A short history lesson.

The flag of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

The Consul General from the Hungarian LA Consulate did a presentation here today, discussing how certain political actions Hungary took helped to bring down the Iron Curtain. There was a lot of it I hadn't heard- I haven't spent as much time looking at that time as at some of the others- and some that I had. He discussed the 1956 Revolution a bit, and I'd heard most of what he said before, but it was nice to be reminded.

If you're interested- The '56 Revolution started off as a student led protest in Budapest on October 23rd, and quickly spread throughout the country. The Soviet Politiburo initially agreed to discuss a withdrawal of Soviet troops, but on Novemeber 4th, troops moved back into Budapest. By the 10th, Hungarian resistance had ended. It had a lot of long lasting impacts, and you can check out the wikipedia article on it.

I have a thing for Hungary. I love the language, I love the people, I love the history, I love the place. I feel so very lucky that I was able to spend time there and get to know all of those a little bit. When people ask why I decided to go there, I tend to start mumbling about not being allowed to go to Africa, and not wanting to speak Spanish and trail off after a while. In all honesty, I don't know exactly why I picked it, but I do know that is where I was supposed to be, and that's enough for me.

After the presentation was over, I went up and had a little conversation with the consul and his daughter, mostly in Hungarian, but not quite all. Everytime I speak a bit, I'm reminded of just how far my speaking abilities have fallen. Luckily, there aren't too many non-native Hungarian speakers, so even my poorly spoken Hungarian is appreciated. That's one good reason to learn less common languages- it's ever so much more impressive to say I speak a bit of Hungarian, or Samoan or Amharic than it is to say I speak a bit of Spanish. ;)

These are a few of my favorite things- day two

Plumeria.

I've never had a favorite flower before, but these might be it. I love that there are so many plumeria trees around campus, and that I can just walk by and pick one. I love walking by and catching a whiff of these. I love that they come in so many different varieties.

And the trees have character! Just look at it.

These are a few of my favorite things

When the dog bites

When the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad

For the next few days before I leave for the Mainland, my posts will be on some of my favorite things here.

Today's is rainstorms.

I'm pretty sure there's nothing quite like a complete downpour of warm Hawaii rain. I love walking out in the rain and feeling it pounding down, and then, just as quickly as it started, it ends. Living in Washington kind of put me off rain- it felt like it was always cloudy and gray and it didn't really rain very often, it just kind of dripped at different rates. Rainstorms here make up their minds- when it's time for rain, it is time, and there's no stopping it. It's amazing.


(I probably wouldn't have felt the same about today's rainstorm if I had anything out on the line, luckily I didn't, so I ran out to take pictures instead of rescuing things from being drenched.)

Another Sunday, another walk to the temple grounds.

Whenever I stop and think about it, I'm in awe of this place. I don't really believe God made ugly places (people did that!) but this place sure is gorgeous.

Holy monkey brains Batman!

These are what the boys and I call monkey brains- probably more commonly known as monkey bread. They're pretty easy to make, and pretty dang good. I plan on making them multiple times while I'm back in Washington with my three favorite little boys in the whole wide world.

I have less than two weeks until I'm back on the Mainland, and I have to say I am so excited. Not necessarily to be leaving Hawaii for a little while, but because it means that I'm done living in the hales (dorms), and will be living off campus when I get back, and I will be able to cook again! My friend that I plan on rooming with following my return to the island and I spent the day looking for houses, which was mostly unsuccessful, but we'll work on it this next week too, and hopefully find some place.

(This picture may be cheating a little bit, it was taken back in September, but I did take it myself, so I think it still mostly counts.)

There's this room off the main hallway with a bunch of couches and what not that looks out on the entrance of the school. Right in the middle of it is this table (shown above) with a statue of Christ on it. I've been meaning to take a picture of it for a while, and finally got around to it a couple days ago. I think it's pretty nice.

Take two!

This time I checked to make sure I had a memory card, charged batteries and everything else necessary. Ta-da!

To make a short story long.

As a fore-warning, this is probably one of the most disjointed, jumping from thought to thought blog post I've written.

I was trying to figure out what to say to go along with these pictures, so I googled some quotes, and ran into one from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay on art. The quote I found turned out to be more of a combination of a couple of different parts, and the real thing didn't fit nearly as well as I would've liked, so I decided not to use it. I did still like what it was saying, but didn't like the font the websites all had it in, so I went to the library to print it out so I can read it some other time in some other font, and came back and couldn't decide on what to write here. In the end, I'm going to apologize for this past paragraph, and recommend you go read the essay. (I can email it to you, or it can be found at http://www.sacred-texts.com/phi/emerson/essay1.txt -there are a bunch of his essays there, and you'll need to scroll down quite a bit until you come to the one on art)

The false-quote that I first encountered was "Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing, to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden." Feels a little choppy and strange, no? It's better in the real thing, and talks about tyrants and how in the moment we're creating something, there's nothing there but that thing. Sometimes I do feel like that, like there's nothing in my world except what I'm working on right there in that moment. It most often happens in the darkroom, I can go in and spend what feels like a few minutes or half an hour at most, and emerge, only to find that a couple of hours have passed, and fairly often, I'm late for something else.

...There's plenty more to be said, as inspired by that essay, but the words are not stringing together in any way that makes sense, so it will have to wait for another day.

Another quote I considered using: "Some days you're the pidgeon, and some days you're the statue."

Also, even though I like statues, I try to avoid looking them in the eye. Those always creep me out.

Life is good.

