Another fun day acting

This morning's classes were both lots of fun! During the music class, we watched a video explaining Korean music and instruments. I had no idea there are so many kinds of instruments in Korea! There are probably more than what we find in Japan. I personally liked the "piri", which is like a small oboe or clarinet. There are several kinds, and they all produce a flat, nasal tone with its vibrating reed.


After this class, I went to the Theatre class, where I met Priscilla and the other students whom we are becoming more familiar with. Today's acting exercise involved pairing up with another student; one had to move around and the other had to be his/her mirror. It was funny! In another exercise, we had to make a human machine by connecting with each other and moving like a machine should.

Finally, a few people took turns acting out in front of us... most of them were pretty good.

For lunch, Priscilla and I went home, but Priscilla left soon after that to go to the International Cafe as part of her Japanese class requirements. I stayed at home and downloaded a tryout for Adobe Illustrator, just so I can work on the art class homework at home instead of at the lab.

Priscilla came back home before our afternoon class, so we could get to the geography class by car. The geography instructor taught about atmospheric pressue and how it affects wind, weather and climate. It was fortunate that Priscilla and I had learned some of this stuff before, or I probably would have been confused like most other students!

We got home at around 4:30pm. Naomi made garlic bread and other goodies for dinner. After we had finished eating, Priscilla and I watched Flightplan! I love that movie.. Sean Bean is so kakkoii! Not to mention the great ending which makes it so worth watching! During most of the movie I was like "Go, Jodie Foster!"


Tomorrow I have only one class, which is the art class. It's going to be fun! :)

So much for the Night Marchers...

During my digital art class this morning, we finally got to scan the pictures we drew and start making it into a digital art picture on Adobe Illustrator. It is fun to see how this is going to progress. I think I'll have to download a 30-day trial version of the software in order to work on it at home.

Next, I went to the Hawaiian English class, where we spent most of the time watching the DVD of a short, independent film about the Night Marchers. The filmmakers tried to make this like a documentary film of some explorers trying to take photos and videos of the legendary Night Marchers of Hawaii. The Night Marchers are supposedly spirits of dead warriors and chiefs who come out at night.. and of course, march. A person who comes upon them risks being killed.

The film was so weird.. they tried to make it scary and all, but the effect they tried to create was ruined by their bad acting. I mean, come on! I couldn't help but laugh when a big local guy came out and warned the adventurers not to go on, because "it's sacred" or something like that... he didn't have any expression at all! The language was also pretty bad, so half of the time I found myself wishing that I had a mute button to stop the sound.
There will be no English class this Wednesday. Hurray! :D


I met Priscilla and Naomi at campus and went home with them. After lunch and a funny episode of "Love that Bob", I started writing a reaction paper for yesterday's Chinese concert. It wasn't so hard to write, though I don't know if my teacher will like it or not. I can get a maximum of 25 points for it.

For the rest of the day, I stayed at home. Priscilla cooked German potatoes for dinner tonight, and it was really good! At night I chatted with my family in Japan.. it seems that our bird is still at the vet's place but getting a little better! :)

This is another brief post, but oh well, there's not that much to write every single day!

Happy Chinese New Year

This morning, Naomi got bread from the bakery for breakfast. It was Naomi's turn to lead our church service today; she talked about the manifestations of the Spirit and how they relate to our callings for our church.

Soon after the service, we went out to eat at Greek Marina, which is of course a Greek restaurant. I love gyros.. mmmm! Afterwards we did some shopping at Costco to buy food.

After we got back home, Erin and Priscilla went to relax at the beach for about an hour while I stayed at home. At 3:30pm, after they had returned from the beach, Erin and I went to the Chinese concert at the UH Manoa campus.
This was first of the 5 concerts I have to go to this semester... I'm so glad Erin came along, because I know I couldn't have gotten to the place by myself.

I enjoyed this concert more than I thought I would! The instruments were really interesting... there was the pipa, sheng, zheng, erhu, xiao, and yangqin. Many of them are like ancestors of Japanese koto, shakuhachi, biwa, etc. The only thing I regret is that my camera's battery decided to die 15 minutes after the concert started! As a result, I got to take only a few pictures.

There were 6 people, and all of them were very nice. After the concert, they showed people their instruments, and let me hold the sheng, which looks something like this:

I'm going to write a 2-page report on this concert tomorrow.. it should be pretty easy.

Well, right after Erin and I got home, the four of us drove to Christi and Brandon's place for dinner. They live right on the first floor of Joe & Mercy's house, so Mercy, Nika and Kaila were there. Tina and Yoko were also there. Too bad I couldn't take any pictures!

