exchange student in Hungary has had a huge impact on my life. If we're looking at it realistically, I probably wouldn't have been accepted here without it and who knows where in the world I would be right now. The things I learned through the application process and the year itself, as well as the time since then have taught me so much about myself, the world and what I want to do to make this a better place in whatever way I can. It was definitely one of the first really pivotal decisions I made in my life and I am forever grateful to my families, Rotary clubs and everyone else who made it possible.

I'm excited to hear about Samuel's adventures over there and hope he does a better job of keeping in touch than I did.

Love you bunches.

I've been less than diligent.

And for that, I extend lots of apologies.

I had two and a half beautiful weeks of break, filled with work and adventures galore, and experienced living all by my lonesome for that short time. I can't lie, I liked it a lot- the house stayed clean and I could curl up in my bed and watch movies until two or three in the morning without disturbing anyone, but having the roomies back is delightful, even if the counters are dirty and I have people around to remind me that consistent sleep patterns are a good idea. We laugh and make fun of each other and watch movies that I always fall asleep during.

Now the semester has started up again, and it's going to be wonderful, yet incredibly busy. I'm taking eighteen credits and working as many hours a week as I can. My classes are going to be awesome and I'm going to in talk to one of my professors about a student research associateship when I have time this week. This semester, along with the necessaries, I'm taking classes for the teachers, and think those will be well worth the extra hours and inevitable stress come finals time.

While I was enjoying some balmy seventy degree weather, Maryland was experiencing quite the snow storm, and so keeping them in my thoughts, I built this one day at the beach:

That's the closest I can get to a snowman right now, sorry folks. Hope you had fun shoveling! (You might be able to tell, but one arm is significantly more tan than the other, she forgot to sunscreen, whoops!)

Also, I got to shoot real engagements for some friends. (Why do I clarify real, you ask? Because last year I shot some fake ones, for an April Fool's joke of epic proportions.) We caught a gorgeous sunset up at the point and got some shots that they're happy with, so we'll call that a productive shoot.

I would make a promise to post daily again, but that may be less than realistic, so we'll go for weekly at this point.

Boldog Karacsony, Mele Kalikimaka, Feliz Navidad and ...

DONE. OVER. COMPLETE.

And it feels so good. Sweet, sweet freedom is mine. And I am going to sleep the day away.

You know what else feels good? Seeing my grades come in and being quite acceptable. I may have put myself through severe sleep deprivation to do it, but this has been a successful semester.

I'm a survivor, I'm gonna make it.

But right now... I kinda feel like this:

This semester has been a lot of work, and I'm not done yet. The past two nights I've been up past three working on assignments, and still had a seven am final to get up for, directly followed by another final. I then went and collapsed on the floor of my friend's room for a couple hours before working on yet another paper to be turned in today by five. That would be nice if that were it, but I still have lengthy beast of a paper to get turned in by eight tomorrow morning, at which point I plan on sleeping the whole dang day, followed shortly by a Flight of the Conchords season two marathon. These next two and half weeks will be a wonderful break from school related stress, and then it all starts up again!

The photo is one from March, goofing off at the beach with some friends. I plan on actively incorporating the beach into my break plans, because otherwise I may never see it again, what with my seventeen credits and all for this next semester.

It's a small world after all!

Alternate title: I know people who know people. 


A couple weeks ago, I was sitting outside enjoying some sunshine and chatting with one of my classmates before walking into class. She mentioned that she's been trying to find a public health internship in Ghana, but has been having a hard time because she has no experience in the area. I've been spending a pretty good chunk of time with the African Club this semester, and have gotten be friends with a lot of the Africans here. There are nine Ghanians here on campus and I remembered a conversation about the Ghana medical system I'd had with one of them, so I offered to get her in touch with a couple people to see if they could help her out. 


Fast forward to today at the end of our anthropology class: I was just leaving when Rachel, my classmate, told me that she had an internship! Maxwell, the guy from Ghana that she'd been talking to, has a brother who works with the military hospital system over there and said he could help get her an internship and that everything will be final in the next couple of days so she can start working on her visa stuff and all those necessaries. How exciting!


I've probably mentioned it a million times already, but I love my school and how international it is. My english teacher may curse me for saying this but she also taught me to quote my sources... According to wikipedia, BYU-H has a  higher percentage of international students than any other baccalaureate institute in the US. I was looking around my classes today and saw students from Guam, Tonga, Samoa, the Philippines, New Zealand, Mongolia, Japan, Hong Kong, Burundi, Sweden, Wales, Brazil and Mexico, among many others. I work with other students from Taiwan, Macau, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Korea. There are so many opportunities to learn about others cultures and backgrounds and to make connections that will last a lifetime. I'm sure that as I go about my career, I'll have the chance to visit some of those places and to have people I call friends to say hello to, and that is an awesome, awesome thing. 

African Club before our performance at Songfest in October.