Tonight there was a community meeting to get input about what they want to have happen in the next few years. It's a big topic both with the school and the community, and sadly one that a lot of students here aren't aware of or don't care about. I'm not condoning that, but I do understand it. We're institutional migrants, to put it in anthropological terms, and aren't going to be around for long, what do we care about what's going to happen in five or ten or twenty years?
Right now there's a big team of consultants here looking at what to do, and it'll be interesting to see how things go in this next little while.

(Also, Mom, Punahou only got 8% of the votes for which team is going to win the state football championship this year, but there may have been a bit of a bias there.)


Check that out. My extra-curricular reading is so exciting. (Pretend this one posted yesterday)


One of the ideas behind having this blog and a daily posting is that I'll have to get out and do something with my camera every day. My pictures aren't always the best technically, but the practice will help.

Sometimes it's a little hard finding a balanced meal around here...

...that's just one reason I'll be glad to move off campus.

Sunrise, sunset.

Sunrise at Hukilau beach.


Sunset in front of the hale.

All the best maps are 3D.


On the right you see the back side of the hales (dorms). I walk this way every day on the way to work. How incredibly lucky am I?

More PCC pictures, playing with texture.

I realized tonight as I was walking with a friend and pointed out something about one of the plants we were passing (it reminded me of dragon scales!) that we all have our own very distinct ways of looking at the world, and that's pretty awesome.

Some days, I think about things that I might like to have happen in my future. Today was one of those days. After browsing through the carts of free books they have at the school library, I wandered back to my dorm room with a copy of A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (copyright 1970).

I opened it up, and saw this:


Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a dictionary with a dedication to you in it? Especially one as nice as "Lover of lovely things in art and literature Devotee to knowledge and true friend"


Then, just for fun, I looked up my name in it:

See also:


Also, I'd really like to become a published academic, that way, I can make up all sorts of lovely words, and not be told I'm wrong. Cooccurring? Really? There are three sets of repeating letters in that word! (This one is not from my new dictionary, instead it's from my linguistic anthropology book, it's really quite exciting.)

With the area of studies I'm doing, the history of Hawaii comes up fairly often. Sadly, it's not the parts I like- the stories of Pele, the goddess of fire and volcanoes, or the methods the native Hawaiians used to cultivate the land, instead we look at what happened post-colonization, how missionaries and business men took over the islands, how they banned the Hawaiian language and the hula and made the people "civilized".

While wandering around the PCC (Polynesian Cultural Center) today, I stopped in the little mission home exhibit/shop they have. It made me a little sad inside, to think that for the most part, the colonizers didn't recognize the good things that the Hawaiian culture had to offer. Instead, because things were different, they needed to conform. They needed to dress the same, speak the same language and use the same dishes (pictured).

I really think the world would be a better place if we all looked at differences as not good, not bad, just different, and recognize that we have the ability to learn something worthwhile from everyone, wherever they're from or whatever way they've been brought up.

After all that rain yesterday, I spent the day in awe of what it does for this place. I'm not talking about the patches of mud that I inevitably stick my foot in as I'm cutting across the grass on my way to class, because I wouldn't really mind not having those experiences, but the plant life here is wonderful. Let me share a couple of examples:





I have absolutely no idea what most of the plants here are called and will hopefully remedy that in my copious spare time, but for now, I just enjoy looking at them.

Just a note, the copious spare time thing was a bit of a joke, all my classes are wonderful, but require a decent amount of pretty intense reading, on top of actual class time, along with work and getting enough sleep to be able to accomplish anything... reading up on native plant life probably won't fit at the top of my list of things to do for a while.

When it rains, it pours.

In honor of the first day of the spring term, the heavens shared their tears with us.

Seriously. They were sobbing.

Allow my drain pipe to show just how much:





It was intense. Walking to work, the only thing I was thinking was "Man, it'd be great to not have to go work, all I want to do is take pictures!" I did end up working, and even having a good time of it, but I know I missed out on some really fun shots.
Lucky for me, there's bound to be another rain storm in not too long.

This one's for you, mom.

I'm pretty sure one of my mom's favorite stories to tell about me is the time my step-dad was teaching me how to change a flat tire on one of our cars and I told him to pause for a bit so I could run inside and grab my camera to get some pictures of the exposed gears and what-not.

That kind of thing certainly isn't a one-time occurance. My friends here are wonderfully patient and don't mind stopping every few feet so I can take a picture of something else on the way. Today I was walking back from visiting the Polynesian Cultural Center and decided I wanted some close-up pictures of plumeria blooms, so up that tree I climbed. My lens is manual focus, so there were some points that were a bit precarious as I was trying to focus the picture and not end up on the ground while doing that. I'll have to try again sometime because I didn't get quite what I wanted in terms of pictures, but at the same time I also didn't want a broken appendage.