Brandon cooked spaghetti and garlic bread for dinner.. wow his stuff was really good! We stayed over until about 9:30pm, talking and watching the Incredibles (don't ask).

I'd better get to bed now before it becomes 12:00! Good night everyone!

Weekend at Home

Today was spent entirely indoors. Priscilla and I woke up after 8:00am, and I have been at home since. Since I was feeling a little artsy today, I decided to do some watercolor. Now, I hadn't used watercolor in almost a whole year (!) so I am a bit out of practice. This painting is of a photo I took in Japan while riding in a Shinkansen. I couldn't scan the painting, so this is just a snapshot of it.


After lunch, Priscilla and I watched the movie "Island", starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson. Sean Bean also came out as the villain.. and of course, he was killed in the end. The story involves clones (I almost wrote "clowns" lol), so it was a little gross sometimes. However, it was a very well-made film, and the action was really great!

Hmm... it's hard to remember what else I did in the evening. Naomi cooked dinner for us tonight. At night, I chatted with some people for a while and said hi to Mrs. Stafford, who had her birthday! :D


That's about it for today! Oh, and I found a phantomphan girl on Livejournal who makes little Phantom comics. They may not be too funny, but this Erik is just so cute!


"You will curse the day you did not do~"





Erik the sore loser

An easy schoolday

Although I had three classes today, none of them required me to write anything or do any homework. In fact, I spent most of the class time either watching a video/DVD or watching other students act.

During Music class, we watched a video of Beijing Opera, which is very different from western opera. The women sing with shrill voices, and they wear very heavy makeup & costume. The acrobatics were really impressive! I want to go see one of those plays someday.. they're actually going to do one somewhere nearby during this semester.

I went to the Theatre class, where we did our usual relaxation routine. After a brief acting exercise, we watched some of the students act a scene, one by one. Today was Priscilla's turn, and she did a great job! She and another Japanese girl were the best for today. For next week's class, Priscilla and I have to team up and think of some kind of scene to do together. Hmmm wonder what that'll be.

We went home, ate fried rice and miso soup for lunch, and watched a hilarious episode of "Love that Bob".

In the afternoon came our Geography class.. the whole class was spent watching a DVD of "National Geographics" about global warming, and how even a slight change in the earth's climate affects the world on a global scale.

They mentioned endangered animals like the caribou (a moose-like animal), not to mention the spreading of sand from Sahara Desert over the Atlantic Ocean that causes breathing problems. Our teacher obviously wants us to think seriously about these environmental problem kinds of things.

As we have come to expect of this class, it finished a little earlier than time. I was glad, because I was so sleepy during this class!


It was my turn to cook dinner, but I "cheated" by baking frozen pizza. Well, frozen pizza is good! I'm going to try to cook something real next week though.
We had our prayer meeting at home after dinner, and talked about the next step for our church.


Tomorrow I have no class in the morning, which means I get to sleep in. Hurray!!

Yay more art books!

This morning, the art classroom was locked until fifteen minutes past time... so we students were left standing in front of the door for that long. Today we learned about the "brush tool", which is basically drawing lines by moving the mouse. It's not always as simple as it sounds! Also, though we were supposed to bring a full sketch of our first project, most people didn't. So the teacher looked pleased when I showed her mine (the pic from yesterday's blog). The picture ended up being passed around to everyone as an example! I don't know whether to be happy or embarrassed..

I then went to the English class, where all we did was listen to the teacher explain what we're going to do in the next few weeks. That's the nice thing about higher level classes: we're expected to know the basics already, so the teacher trusts us to do our stuff. In the next few weeks, I will have to make a short presentation of a Hawaiian poem and an anthology of one aspect of the Hawaiian culture with the interpretation for 4 Hawaiian short stories and 4 poems. Sounds like a lot of work, but I think it's going to be pretty fun, because I get to design a cover and add images to the anthology!

Right after we got home, I was dropped off at the post office by Naomi and Priscilla so that I could send a package to my parents and also receive a package from the Barnes & Noble bookstore. I got another art book.. yay! I think I've collected about four art books in less than 2 weeks. Time to stop buying and start reading!

By the time we got home after the post office, I was starving! So we ate lunch while watching "Undercover Blues", which is an action comedy from the early 90's. T'was very funny!

For the rest of the day I stayed at home and studied a little bit, chatted with my father, and scanned through my new art book, called "A Brief History of Painting". I loved this part about one modern painter of the 20th century who was so into playing chess that only after a week of marriage, his new wife glued his chess pieces to the board and divorced him! Lots of modern artists are very screwed up.

Erin made tonkatsu and mabo-dofu for dinner. Tomorrow's my turn to cook, but I might just decide to use that frozen pizza!

