I've gone hard...

...And now, after almost a year and a half, sixty-eight completed credit hours and one long bout of homesickness, I am finally going home.

(Picture from the first stop on the Stairway to Heaven, on an August adventure with the roommates.)

Aloha for two weeks and a half weeks, Hawaii. 

Hello, Maryland. Please, don't freeze me while I'm out there!

It's a (relatively) cold, rainy morning, which makes oatmeal and cinnamon apple tea the perfect accompaniment to writing reading responses to Marx, Levi-Strauss and the hater of an author who penned the chapter on post-modern anthropology in my textbook.

For some strange reason, my posting increases exponentially at the end of the semester in comparison to the beginning. My room is also cleaner and everything I own is more organized. At least my procrastination is productive, right?

I bet...

Rubber Ducky likes outside showers too, not just baths...

P.S. The pasta had the opposite problem this time- it was a little too tough (and the lasagna, although quite tasty, was far from pretty, thus no pictures). I feel like the Goldilocks of pasta. The third time she always likes it, right?

ADVENTURE TIME!

...that title is for Raycho and MayeHsuwimmer. Because even though I don't see the point of that show, I think you guys are a-okay.

Anyways.

My adventures of late may not be super-exciting-jumping-off-rocks-into-shallow-pools-of-water adventures, but I still think they're delightful. In recent weeks, many of my adventures have been going down in the kitchen. (With good reason, far too many of past outside adventures have ended in pain lately. Why yes, my left knee and hip are still lovely shades of purple and green, thank you for asking.)

A few weeks ago, I decided to try my hand at home-made pasta. Home made spinach pasta, in fact. The process was fun, and made more fun with the help of friends. It turned out beaaaaaaaaaaautiful.
See:

The color was lovely, and the recipe I conglomerated from a few different ones (and didn't write down... typical!) worked pretty well. I'd never made pasta before and the sources I looked at varied on drying time, so I let the noodles dry for two-three hours before sticking them in the pot. In my exuberance, I put them in the pot to take pictures and let them there while the water was boiling, which, in combination with the short drying time probably played a role in the mushy texture.

I was happy, but not completely happy, so with nothing except planning a lesson for Sunday on my agenda for Saturday night, I decided to have another go at it.

Right now the lasagna noodles are drying out in the kitchen, and this is me desperately hoping that even though the dough was a completely different texture and they're not as thin as they maybe should be, it all works out and tastes great.

And yes, in case you were wondering, this is a pretty typical Saturday night for me. At least I went to the beach today in combination with hanging out in the library. My life is so exciting.

Non-sequitur: I am flying home in twelve days and couldn't be more excited. I guess to be more accurate, I'm flying to visit my grandparents in twelve days and driving home in fourteen, but GOOD HEAVENS it has been a long time since I saw my family. I like this rock in the middle of the ocean and all, but it being a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean when my family lives on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean does put a bit of a damper on face to face interactions on a regular basis.

A Day Late

Yesterday, I thought about Thanksgiving. It makes sense, seeing how it was Thanksgiving.

I thought about our school Thanksgiving dinner in second grade, where we lined up our desks in the hallway outside the classroom and half of us got to be pilgrims with black and white construction paper hats or bonnets, and half of us got to be Indians, with brown headbands and red feather shaped cut outs jutting up from the back of our heads. I thought about the dehydrated and rehydrated mashed potatoes, the turkey and gravy and the half pint chocolate milk cartons on the white styrofoam trays that was all the same as the regular cafeteria food, but it felt special and different because it was Thanksgiving. I remembered how as first graders, we were so jealous that the second graders got to do that, and how as I moved up the ladder of elementary school, I wished we could all have that same Thanksgiving lunch in the hallway.

