Spam Jam at Waikiki..

Report from Priscilla: her computer is not working too well, so she won't be able to post tonight.


Today, I spent a relaxing morning and afternoon at home. Hard to remember exactly what I did.. I worked on my Flash project for a couple of hours, cleaning up the rough drawings I scanned in.

From 4:00pm, Naomi, Priscilla and I went to the Kaimuki Christian church to join Ericson's youth ministry event for the people visiting from Nebraska Christian College. Matt, Yuriy, and Bao were also there, and we all went down to Waikiki together, since there was a Spam Jam festival going on down there. It was reaally crowded, as you can see here.

The Nebraska group actually went their own ways, so it was mostly only the small Hawaii group who stuck together. We ate dinner at McDonalds... they were selling lots of spam foods, but I don't like spam. :(

After everyone finally got together again, we went back to church and had some fun there with ping pong and other games. Thanks to Ericson for planning and being in charge of this evening!

I didn't get to talk much with the Nebraska group, but it was pretty fun!

The last lab class!

Not much worth mentioning happened today... I stayed at home in the morning, typing away at the computer writing an essay to hand in with my scholarship application. What fun! I'm really hoping that I will be able to get this scholarship though.. it would be helpful.

In the afternoon, Priscilla and I went to our very last geography lab class. Basically, we got to go outside in the sun and watch water soak into the soil. Sounds exciting doesn't it? lol Well actually it wasn't that boring, since we did it in groups. We stuck cylinders into various types of soil, poured water into it, and counted how long it took for the water to soak through.
Hurray no more Friday class!!

After getting home, I relaxed a little before we all went to the 7:00pm service at the Kaimuki church. The church was having some people from Nebraska Christian College over for a kind of mission trip, so the professor from that place gave the sermon tonight. From next week they're going to do a series on Da Vinci Code, so I'm a bit curious about what that will be like.

We went out to eat at Chili's before heading back home, then watched one episode of Monk. Very fun and relaxing way to spend Friday night! :)

Whew... so glad today's finished!

Yup today was a pretty tough day with lots of things to do! Theatre class' finals started at 10:15am, 30 minutes earlier than usual. That meant that I had to leave my music class early!

Four groups, including Priscilla's and my group, did our final scenes today. I must admit I was pretty nervous about it! I think my scene went okay, though Oswald did mess up a little by forgetting his costume. lol! I think all of today's groups did pretty well.

I was so relieved after that class was over... but there was still a lot to do in the afternoon! We went home with Kaori and worked on our poster, which was due for presentation in a matter of hours. We finished gluing and taping all the papers onto the poster in time. At first glance, the crack I painted on the board really looks like a crack!
The presentation went pretty well, and I think everyone liked our poster. Now that this project is over, all we have to worry about is the final exam! *celebrates*

<--- our amazing team: Priscilla, me, and Kaori.



After getting back home, I prepared dinner for the four of us, then led the night's prayer meeting. Finally, all of us watched the movie "The Village", which was suspenseful and cleverly done! I think I have a headache now though....


Less than 1 week of school left! Good night!

Tomorrow's going to be a big day...

Today's classes weren't very eventful, because the art teacher was still absent from class. It was basically 2 1/2 hours of cleaning up images on Flash while listening to music.

After grabbing a cup of coffee at 2nd Cup Cafe, I went to English class, which is becoming like a theatre class now. We finished reading the script of a Hawaiian play, and now we have to get in groups and create a scene on our own, and perform it. My group consists of a local Japanese girl, a Korean guy, and myself. This Korean guy looks like he can act a little, so I think my group is going to be fine with this!

After coming home, I was rather jittery for a while because of that cup of coffee (next time, I'm getting tea instead). But I got some things done for the earthquake poster that we're going to use tomorrow during geography class.

At night, Erin cooked delicious cabbage rolls for dinner. Priscilla and I watched American Idol later, which I loved because Andrea Bocelli sang in it! Oooh I love singers who can sing both opera and popular music! Maybe I will get one of his CDs...