Tomorrow's Music class and Theatre class! They're two of my favorite classes this semester, along with the Art class. Can't wait!! :D

So much fun acting like 3-year-olds

This morning's classes were both very enjoyable! During most of Music class, we watched a video of Chinese people playing their traditional music with very unique instruments like Sheng, Zheng, and Erhu (don't ask me to pronounce them!). I'm going to see a concert of Chinese music with Erin next Sunday, so I'm looking forward to that!

Next came the Theatre class. Today the teacher made us act like 3-year-olds trying to tie a shoelace, be like teenagers stealing for the first time, and lots of other characters! For the last 30 minutes, four of the students, including myself, acted out a scene of our own choice one by one. I acted out the scene where a freshly wedded girl walks into their unfurnished apartment room and examines it. I think I did okay, though acting in front of the teacher did make me a little nervous!

We stopped by at Times Supermarket on the way home to do some grocery shopping (yay icecream!). We ate lunch while watching the last Hogan's Heroes episode from Season 2, then went to our Geography class at 3:15pm.

I still don't know what to make of our Geography class... we haven't done any quizzes or projects yet. There's a lot of information to digest, so I hope I can remember everything.

Naomi cooked dinner tonight.. something with string beans, corn beef, and potatoes. I don't know what it's called, but it was good! Afterwards, we watched Transporter 2... *sigh* so cool!

For tomorrow's art class, I'm going to take this picture that I drew. Kinda embarrassing, but it will hopefully look better when I use Adobe Illustrator on it.



Off to bed I go!

So nice to have classes only in the morning!

It's sometimes a little hard to wake up at 7:00am in the morning (it's a bit dark in the room), get ready without waking up your roommate, and be attentive during the morning class. Well, that's what I do on Mondays and Wednesdays, and today was no exception.

It's fortunate for me that the 8:00am class is an art class and not a lecture class... it doesn't require me to be totally alert. Today we learned some more tools on the Adobe Illustrator, especially about the Pentool. It's not an easy tool to use at first, but one gets used to it, I guess. It was still a lot of fun!

I ran over to Kalia for my English class. Today was our presentation day... yes, the urban legend one. That class is pretty easy so far because the teacher doesn't really teach, but makes us discuss and do something instead. There were about 6 groups in all, and each talked about an urban legend (mostly local Hawaiian) and interpreted it. Some of them were kinda boring because the people were not so good at storytelling, but some others were interesting. I think that my group's went pretty well.

After that class was over at 12:00pm, Naomi and I were picked up by Priscilla and went home. We ate lunch while watching an old TV series called "Love that Bob", then I did some art homework, which was yet more sketching!

Not much happened in the afternoon.
For dinner, Priscilla made her famous om-rice! Yum!
After dinner was over and Priscilla had finished watching over the kids during their sign dance practice, the four of us watched the DVD of "Red Eye", which Priscilla had gotten just today. All of us except for Erin had seen it before, but it was still suspenseful and fun!

Sorry, no pictures today!

Birthday Party at Stewart and Lisa's

This morning started out with our Sunday service in our living room. Today was Erin's turn to lead, and she talked about our having to prepare ourselves for what God has in store for us.

After the service, Naomi, Priscilla and I went picked up a church person called Linda and went to a birthday party for Bella and Abigail which took place at Abigail's parents, Stewart and Lisa's house. The two little girls, whose birthdays are very close, had their very first birthday party today (1-year-old)!

There were lots and lots of people, both from the Kaimuki Church and another church. Many of them were families with little children, so we saw kids and babies everywhere! LOL
Stewart and Lisa's house was very nice and air-conditioned, so Naomi, Priscilla and I spent much of the time indoors while most people sat and ate outside near the barbeque. The family has a Chihuahua-like dog named Buddy, a cat named Billy, and a cute little budgie called Bobby!

Here is Bobby the Budgie!






Malia with her adorable hat.







Naomi, Bella, and Don







Malia looking so cool with my sunglasses.

Happy birthday, girls! (notice the single candle on each doll.. I mean cake)




We left at around 3:00pm, earlier than others. Priscilla and I took a nice, refreshing nap soon after we got home.

Erin prepared dinner for us, and we ate those dishes along with some leftovers from the day before. There was the movie Italian Job on TV while we ate, but we didn't watch the whole thing.

I have an early start tomorrow, but I'm looking forward to the art class. Good night everyone!

Another movie weekend!

Today, Erin, Priscilla and I decided to go to see the movie "Glory Road". The movie was to start from 11:30am, so we got ready in a hurry and left for Ward Theatre. We called up Ericson to join us, and though it was on short notice, he came to watch the movie with us.