I thought about the Thanksgivings growing up, where we would all pile into the car and drive down to North Carolina to spend a couple of days with my step-mom's cousin and his family. There would be turkey and pumpkin pie and a little backyard football. We would play a few rounds of the Great Dalmuti and Settlers of Catan and my dad would usually wander off to another room to read. I think I remember going on walks around the neighborhood and that there was a big pond or a small lake that we would go down to (literally, because they lived on a killer hill). I remember how we used to hate climbing back into the car because it meant we had a seven hour car ride ahead of us, and it didn't matter how many books or pillows we had, there was no way it was going to be fun.

I thought about the Thanksgiving I had in Hungary, where I went to school, but probably not for very long, and then the two other exchange students in the city came over to my apartment and we baked peanut butter cookies and ate some of the Japanese treats Motoko's family had sent her. A little later that evening, the six missionaries and some of the young adults and I met up at one of their apartments and we had a pseudo-Thanksgiving dinner, with a big chunk of turkey meat cooked on a baking pan and square pumpkin pie with phyllo dough because the sisters didn't have time to make pie crust. I shared the cookies I'd made and the mint chocolate covered Oreos I'd gotten in a care package from my mom and we all sat around speaking a mix of Hungarian and English. I remember it as being one of my favorite days I'd had in Hungary so far and maintain that it is still my favorite Thanksgiving.

I thought about the faulty premises of the holiday and that although there might have been a day that the Pilgrims and Indians, uh, I mean, Native Americans, sat down together to share a meal, they were also at extreme odds as to what exactly was going to be going down on this continent, and that to this day, the relationship is a little shaky.

I also thought about how unthankful I am, and how helpful it is to have a day set aside to reflect on all of the many things I have to be grateful for, and that even though the myth (and I'm saying myth in the Barthe sense) we pass down is dubious at best, it can't be all bad if it brings people together at a sit down dinner to share their gratitude for each other and for the great things in life.

Yesterday, I was thankful that even though I live 5,544 miles away from my parents, I have people out here that I can call 'ohana and who gather together for beautiful Thanksgiving dinners outside. I was thankful to live in a gorgeous place where 70 is cold. I was thankful for long chats with my family and short texts with far away friends. I was thankful for my rad roommates who spent all day cooking up a storm in the kitchen. I was thankful that the preceding week had been filled with good friends and good food. I was thankful that even though the week wasn't the best academically, there's still another two weeks for me to redeem myself.

All those things I was thankful for yesterday? I appreciate them even more today.

Probably the thing I'm most thankful for is that Thanksgiving is over, because now the next big day is Christmas, and I will finally be back on the East Coast to enjoy the company of those family and friends I have missed so much in the year and a half since I've been home.    

Also, I doubt your Thanksgiving dinner was as pretty as mine. Check it out:

  

Adios, amigas.

In honor of friendships chock full of late night chats, nail-parties, lots of laughing, lots of eating, beach Fridays and night-swimming, among many, many other things, two of my favorite people and I did a little photo session last Saturday.

To make the photos a little more interesting (because we can be pretty boring people, y'know!), we had classy, classy cardstock mustaches.
To make the world a more entertaining, when we were done, we stuck them to a handrail on campus and drew faces. Last I checked, they were still there, a week and some change later.

 

The cheese-tastic, requisite photos with the school motto were also done, in the most serious manner possible. Clearly, we were all meant to be models. 

(Somehow I conned my roommate into taking some photos for us, even though she had a full day of studying planned. She is wonderful, clearly.)

I've been preparing myself for a life of solitude and study once both of these lovely ladies leave, I think it'll work out quite well for me. 

Mmmm, mmmm, good.

Certainly there are incredible, awe-inspiring, adventurous ways to start a day off. Today, making a avocado, cheese, tomato, lettuce mustard sammich on a whole grain bagel (and having friends around to laugh at my camera in hand through the whole process) was a pretty good way to welcome in the weekend.

I might've mentioned this before, but I am one lucky girl.

Sometimes I forget this. I enjoy school immensely, but I do tend to get caught up and stress out about it a little more than is probably good for me. (Was I up until two last night rewriting a paper that I rewrote completely again, for the third time, after I woke up? Yes. Yes, I was. Am I going to get an A on that dang paper? You bet I am.)