I am getting nervous about tomorrow, because it's the day both of us are going to do our final scenes during theatre class. I think I'm ready for it, but I hope my partner's memorized all his lines. Also coming up tomorrow is the poster presentation of Kaori, Priscilla, and me.
Now I am off for a good night's sleep to prepare for the big day!

Wow the semester is really drawing close to an end...

During this morning's music class, I did my presentation on the Taishogoto! I love that instrument, mainly because I grew up with one of them. I had a Powerpoint slide and some mp3 files to assist me, so I think it turned out pretty well. My teacher told me that it was very good, since most of the other students who gave presentations had a hard time keeping track of time and wrapping up with a good conclusion.

During theatre class came a surprise... my group, along with Priscilla's group and another group, will do our final scenes this Thursday!! That's day after tomorrow! My group had better be completely ready by then. So we practiced pretty seriously today outside the theatre building.

Instead of staying on campus until geography class, we picked up Kaori (our geography classmate) and took her home with us so that we could plan our poster presentation which is due this Thursday. On the way back, we picked up Jack in the Box for lunch.
Kaori is such a fun and cute Japanese girl, and we had fun making the poster together, cutting out papers and drawing out the plan. The three of us went back to campus in time for our geography class.

Four groups from class gave their natural disaster poster presentation today. Most of them were actually kinda boring, partly because three out of four presentations involved the Kobe earthquake of 1995. I'm glad we're doing different earthquakes on our presentation.

After all our classes of the day had finally been done, we went back home and I started painting on our poster board with acrylic paint. We're going to have the picture of a large crack running down the center of the board, cutting it in two... then we'll put two different earthquakes on different sides and compare/contrast them. Oooh this is going to be good!


That's about it for today. There are only two more Tuesday/Thursday classes this semester! I'm really happy but kinda sad that it's going to be over.

Finishing up my presentation...

Today's classes were really really easy! The art teacher is gone for the week, so I just showed up for class and worked on the Flash project by myself for 2 1/2 hours. When that was over, I walked over to Kalia for my English class. The English teacher was 15 minutes late, but she walked in just as I was contemplating to leave and go home. Hmph... at least all we did in class was read a Hawaiian play script together. Dull, but easy. The teacher brought us Red Vine candies, maybe as peace offering after showing up late. lol I unfortunately don't like Red Vine though... yech.

After lunch, I wrote the rest of my music presentation report about the Taishogoto, which took a few hours. I also made a Powerpoint slideshow to go with the presentation. I hope it won't be a boring 10 minutes tomorrow during music class.

Tonight we went out to a nearby Italian restaurant (forgot the name) to celebrate Erin's one-year stay in Hawaii. The food was sooo good, and I'm still full from it. Congratulations Erin!! :D



Oh, and yesterday's post is now up below this one. :) I couldn't upload last night because Blogger was acting all strange! Good night!

2 more weeks of school (+ finals)!

For the Sunday service this morning, Erin played the keyboards and I the guitar during worship. It was Erin's turn to lead, and she gave a sermon entitled something like "Walking in Jesus Christ". Since we had not done our communion last week during the Easter service, we did it today. :)

For lunch, we went out and got food from Panda Express. I like that place a lot, although it's not all authentic Chinese food. There was a lot of food, so we had enough leftovers to eat for dinner.

During the afternoon, I played with Flash some more while Priscilla watched King Kong. Well, I had some spare time too, and found scratchpaper all over my desk, so I decided to draw. After a while I found myself drawing anime cartoons. Just so you know, I'm not into the weird anime stuff.. but I am Japanese after all and learning to become an artist, so I guess I should at least know how to draw stuff like these.
http://pics.livejournal.com/gwaihirjp/pic/00002060/
http://pics.livejournal.com/gwaihirjp/pic/00003pf5/

I personally think anyone can draw anime... all you got to do is make the eyes astonishingly huge/sparkly and make the nose tiny and pointy. lol


Only 2 more weeks of lectures left!! I really really can't wait to finish up and go back home!
:D

Oh, and great to hear that the church Garage Sale went well!! :)

The Sentinel!