Also, can I mention how awesome it is to have plumeria trees around? I don't think I'll evereverever get over how fortunate I am to be here.

Why cross at the zebra?

While it probably wasn't one of the first words I learned in Hungary, I remember being amused when my host sister told me that cross-walks are called zebras, and still smile a little whenever it pops up in my mind.

There are a lot of things like that- little links that take me back to this or that in Hungary. Earlier this week, I spent a couple of hours looking through my pictures from that year. There were a lot of things I'd forgotten about that made me laugh or just wish I'd made a little bit better use of my time, or taken more pictures (fourteen gigs worth obviously wasn't enough).

I wasn't feeling particularly creative when I decided to actually sit down and make this blog, but the idea came to mind, so I went with it.


(This zebra is one I cross often here, and it always reminds me of one of those giant keyboards that Tom Hanks busted out Heart and Soul on in Big, classic.)

Lives of great men all remind us,
we can make our lives sublime,
and departing leave behind us,
footprints on the sands of time.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellwo

This is a beautiful, beautiful place, and I am beyond lucky to be able to go to school here.

Also, I just finished my first final of the semester, and got an A on it. Life is good.

Sunday afternoons after church and related activities are taken care of, I go for a walk. It's my time I set aside each week to be by myself, to think, to pray and to enjoy the beautiful place I live in. This is part of the view from the bench I usually end up at.

Sunrise at Temple Beach a couple of weeks ago.

One of the best things about this school, in my opinion, is the incredible diversity. I've mentioned before that there are only about 2,400 students. From that, there are more than 70 countries represented, and approximately 70% of our students are international. Our "grand entrance" features a circle of flag poles, each featuring a different country. Sadly, of the ones in this picture, there are only two or three I could readily identify. That may be another goal of mine- to be able to recognize on sight all the different flags in the circle. We'll see whether this or learning to climb a coconut tree happens first.

I'm not quite sure what to say about these shots. They're coconuts, obviously, and I took them while on my first walk to the beach with my new camera.

Now, this may or may not be necessary to say, but there are a lot of coconut trees here in Hawaii. One of the goals I've set for myself to accomplish before I graduate is to learn how to climb one. I've made a couple of attempts so far, and all of them have been far from successful, unfortunately. The first try ended up with bright red scrapes up and down my legs, feet and arms, and the times after that, I was a little too wary to try very hard. Luckily, graduation isn't for another couple of years, so there's still some time.

The Cannon Activities Center is sort of the hub of campus- we have weekly devotionals where speakers come from around the world, talent shows and Culture Nights, concerts and all the big school events, along with my favorite, basketball games.

Previous to coming out here, I didn't really care much for basketball. I went to a couple of games in high school to shoot for a class assignment, then to a couple more because the coach/my health teacher asked me to keep taking pictures, but it wasn't a big deal.

It's different here. It probably has something to do with the fact that we're a small school- 2,400 students, and there isn't usually very much happening. That's at least the reason I went to the first game, but then I caught the bug and didn't miss a home game until the end of the season. It was an awesome season, the Seasiders made it to the Sweet 16 before losing the game 58-59 with three seconds left on the clock. That was a rough lose, but I felt a little bit better when the team that beat us lost the final 53-56 in over time. Our final record was 27-2, and the only other game lost was the very first one.

(And the half head you can see at the bottom of the picture? He's my favorite kid on campus.)

The beginnings

Ever since a life-changing box arrived at the BYU-Hawaii post office on February 10th, I've been meaning to start up a blog to share the pictures I can now take with my be-a-utiful camera. Being a college student though, I'm quite the procrastinating pro, and am just now getting around to it. There is a plus side to waiting- I have a decent number of pictures already taken that are just itching to be shared. There's a self-set goal to post a picture a day, and I have a couple of months worth already, so I figured I'd start sharing the ones I already have by general themes and then move on from there.


Currently, I don't have a picture of the main entrance to school (which is quite lovely, and has now been added to the list of pictures to take), but this is a shot I took one day while coming back from the beach. This is the far side of campus, opposite of the dorms. The brown building on the left is the library, and the building on the right is the stake center- the church building for campus. This is a church school though, and so not all of our meetings are in there, but it also serves as "head quarters" of the religion department. My Sunday meetings are in a class room building just behind there, but my two religion classes are in the stake center.



We'll see if I'm as wordy with the rest of the pictures.