Those times are when I need little reminders of how lucky I actually am.

Reminders like this:

I wish I'd thought to bring along my wide-angle lens, which would've made for a much better photo, but that will have to wait for another day.

Early last week, after a two hour long Astronomy lecture that dragged on for what felt like five hours, I decided that being productive was overrated. With a little bit of time to kill before I had to be at work, I threw on my swimsuit, grabbed my towel and a book and walked three minutes to the beach, to sit in the shade and ignore the fact that I had chapters of studying to do and pages of papers waiting to be written. It was one of the best decisions I made all week.

I'm bad a resolutions.

...Clearly, seeing as I resolved to be better at posting and then this poor little blog has sat ignored for the past two months.

I've certainly been busy, with both work and school as well as taking advantage of all the rad things there are to do as a college kid in Hawaii. I've even been photo-documenting most things, but most of those photos have simply sat in a folder on my desktop.

To try to make amends, I'll share a picture of one of the most beautiful sights to ever been seen by these two eyes of mine. Feel free to be as jealous as you'd like.

Thank goodness for summer!

Spring term just ended last week, and already summer has been full of night-swimming, a multitude of four am chats with friends, trips to town, nail painting parties, afternoon beach hours, reading for fun, field trips about food sovereignty and makin' money. I'm living in what is probably the best house in this little town with some wonderful roommates and am just so glad to have this six week break free of homework, quizzes, exams, three hour lectures and all those other school things. I now have a chance to immerse myself in nerdiness for sheer enjoyment without concerns about deadlines and bedtimes and such.

I make no guarantees about posting at any interval, but I do promise that I think about posting at least twenty-seven times for every time that I do actually find myself wandering onto blogger, and all of those thoughts are deep and awe-inspiring, of course.

As for a picture this post... On Memorial Day, some friends and I drove down to town to check out the Lantern Floating Festival without any real idea of what it would be. We certainly weren't expecting the thousands of people that were packed into Ala Moana Beach Park, or the huge projection screens showing what was going down on the stage. Needless to say, we were a little surprised upon arrival. There was a bit of a concert before the speeches and ceremony and all that and then the two thousand lanterns were set out on the water. I wish I had more mad skillz as a writer so that you all could feel it, but I don't, and this picture will have to suffice. Trust me, it was beautiful.

 

And now, off I go to get some sleep before a very early wake-up to go catch the first game of the World Cup. I think I'm rooting for South Africa in this game, and for Brazil in general. 

Somehow in the past three weeks, I managed to survive finals, work approximately a million hours, go to graduation, go to a funeral, go to a wedding reception, start classes again, finally get some beach time, some rest time, some friend time and visit Waikiki for the first time.

With all of those activities going down, I haven't been doing too much with my camera. I did go and take some engagements for friends up at Pupukea, but that was pretty much it.

After this past semester, I needed a break and am taking fewer classes and working fewer hours this term, which should hopefully translate into more blog posts.

For now, a favorite from last summer.

Here's to another summer of rest, fun, music and adventures with friends.

Elfelejtettem!

Some how I missed posting about Culture Night.

It was epic.
The end.





...Just kidding.

I took pictures, lots and lots and lots of pictures. I'm mentioned it a bajillion times, but I love my school, and I love the diversity and the cultures and the opportunities it presents for us to learn. Totally rad.

Fijian Club always tells a folktale with their dances, and this time they had some adorable kids with them. 

I was planning on dancing with African club, but the semester was a bit busier than I'd anticipated. They did an awesome job!

For the last few performances on Saturday night, I handed my camera over to a friend. Samoan Club ended the night, and there couldn't have been a better way to finish the event off. 

There's one week left in the semester. This past week, I had one of the more miserable days of my school career, but to make up for it, I also had one of the best, that just so happened to include two incredibly successful presentations.

Um, thanks?