The traffic was crowded and crazy, so we barely got there in time. The movie "Glory Road" is produced by Gerry Bruckheimer (same guy as Pirates of the Caribbean) and is based on a true story about a basketball team that was mainly comprised of black people (which at the time was unthinkable). It's the story of how that team goes on to win first place at the national championship. It was a really good, exciting movie. I loved Josh Lucas as the coach!

After that, Ericson went his own way while we went to Borders bookstore. There was a sale going on, and lots of good, educational books were really cheap! I got two art books for less than $10... so happy!

I like looking at these art books to see how different author teach in different ways. Art is a very subjective matter, so it's hard to determine what's right and what's wrong in it. However, there are some set techniques and skills that are useful to learn through these books. I think I should start painting when I find the time.

Naomi cooked some salmon for dinner. For the rest of the day, I read the books I got, did some homework and computer. I'm glad we got to see Glory Road today! :)

First real Geography Lab class

Today, I woke up later than Priscilla because Priscilla had to go to her Japanese class in the morning. Until lunchtime, I sat at my desk and worked on my art class homework, which was putting the earlier sketches together into four different compositions. I finished three, but haven't come up with the fourth one yet.

After lunch, Priscilla and I went to our Geography Lab class. Since last week's class was only a 10-minute introduction, this was our first real class. Today, we had five pages of exercises to do. We used a globe and a flat map to locate various cities, longitudes and latitudes, and time zones. A lot of people seemed to be having a hard time with it, but since Priscilla and I had learned all this stuff back in Japan, we finished it in an hour and 15 minutes, ahead of the others and went home!

In the evening, Naomi and Priscilla went to the Kaimuki church service while Erin and I stayed home. Erin had been doing some exercising today with her co-workers and was tired, so we stayed at home and watched Midsummer Night's Dream. Kevin Kline was hilarious in the role of Bottom the Weaver... I thought he looked kinda cute with those huge donkey ears!

Well, today's post is pretty brief, but that's about all that happened. Just for the sake of embellishing it a little, here is a picture of a view from the campus. Actually, the sun was so bright I could hardly see what I was taking. The building on the left is where we take our theatre class. We can get a nice view of the ocean from here!

I'm starting to like Geography class...

This morning, I took a quiz during Music class. It was a bit harder and longer than expected (we were given 45 minutes to do it), but I think I only made a couple mistakes. It was a good thing I studied a lot the night before! At least, now I know what to expect out of those quizzes!

Then, I joined Priscilla and other students at Maile for our Theatre class. Today, I didn't have to act or anything... just watched others act. There is this one guy called Klunx who acted a suicide scene so well that he almost made some students cry! LOL
My turn to act comes next Tuesday.

We drove home and ate lunch while watching Hogan's Heroes. After that, I started translating a Japanese urban legend story from the net into English. It's a story about a traveler who ventures into the forest alone at night and encounters a man with nothing on his face but one big staring eye. The story doesn't end there... he runs down to a village in fright and finds out that all the villagers have that same one eye as well. Eeewww..

In the afternoon, we went to the Geography class. Today we played a game in which we divided into 5 teams and took turns answering questions from previous lectures. My team won just by a point or two. When I quickly identified the country of Sudan on the map, the teacher seemed a bit amazed. We got out of class 30 minutes early, so we walked home.

I finished up my urban legend draft, sent it to my group, then made dinner. I didn't really know what I was going to make, but I'm glad everything turned out edible. At night, the four of us gathered together and spent some time talking together, taking in current situation, etc.

Just now I heard that my bird Shuichi has been hospitalized because he's apparently been sick for some time. I hope he gets better soon!

Fiddling with the Adobe Illustrator..

This morning, we all woke up and left home pretty early... Erin and I had class from 8:00am, but Priscilla just decided to go early by car instead of walking to school later.

Art class was really fun today. We handed in our rough sketches, then learned some more features of Adobe Illustrator. I think the instructor was amazed with my sketches, because I heard her utter a small "OMG!" when she looked at the papers.

We're still doing some very easy stuff on the Illustrator... look at this strange face. Just a simple practice of using layers.




When the instructor was busy with other people, I went ahead and fiddled with some tools we hadn't learned yet. So I really don't know or remember how I made this blue and purple blob! So weird...


After that class was over, I immediately went to Kalia for my English class. Because it is a higher level English class, there is hardly any lecture. Instead, most of the class time is spent in discussion among separate groups and analyzing literature. So far it's pretty fun, though now each of our groups have to find an urban legend (scary story) to present in class next Monday. I hate ghost/horror stories, so I'm not looking forward to this!