I made it to the beach again today. It was beautiful and sunny and I got my readings done for tomorrow.

A profuse apology for the pathetic pause in posting.

I've been having technical difficulties with pretty much everything lately. My phone is currently only functioning as an alarm clock and a texting device, phone conversations are impossible right now, and this is the first time in a few days that my computer has lasted more than about twenty minutes without shutting itself down. (Why? I'm not sure, but it seems to have fixed itself.) The most exciting parts of my Friday night and Saturday were the same thing, so I'll post multiple pictures and you all will have to pretend they're separate posts on the correct days.

World Fireknife Dancing Competition.

so. legit.

(Next time I'll have to do a bit of research beforehand on lighting and such, and not spend the first half of the competition in the very last row standing on a chair. Maybe I'll even figure out a way to get a press pass and get right up front, that would be awesome.)

This term is almost done, there are two and a half more weeks, four more papers to write, a thirty minute DVD to prepare, two finals to take and I'm done, and on my way back to the Mainland, hurray!

Last night I was having a bit of a rough time, so I went for a walk down to the beach with my scriptures, my ipod and my camera and just sat for a long time, thinking about some things and enjoying being alone.
I think one of my biggest challenges here at school is that I am not an extrovert. I enjoy being around people, but sometimes I just need to be by myself and the more time I put that off, or the less of it I get, the worse off I am. This is a wonderful place, but I am definitely looking forward to being at home and not constantly surrounded by lots and lots of people.

Happy thoughts of the day:
There's one less paper to write this weekend because my group convinced the teacher it was unnecessary.
The presentation I helped out with in class went pretty well, and I got extra credit for it because I'd already done all the presentations the teacher requires us to do.
Tomorrow is Saturday!

From an email my religion professor sent the class talking about the midterm- "Do not be anxious just be happy."

Not everything is green in Hawaii

Shot this one on my way back from taking yesterday's picture.

I used the Princess Bride in my Anthro 445 class today. It was awesome.

Hopefully I will be able to work things out in the next couple of weeks before I leave so that I'll actually make it to the beach. I've been once in the past month, and it's only a ten minute walk away. Something is wrong with that.

A couple days ago I got an email about scholarships available at a university in Hungary, and I know it won't work out for this year, but maybe next year it might. I'm going to to talk to my academic advisor about a couple of things tomorrow, and this option might be one of them. Among the things to talk to her about includes the fact that for my Public Management minor, I need to take a couple of Econ classes, which require taking another math class which I am not interested in doing. I ended on a good note and I intend to keep it that way.

I miss Hungary.

It's the little things.

On my way to work everyday, I walk through the laundry room and out onto the street. This is right outside the laundry room door and I smile every time I see it. You see why I'm smiling, right?

I love this place.

Moms are awesome.

I have a lot of moms. Obviously, there was just one that gave birth to me, but besides her, I have my step-mom, my host moms, my friends' moms' who I spent a lot of time with, all my grandmothers, and all those other people who have been some sort of materal figure to me at one point or another.
I don't think I'll ever really be able to express my gratitude for everything they have all done and I can only hope to one day be like them.

My beautiful mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, on my trip down to see them as soon as I got back from Hungary. I am so, so excited to get to see all of them again later this summer.

I don't know why, but this reminds me of one of those WWII memorial type things.

Yes, yes, yes!

I made it to the beach.
And climbed that tree.
I may have even gotten some reading done for class and had a nice chat with a friend. How's that for productive?
Now it is 9 and I'm going to bed.

This time two years ago, I was wandering Barcelona with my host family and one of my best friends. We visited all sorts of grand old churches, a few Gaudi buildings, La Sagrada Familia, and took the tour bus around, then had a Spanish train adventure on our way to Montserrat. It was all absolutely lovely.

Inside one of the Gaudi houses.

A legit Dali (my framing is crooked, whoops). I loved this piece, and I love Dali.

We spent a little longer than planned here on our train adventure.

A view from Montserrat.

America doesn't have alleyways like this, and I miss them.

Rental bikes!

Apparently I had a thing for staircases this trip.

If I ever make it back to Hukilau beach (I haven't been to any beach since the term started, and it doesn't look like it's happening any time soon), there'll be a picture from the top of this tree as well as this one.
Doesn't it look like the best climbing tree?

A shot and a miss.

So, I was walking to my room while coming back from the gym (that's a new thing) and spotted a gecko on the wall. Surprisingly, we don't really get too many of them in the hales, so I ran in and grabbed my camera and snapped a couple of pictures.

Then I realized I didn't have a card in my camera, so none of them were saved. Dangit.

Then I went back into my room and stuck a card in my camera, but the gecko had gone into hiding.


You get a picture of a gecko tail (along with the lovely hallway light fixture). Enjoy.

(Moral of the story: When done uploading pictures, put the dang card back in the camera.)

Just some more lovely Hawaiian flora and fauna.

May Day is Lei Day

I got to watch part of Laie school's annual May Day dance festival, and it was wonderful. My favorite was definitely the fourth or fifith grade presentation on British pop culture- they had James Bond, the Royal British guard, Austin Powers, the Beatles, the Spice Girls, and David Beckham. How rad!

Other favorites included the African tribesmen (I may have had some sliiiight thoughts about sterotypes, etc) dancing to Michael Jackson, and the Indian dance.





Mainland is kinda boring in a lot of ways in comparison.

Samoan village, PCC.

I have spent the past hour not working on a two-three page paper for my communications class tomorrow. I have two hours before I go to work, and will focus. Seriously.