Today was a nice day.. we spent the morning cleaning up the house and doing laundry. Then in the afternoon, Naomi, Priscilla and I went out to watch the movie "The Sentinel" at Ward Theatres.

It was a film about a special agent who is accused of conspiring to assassinate the president. Michael Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland were great in it, and I liked the movie itself a lot too.
On the way back from the movie, we did grocery shopping at Times.

I also played around with Flash some more and finished a simple animation of the Japanese instrument Taishogoto. It took mre some time before I figured out how to do this much. I'm going to use this for my powerpoint presentation during music class on Tuesday.
http://pics.livejournal.com/gwaihirjp/pic/000011q6/

That's about all for today. Good night!
Hmm my posts seem to be getting shorter and shorter lately... :(

Finally, a relaxing Friday!

This morning I got to sleep in until past 9:00am.. ahh it felt so good!

I spent the day at home except when I went to the geography lab class with Priscilla. It was pretty exciting... not. We basically went around the campus measuring soil temperatures of 6 different areas and counting the percentage and number of vegetative species in the area. It wasn't that bad or difficult.. but plants are just not very fun subjects.

At home, I was playing with Flash and writing my music report. Flash can be so frustrating, but I'm starting to grasp it.

After having Naomi's stew for dinner, Erin, Priscilla and I watched 2 episodes of Monk from the 1st season. I love Monk!!
Well this is the really brief account of the day. It was nice to be able to relax at home!

So relieved that the schoolweek's over!

This week was pretty hectic for me, so I am so happy that Thursday is now over. Whew...
Oh, just so you know, Priscilla and her poor computer are not getting along too well together at the moment, so she might not be able to post on her blog tonight.

In the morning, my music class had student presentations again. My turn will be coming up on Tuesday next week, and I am going to do a Powerpoint presentation on the "Taisho-Goto" just because it's such an interesting instrument and I grew up with one of these things.


During theatre class, my group did our scene. It went okay, I think, except for the fact that my partner forgot a lot of his lines.. he was probably nervous. Priscilla came in as my character's mother, though, and she was great! The only problem was when Oswald was supposed to give me "pills", which were actually Japanese ramune candies, he gave them to me a few seconds late, just as I was supposed to talk.. so I didn't have the time to chew the stuff, and had to swallow 3 of them whole! For the rest of the scene I felt like something was stuck in my throat. It would've been very strange if my character had died from choking.
This was only the first 20 minutes of the class, so the rest of the time we were outside the building, talking with classmates.

After lunch at the cafeteria, I went to the computer lab and looked into next semester's classes until geography class.

Today's geogaphy class was pretty funny.. so many students didn't show up, and the teacher obviously was not too happy about it! Priscilla, me, and another Japanese girl named Kaori are going to make a poster board on earthquakes and give a presentation on Thursday next week.

At home, I made simple dinner, then we had our prayer meeting time.

Tomorrow, there's not much going on except for the geography lab class. I'll be able to sleep in, relax and study at home!! :)

Just a quickie post

Today was another day full of things to do. In the morning, I had my fun art class again.. I think I now got the basic of the basics of Flash.

English class is going to be interesting, because we are going to read through a Hawaiin play script together and write a "sequel", or an extra scene for it. This is more like theatre class, except those students can't voice act.

After getting home, Erin took me to the job interview at a small sampling company called Judi's Darlings. It's a company that hires people to hand out food samples, coupons, etc. They were very nice and easy-going, and accepted me without hesitation. The good thing about this place is that I can choose when and where to work. I will probably be doing it once in a while.
Thank you Erin for taking me there!

Back at home, Priscilla and I worked on our geography paper which is due tomorrow. We are comparing and contrasting two major earthquakes. By the time I was done, I was thoroughly sick of all things earthquake-related. I'm glad there are little or no earthquakes in Hawaii.. just a random thought.