Priscilla came to pick us up after class, so we got home at about lunchtime. We watched just one episode of Hogan's Heroes while eating, partly because there's only a couple more episodes left to watch! :(

Erin went to her guitar class in the afternoon (I think she looks better with a guitar than I do), and Naomi and Priscilla went driving somewhere, so I stayed at home and looked for urban legends for my English class until I got sick of scary stories. I've asked my parents if they know any good story I can use, so hopefully they can come up with something.
It was Erin's turn to cook tonight, and she cooked spaghetti with tomato and chicken sauce.

Tomorrow I have a Music quiz coming up. Also, during the Theatre class, I have to act out a short scene from a play by myself. Wish me luck! :D

A day with three very different classes

Today started out with the music class, which was some more basics on music as a part of culture. It's a lecture class, but it's great because we get to listen to interesting music during class and hardly have any homework! There is a quiz coming up on Thursday though... my first quiz this semester!

Next came the Theatre class. It's a class unlike any other classes because we get to lie down, breathe, and relax. Later we had to act like elementary schoolkids playing outside during recess. Half of the students had to be the playthings (like swings and stuff) while the other half were the kids. A lot of fun!

We went home, ate lunch while watching Hogan's Heroes (so good to watch them again!), and stayed there until it was time for our Geography class at 3:15pm. It was only about one hour, but we went through a lot of material, like the solar system, seasons, and atmosphere. Here in the states, geography class is not required in high school, so I'm guessing that a lot of this stuff is new to most students.


Also, here is a funny map which the teacher used in order to show us that every map has its perspective. This is from the perspective of the United States.


We went home after that, and while Priscilla went to pick up Erin from her work place, I finished up my sketches for tomorrow's art class. Yes, my sketches take a rather long time to make! :)

Naomi cooked delicious dinner for us, a kind of stew with shrimps! Each of us are cooking at least once a week this semester... my turn comes on Thursday. I hope that whatever I'm going to cook turns out at least edible and that no one gets sick after eating it! :P

I think I'm starting to get a little headache, so I'm off to bed. Gute nacht!

What a nice, relaxing holiday!

Today was Martin Luther King Day, so there was no school! There are far fewer national holidays here than in Japan, so each holiday seems more special here. Naturally, we did not wake up until late in the morning. Priscilla and I completed our theatre class homework, which was to write a step-by-step direction for a scene from a play we have to act out individually.

While eating lunch, we watched "Relative Values", a comedy with Julie Andrews, Colin Firth, and Luke Baldwin. Colin Firth is so funny! It was my second time to see it, but still fresh and fun to watch because I'd forgotten how funny it was!

In the afternoon, I sketched a little more and chatted on the computer. I also found a spare piece of canvas from last semester which I thought was too good to waste... it's a kind of long, narrow strip, though, so I'm not sure what I can paint on it.

For dinner, Priscilla prepared some frozen pizza (mmmm!), and we ate that while watching the Golden Global Awards! In Hawaii we didn't get to watch it live, so it was on TV from 7:00pm to around 10:00pm.

The movie that got the most awards was Brokeback Mountain, the one that we wish it didn't have to win so many... however, Walk the Line won the best Musical or Comedy, Best Actor, and Best Actress. It was funny because most of those actors and actresses were so nervous and at a loss for words when they received the award! LOL


Anyway, school goes back to normal from tomorrow... I will take three classes tomorrow: Music, Theatre, and Geography. I hope all of them goes well!

Here's yet another picture from Japan...

Yokohama~~! brrr looks cold!

Already 3rd Sunday?

This morning, Naomi cooked breakfast for us. Priscilla unfortunately had a really bad stomachache, so she couldn't eat in the morning. It seems that she couldn't sleep last night because of it... but I was so sound asleep I didn't know anything about it until this morning.

It was Naomi's turn to lead the service today. It's hard to imagine what it would be like to be here without our services... we still need to pray for the next step for our House of Chloe Church.

After the service, we went out to eat lunch at Happy Day, our favorite Chinese restaurant. Priscilla was fortunately feeling better by that time. The dim sum there is always good, and I enjoyed going there again.

After we got home, we had a somewhat relaxing time... Priscilla had to work on her Japanese homework, and I finished my Hawaiian literature paper. Also, I got to work on my art sketches a little more. For the rest of the afternoon and evening, I had a good time at the computer, chatting with my mother.


During dinnertime, we watched "How to Steal a Million" while eating. It was a really cute, funny movie, and I loved Audrey Hepburn in it!
By the time the movie was finished, it was already about 9:30pm.


Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day, which means it's a holiday!! *jumps up and down* Too bad our internet is going to be down tomorrow... :( I hope it'll be just during the work hours.

A birthday party!

Just like most other Saturdays, we slept in today until about 9:30am... because it was the weekend, of course we took our time getting up, dressing, eating, etc. At around 11:40, Erin, Priscilla and I went to Dole Theatre to see a movie... a movie I'm not going to mention here because I don't want all the kids watching it.