So last night, one of my housemates handed me a couple of packages. One was from Amazon (Got the book, ma, I'll read it over break.), the other was this rather innocuous looking flat rate box sent from home.

 

Harmless, right? Let's take a look inside:

 

Things are a little stranger now. It was filled with a gummy hand (with real crunchy bones inside!), a couple of mustaches, an emergency blanket, lots and lots of napkins and no note. To say the least, I was a little confused. I texted my sister and the conversation went a little like this:

Me: Any explanation for this box I just got?

Sister: Ummmmmmmmm... merry christmas?

Me: Theme gifts?

Sister: Yep.

Me: Who is the hand from?

Sister: Uncle 3's theme.

Me: The napkins? And the Christmas napkins?

Sister: Lol step dad was out of packing peanuts.

Me: And popcorn? I have to say those were the most confusing part. Did you do the mustaches?

Sister: I don't know about the popcorn and yep.

My mom's side of the family has this super fun tradition were we all try to spend the least on the strangest or most entertaining gifts for the whole family. I remember blinking red noses one year, pencils with "1998 theem gift" on them, and some interesting band-aids, among others things. This exchange happens whenever most of us can get together. My mom and two uncles are all in the same general vicinity, so it's usually them now and I think they had Christmas sometime in mid-January, and naturally, the box just got here at the end of March. I had kind of guessed that's what it was, and wasn't the least surprised by most of the contents, but the napkins threw me off a bit, those aren't typical theme gift things. My family is awesome. My housemate who brought me the box also witnessed me opening it and is probably convinced that side of my family is on the top ten list of "Strangest Families in the World who Don't Participate in Illegal Activities."

Also, this is the closest thing I will ever get to one of those mirror self portraits with a big camera type shot. I call it "The artist as an angry mustachioed man." I even wore my man glasses for the occasion. Actually, I wear my man glasses a lot, so that's not really a big surprise. 

I have several posts that are sitting half-way written that will hopefully be posted soon. Maybe even sometime today seeing as I have been meaning to go hang out at the library to get a couple of papers written and now it's three and that still hasn't happened. 

Portrait of a Pineapple

I'm feeling the need for a little more positive in my life right now and thought I would write an ode to the farmers market, (Kid you not. I'm such a hippie child.) but didn't know which form would do such a thing the most justice (my iambic pentameter is a little rusty), because farmers markets are indeed things of beauty. 

Instead, you will get to look at portraits of the deliciously fresh pineapple I purchased that were taken shortly after said product of paradise came into my possession. 

I'm such a sucker for texture. 

We have an on campus farmers market every other Friday where we can get locally grown produce for a heckuva lot cheaper than Foodland offers. I may have gotten a little spoiled while I was home last summer because most dinners included at least a couple of veggies that were grown in the back yard or purchased at the farmers market, and I miss that. My diet is lacking in awesome most of the time, but for a couple of times every month I can enjoy fresh pineapple, pears, peas, tomatoes and whatever else catches my eye and I am happy. There are very few things in the world that beat fresh produce, and none of those are other food items. 

Almost.

It's hitting that point in the semester again where I have an easily quantifiable list of things I need to get done before finals, and there really aren't that many things, but what is left is BIG. And it might be just a teeny-tiny bit stressful. And I may have been walking down the hallway on my way home while thinking about things that still need to get done and haven't been going as well as I would have hoped when I fell and hurt my knee and it just topped everything off and I might have been very grateful to have a good friend with me who didn't mind that it took twenty minutes to walk home when it usually takes five. And it may be one in the morning and I am still up because my knee hurts and I want to get a paper written before I go to class tomorrow.

Thank goodness that there are only three weeks left and then I can finally breath again.

 

Right now I want nothing more than to sit and watch the waves at Pupukea, and I'd totally take a trip down Kam Highway this weekend to do it, except I have a meeting all of Saturday morning and a couple more papers due next week that need to get written. Someday. 