Dole Theatre was nice because they had digital sound, but the seats were not the most comfortable ones around... Ward Theatres' seats are better, I think.

We got home in the afternoon and relaxed for a few hours at home. At around 5:30pm, all of us drove to Joe & Mercy's house (Joe is the church drummer) for their little girl Kaila's birthday party! They live in a house at the side of a very steep hill... the view was really nice from up there!

At the party, where were Joe's family, the four of us, Nick & Heather's family, and a few neighbors. There were four busy little girls who kept playing around, so we were never bored! We all played with them a lot.


Kaila's birthday cake, made especially for her by her mom! That's Nika (left) and Kaila (right) together... Nika did not seem to get that the whole party was for Kaila. LOL They were still having so much fun!

The dinner was really good, and so were the cakes! Joe's family is really cute and funny, and we just couldn't stop laughing when they got out two huge rubber, air-filled balls... the father and the girls were throwing those balls at each other! That's something we wouldn't normally see in Japanese families! LOL

After we had lots and lots of good time together, we came back home. After all that laughing, I'm pretty knackered! Off to bed now... tomorrow is Sunday! :)

Friday is an easy day!

I woke up this morning at around 8:00am, when Priscilla woke up to go to her Japanese class. But then, I fell asleep again and did not wake up until almost 10:00! I wasn't the last one to get out of bed though.

At around noon, Priscilla came back from her Japanese class, which turned out to be very different from what had been expected. I'd have felt awful in Priscilla's place too... who would want to write a 6 page paper, all in Japanese? :S

From 1:45pm, we went to our Geography Lab class, which is taught by the same teacher as the geography class. It's a 2hour-and-45-minutes class, but since today was only an introduction, we got to get out of class after only 13 minutes! That was and will be the only class I take on Fridays.

I did random things at home until the evening, when we went to the service at Kaimuki Christian Church. The topic today was about adopting orphans and abused children. At the end there was a sign dance by four adopted girls.

After the service, the four of us went to eat at a ramen restaurant with Tiffany, Tina, and Yoko. The ramen was pretty good, though I think I like the Kyoto Ramen place a little better. If I go there again, I'm going to try their "tsukemen"!

Well it's late now because we stayed at the ramen place for a pretty long time. Good night!!

I love these classes already!! :D

Today, I was dropped off at the campus at 8:00am by Naomi, even though my Music class was not to start until 9:15. So I took a seat in the cafeteria and looked over my music book for a while, going over the material for this week.

After getting out of the cafeteria and running into Priscilla and Nichelle on the way, I reached the Kalia building and walked into the music class. Since I knew that this was one of those classes that run out of seats quickly, I came in early and got the front seat. The teacher, Lina Doo, makes her class fun to be in... we basically learned about rhythm and melody today, and listened to some examples. It's easy, but there are lots of terms to memorize, like idiophones, membranophones, hetero, musical texture, homophonic and heterophonic, etc. For an example of harmonization, she made the class sing a C chord... but most of the students were so off key!

I ran to the theatre building, where the instructor, Mrs. Perez, made us start by lying on towls laid on the floor and doing a breathing, concentration exercise. After that, she told us to pretend (or act) that we were in a highschool basketball team. There had to be one referee, three people on each team, and some spectators. It was so fun to act it out... well, I think that half of it was real, not just acting. After a while, the teacher told us to do it slow motion!! It was so funny, everyone was moving so slowly and even yelling slowly! Finally, we had to do slow motion, but without the ball! It went crazy when the referee decided to be mean and unfair, and when the opposing teams got excited and started shouting and trying to get at each other. All of that was acting, of couse... or so I hope! LOL In the end, the teacher congratulated us, saying that we did very well for beginners. Yaay! ;D

We went home and relaxed for a few hours before going to our afternoon Geography class at 3:15pm. This teacher, who is still a little young, is not the best teacher I've seen, but I guess she's okay. We learned about kinds of maps that are out there (globe, Mercater, Peter...), and got to get out of class a little early! I hope this class will be an easy one!

We stopped by at Longs Drugstore on the way home to buy notebooks and stuff for studying. Right after we got home, we washed the car clean because it had become dirty again! *sigh* Well, it's clean now and hopefully it will stay that way for a few days.

I did a little homework for my art class today... I'm supposed to sketch two perspectives for all the characters and objects I will use in my picture. Here's what I've done so far. I know it looks really weird, but my story is about a family of eggs having a Christmas feast of roast chicken. I can't believe I'm doing this... So this is the boy and the father. Mother and sister will be following soon!


Naomi cooked a kind of chicken stew for dinner along with rice and asparagus. I think I should start making dinner sometimes too.

Tomorrow I get to sleep in!! :D Oh happiness! There's just one Geography lab class which I will be taking with Priscilla in the afternoon.

This is going to be a long semester!

I woke up at 7:00am this morning, the time I will be waking up every Monday and Wednesday for this semester. Naomi dropped me and Erin off at campus for our 8:00am classes.

I took my "Fantasy meal" story to the digital art class; the students had to trade the papers and edit each other's work. I corrected a Japanese girl's story, which was about traditional new year food (datemaki, kurikintoki, etc) dancing and singing with instruments. Our homework for next week is to start sketching a picture from our story, in order to make a picture using Adobe Illustrator. We got to fiddle (LOL just now I wrote "diffle"!) around with that software... though it was real basic stuff like copy & paste.

That class lasted for 2 1/2 hours. After it was over at 10:30am, I had less than 15 minutes to run to another building for my "Multiethnic Hawaiian Literature" English class. I'm taking this class mostly because I kinda have to, but I also think that it's good to learn about the culture of Hawaii by reading books about it (okay I'm just trying to make myself more enthusiastic). So far it's not difficult, but not too fun either... we got into groups of 2 or 3 and analyzed poems.

At 12:00pm it was finished, so I went up to the parking lot, where I met up with Naomi and waited for Priscilla to come pick us up by car. Since I had no more classes for the day, I stayed at home and relaxed while doing a little homework.

I must've been really bored when I took this utterly meaningless picture..



While eating the ramen from Japan for lunch, Priscilla and I watched a movie called "Showtime". It was one of those funny, stupid movies. Of course, what could I expect of a movie with Eddy Murphy?

The afternoon and evening went by rather slowly. Erin came back from her guitar class in the evening, then for dinner, we ate tuna sandwich.

My day starts early again tomorrow, because Naomi is going to drop me off at campus at 8:00am. I will have three classes tomorrow, including music and theatre! Yay! :D

These classes are going to be fun!

This morning, I woke up when Priscilla's alarm clock went off. Priscilla woke up temporarily at the sound and probably turned off the alarm, but then fell asleep again and remembers nothing of the alarm going off.

Priscilla and I both have three classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays; we take two of them together. At 9:15am, Priscilla went off to her history class while I went to my Music in World Cultures class. The teacher was a nice but strict kind of lady, not-so-young. Since that is the only class of its kind, it was very full and crowded. The teacher made us listen to some interesting music from random places in the world. I think that this class will be fun and not too difficult. The only thing is, it requires me to go to 5 concerts of different kinds and write a report on each of them.

At 10:30am I got out of that class and ran to the theatre building before the Beginnings in Acting class started at 10:45. This class seems like it's going to be great, too. We're going to learn how to act (of course) as well as learning to control our voices better.

We went home and ate leftovers for lunch. We started watching Shanghai Noon while eating, but stopped it halfway. I think I'll finish it tomorrow, since there's no class in the afternoon.

From 3:15pm to 4:30 was our Geography class. Well, it's not geography as in learning where certain countries and certain mountain ranges are located. It's a kind of physical geography, so we're going to learn about land formations, weather, climate, and that sort of stuff. The instructor was a 28-year-old lady from Seattle (all my instructors this semester are women!)... she seemed kinda nervous, but that may be because it was our first class. She is also going to teach us geography lab on Fridays.

We drove back home after class and stayed at home the rest of the day. I worked a bit on the art homework again, just to add a finishing touch to that weird story I wrote about food. Naomi cooked hamburgers for dinner, and we also had Erin's salmons from yesterday.

Since I haven't been taking any pictures in Hawaii this year, I shall put one of my Japan photos here:




Hmm, I tried to upload another picture, but this birdie one keeps coming up!

First Day of School (yay there are 4 of us now!)

Our first day of Spring 2006 semester started early; we both have 8:00am classes on both Monday and Wednesday. It's slightly better than last semester, when we had 8:00 classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Ooh it's so exciting to go to new classes and meet all-new people!

My first class was the Introduction to Digital Arts, where I will learn some basics of softwares like Photoshop and Flash. The teacher seems pretty knowledgable, though she is young (27). We didn't do much today since it was still our first day, but we already got a homework due on Wednesday: we have to write a little story about a "fantasy meal", which will later become one of our projects on the computer. I saw some of the earlier peoples' artwork, and there was a picture in which a guy was surfing in a bowl of ramen. In another picture, a sushi was depicted cooking a live fish... how twisted! Well, mine is going to be a little like that too, I think.