Tsunami Tsaturday

Goodness gracious, what a day. I got home from adventures Friday night at a none-too-early time, having heard a little bit about the earthquake in Chile and the chance of a tsunami coming our way. No big deal, right? Au contraire. One of my housemates was still up at one-thirty/two-ish as I was on my way to bed and she was super worried, so I stopped and talked to her for a bit. Remember the tsunami in September that hit Samoa really hard? That hit her hometown super hard and so anxiety was completely understandable. I ended up going to bed at 2ish and being woken up by a text/phone call at 3:45 saying that the on campus kids were going to be evacuating to the second story at six and that we should probably pack up and head to higher ground. Naturally, the news was a little alarming, so I wake up my roommates and we all pack up and head to campus to wait out the seven hours until this monster is supposed to hit. In the mean time, I call family to let them know what's going on and to spread some love in case I drown or am attacked by the mutant huge crabs that certainly will overtake Laie when the waves come this far in.

In case you were ever searching for a way to wake up a whole dorm of college kids, a tsunami tscare is a very effective means of doing so. This is six am on a Saturday morning. This was not fun.

The following few hours were spent seeing how many people we could fit into Rachel's room before we would get yelled at for fire code violations (eight, in case you were wondering), snacking on whatever food we had stashed away and watching the news. The last hour or so before the tsunami was supposed to hit we were glued to the live coverage that mostly showed the waves at Hilo Bay going in and out and in and out, and it was incredibly exciting. Not. Eventually, the fact that I was on my second day of approximately two hours of sleep a night caught up with me and I crashed before our fair city was destroyed. ...That didn't happen. Apparently they never really called off the warning, they just switched over to the Olympics. Also, I apparently answered a phone call from my mother that I don't remember in the least. What can I say, I was tired.

I have to admit, I was a little bugged that with all the hoopla, nothing happened, but then I think about how terribly things could have turned out and I couldn't be happier. It also makes me realize how completely unprepared I am in case anything does happen, which is a little scary. As a college kid, there really isn't a huge amount of food storage or such that I can accumulate, but the fact that the only things I grabbed were my camera, laptop, a couple of changes of clothes, my old journals, an apple and a jar of peanut butter... that's a little ridiculous. We'll see what all I can figure out so that should we actually have something happen, my arrangements are not such that I will have to eat pages out of my journals to survive.

Mini-Muffins at Midnight

Some days, you wake up and go to class even though you really don't want to because it's a bit of a joke and you know you're only watching a movie because the teacher hasn't really planned the semester but you get up and go anyways because you've already missed two classes and missing class is a dumb reason to get your grade lowered.

Some days, you make an appointment to see your academic advisor after having made one the day before and been told that she was going to lunch and you'll have to come back some other time so you're back and she's in her office with another student for an hour and you have to make another appointment to come back later because class starts in ten minutes.

Some days, you hope that you'll be able to make a trip to town to work on a project that you're really looking forward to even though you know it probably won't happen and when it doesn't you're still disappointed.

Some days, you get papers back that you really didn't do that well on and even though you knew it really wasn't a good paper you're still a little disappointed that you didn't spend more time on it until you realize that it was due that one week that you also had a unit exam, two other papers and a hundred plus pages of reading due on top of class and work time.

Some days, you come home and take a two hour nap even though you really didn't mean to and you spend the rest of the night vegging out until you realize that you have no food and a trip to the grocery store is necessary unless you plan on eating instant potatoes for the next three days.

Some days, at those trips you're really hoping that by some miracle the soy milk will be on sale enough for it not to be absolutely ridiculous and out of budget to buy enough to make this recipe for vegan muffins that you just found and really want to try out.

Some days just don't go like you'd hoped they would.

Those are the days that mini-muffins at midnight are a good idea.

Those are the times that a little bit of goodness might remind you that things don't have to go like you'd hoped they would for them to be good.

And those mini-muffins just might help you remember that it's okay to veg out on a Friday night, and that spending a little time looking at recipes online will probably help you make healthier choices when you're at the grocery store.

They might help you remember that it's okay to use milk in a recipe that calls for soy milk if it means you're being a little more responsible and sticking to that budget you laid out titled "Because I am attempting to be a responsible adult."

They might help you remember that it's okay to not get As or even Bs on everything and that you still have time to bring that grade up and do well in the class and now you know what the expectations are and can better plan for the next paper.

They might help you remember that even though you didn't get to town, you still got that proposal in that really needed to be submitted so that the ball can start rolling on bringing speakers to campus for a project that you think is really important and worthwhile and that if you'd gone to town, that probably wouldn't have happened.

They might help you remember that even if it was a pain to actually go see the academic advisor, once you were there you finally got some questions taken care of and now you have officially postponed graduation which means you're actually doing that peace building certificate you were so excited about and that you will actually have all summer off to go do your own research and that the academic advisor who may or may not be notoriously grouchy seemed a little less grouchy when you were leaving than when you walked in and that you like it when people aren't grouchy.

They might help you remember that professors are people too and that sometimes they get caught up in other things and are busy and might not like planning quite as much as you do and that they have get to up and deal with a bunch of kids who pretty obviously don't want to be there and that probably isn't very fun for them either.

They also might make you write in incredibly long run on sentences and wonder if it's entirely insane or only kind of crazy to blame everything on mini-muffins at midnight.

Recipe found here. Obviously with milk instead of soy milk, and made in mini-muffin form (which probably made all the difference).

First, agitate in developer for two minutes.

All through high school and out in Washington, I took as many photo classes as I could and would spend hours in the darkroom, rolling film, developing it, then going through the printing process- adjusting the enlarger, testing exposure time, developing the test strips, readjusting everything a couple of times and then putting the picture through all the chemicals- first the developer, then rinse, the stop bath, another rinse, stick it in the fixer, then the last rinse before you squeegee and set it out to dry. If I was lucky, I'd only go through that a couple of times before I got a print I was happy with, but there were many occasions where that wasn't the case and I would leave the dark room after three, four, maybe five hours unhappy with what I'd gotten done during that time. It happens. Often. As long as I stuck with it long enough, I'd end up with a print I was happy with turning in to my teacher or showing off to friends.

Even though it was time consuming and frustrating at times, I loved it. There was something incredible about being able to look at a picture and say I made that, all by myself. The smell of the darkroom, at first strange and unpleasant became an aroma I looked forward to encountering again because it meant that for the next how ever many hours, I could focus on the enlarger, the film, the paper, the chemicals and nothing else. I knew the processes to go through to reach that final product.

Now, I'm at school and I would kill to have a set process to go through again. I know some of the steps- sleep, classes, work, study, trips to town to visit the mosque for projects, practices for Culture Night, eat- but how to fit them all together is a little befuddling at times. It would be wonderful to have a step-by-step guide for all of this, set timings and adjustments to make for the correct outcome.

There isn't.

I muddle through as best I can, fitting in homework where I can, getting home before eleven at night if I'm lucky, working, and trying to stay sane by going to basketball games or watching Moulin Rouge at a study party. I guesstimate the amount of time I'll need for various assignments, and have gotten up at five more than a few times recently to get things done in time for class (or speaking assignments for church, which are a whole 'nother post). Even though it's not the easiest right now, I am loving it, even though there isn't a set procedure to tell me how and what to do, I'm making it, and I'm going to stick with it, until I have my diploma, or a published article, or a grad school acceptance later to share with teachers or show off to friends. There are doubtlessly dozens more papers to barely get in before the deadline, and countless late nights and early mornings, and grades that I won't be thrilled with, but in the end, it will be good, and I will be able to look back and say I did it.

Sadly, I don't have any of my old prints with me anywhere, but this is a shot taken with my trusty ol' totally-manual Pentax K1000 for a photo assignment back when my darling little sister was just a baby. 

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.