I had over an hour before my second class, so I killed some time in the cafeteria trying to come up with an idea (in other words, awaiting for inspiration) for my fantasy meal homework. At 10:45am, I went to the English 257B class. This class is one of the higher level English classes and focuses on the multiethnic literatures of Hawaii. Doesn't sound that exciting, but hey, it's one of the classes I have to take.

Fortunately, the instructor is a really lively, talkative, local lady and makes the class pretty fun. She doesn't really act like an instructor, so the class is more like a get-together, discussion type thing. In order to get to know each other better, the classmates had to team up and write a short poem (no rhyme, thank goodness!) about each other. The name of the girl I wrote about happened to be Erin!

That class was over at 12:00. Wow Priscilla and I have the whole afternoon free on Mondays and Wednesdays! This feels great! :D I walked home, ate lunch, and talked to my parents. My father gave me some ideas to use for my art homework, and I think I can use one of the ideas to make my own picture. It's a crazy, meaningless story about a family of eggs having a Christmas feast. Reading this in front of the class is going to be a most embarrassing experience!

Erin went to her afternoon guitar class and came back with some important documents that we have to send to the mainland as soon as possible... so we went to the crowded post office to do that.

After that, we made a delicious dinner of rice, unagi, steamed salmon, and salad. While I cleaned the dishes, Erin went to pick up Naomi and Priscilla. At around 9:15pm, they arrived home! :D It's so nice to have them back.

The rest of the night was a flurry of unpacking and putting away stuff. Priscilla and I have three classes tomorrow, and we'd better be attentive during them, so good night!!

Just the two of us ~~ and nobody else in sight~~♪♪

Today I woke up at around 8:30am. Erin was already up and making breakfast of bacon and scrambled eggs for the two of us. Yum! Then from 10:00am, we had our Sunday service. During worship, Erin played the keyboards and I played the guitar. It was no less a church than any bigger ones, because whenever two or three gather in Jesus' name, it's a church! :) Erin spoke today and said that we need to think about what we are placed here to do.

After the service, we went to Kaka'ako Kitchen, a kind of fast food-ish local restaurant very close to the Ward Theatre. The grilled pastrami sandwich and mochiko chicken salad were goooooood!! It was my first time to go there, but I think I like the place already.

Although we were stuffed with all the food (we couldn't even finish them!), we went to Nordstrom Rack to look at some clothes and stuff. I bought myself a aloha shirt, since I didn't have one. It was a good thing I found a nice XS size!

We went home after that... and in the late afternoon and evening, we both fell asleep again! LOL Well, Erin slept a lot more than I did!

Dinner was comprised of leftovers from yesterday and today. Everything we find here is huge, so we get a stockpile of leftovers in our fridge in no time! I think the salad I got at Costco is worth three whole meals for me.

Not much else to write, except that school is starting tomorrow! Our day starts early because we have separate classes at 8:00am. Let's hope I wake up in time..

Naomi and Priscilla are arriving here tomorrow... can't wait!! :D

One of those nice, quiet days just before the coming of a new semester

I had a wonderful time back in Japan, and I'm going to miss everyone back home while I'm here! Here are some random pics I took in Japan:

"Hey, when are you gonna let me out of this cramped cage??"




Our Christmas Hula/Sign Dance performance!


The huge, moving crab in Osaka.







This is the kind of food that we can't easily find in Hawaii!



Anyway, Erin and I left Japan at around 9:20pm on Friday. The flight was okay, but there was a lot of turbulence along the way. I watched a movie and played some games, but could not get any real sleep.

At the airport, we had some trouble getting out of the place because of something we forgot to do with our student Visa. Well, we got out about an hour later than expected, but Ericson was still waiting to pick us up.

After getting home, we immediately went to the campus to buy textbooks, then to some other places like the post office. Unpacking took some time because I had to sort out what omiyage to give to each person. After it was done and I had sent a mail or two, I fell asleep! LOL

Woke up at around 5:30pm, got ready, and went to the Friday service at the Kaimuki Church. We took all our omiyage to church to give them to friends, but many of them happened to be absent that night.

We were sleepy after the service, so we went home, had some dinner, and went to bed.



Today, we woke up very late! That was a good thing, since we needed the sleep. We got to go to Costco and do some shopping. Things are so much cheaper here than in Japan, especially in Costco!

In the afternoon, we watched the movie Sister Act, since it was on TV. Erin went shopping after that, while I stayed at home and chatted with my family.
For dinner, we ate the thickly sliced sashimi from Costco... pretty good, but of course nothing like the stuff we find in Japan! :P

Erin's gone to bed already, and I think I should do the same. Good night!

In Hawaii again..!

Yes, Erin and I have arrived! Since I've been awake for a very long time already, I'm going to go to bed now... sorry, no full post today! I'll write a long one tomorrow instead. ;)