Erin made dinner today, so we ate sashimi! Mmm.. Afterwards, Priscilla and I watched American Idol. YES, that Ace is gone!! I just didn't really like him, no matter how many bubbly fangirls fell in love with him.

Tomorrow I have to act out my group's final scene in front of the teacher again. Priscilla will be joining us this time, and it should be fun!

A Busy Day

Today was actually pretty tiring.. seemed like I did a lot of running about though it wasn't much more than any other Tuesdays and the classes were pretty fun.

Music class was all student presentations again. Most of them brought powerpoint presentations, which took a long time to set up... Mrs. Doo obviously wasn't very happy about it. I thought that it was pretty funny the way she kept singing "I can't wait anymore~".

Theatre class was very fun too.. Priscilla and Amie's group did their Miracle Worker bit, and me and Oswald came in as Helen Keller's parents. This one is going to be good! For the rest of the class we practiced outside, and I got a little tan as it was very hot.

After lunch at the cafeteria, we met up with Kaori from our geography class and planned what we should do for our geography assignment. During that time I was getting sleepy.. it usually happens.
Geography class was unexpectedly fun though. We watched a video on National Geographics about alien species (not the kind from outer space) on foreign lands.

After getting home, Priscilla and I made a quick trip to Kahala Mall and the post office. We got to the office just 2 minutes before it closed.. it was really close! We also went to Claire's before that and got 15 sale items for $5!!
At home, we ate Jack in the Box which Priscilla and I had bought on the way home. For the rest of the night, I was mostly at my desk writing a paper for English class.

Yes, tomorrow is the job interview day and I'm starting to get nervous already!! Hope it goes well...

Registeration for next semester

Today's art class was all about Flash again.. we got to learn some more basic tools, though I knew how to use most of them because I'd been playing with the software at home. It's still pretty hard to master. This is one software that requires a lot of practice! I was getting very sleepy during the lecture... the room was all dark because we were using a projector, and the teacher tends to speak in a kind of monotone.

English class was all casual again. We had a kind of "presentation" in which my group, consisting of 5 people, went in front to talk about the theme and purpose of a selected short story. There were only three groups in all, so the class finished a little early. One of the classmates brought pickled li hing mui mangoes for everyone, but I couldn't bring myself to eat it. I've tried li hing mui once, and once was enough! lol I seriously thought back then that my mouth would never be free of that color and taste!

We went home at 12:00pm, but not by ourselves; two Japanese girls from Priscilla's Japanese class came to our house to work on a project together. We all had sushi for lunch, and it was nice to have them visit.

There seems to be so much going on for me this week. I have a few papers and a powerpoint presentation to finish, and also an interview coming up for a job on Wednesday. So please be praying that the interview will go well. :)
The afternoon and evening was spent writing the papers for Geography and Music class. For dinner, Priscilla made oyakodon, which was really good!

At night, Naomi and I got to discuss what courses I should take for my 2nd (and last) year at school. I can't believe half of my stay is already almost over. Well I want to pursue both fine arts and digital arts, and that's not going to be easy... but with God's guidance, hopefully I will find and take all the right courses. I already got to register for 4 out of 5 classes for next semester, so hurray for that!

Okay a busy day at school tomorrow.. good night!

Happy Easter!!

Wow today was such a wonderful day! We woke up early in the morning and went to the 8:30am service at the Kaimuki church. There were even more people at the church than I had been expecting.. in fact, there were so many people that the ushers had to bring in more chairs in the back for people to sit on. Naomi danced a beautiful Hula dance during the service, and Priscilla played the drums for worship. There was a big Easter brunch afterwards, so Erin and I had a little snack and went home before Naomi and Priscilla in order to prepare for our own Easter service.

After some setting up, we were ready! Ericson and Tiffany came as guests, and the worship was really good. We also had one special music of the song "Open the Eyes" with all four of us, and also a sign dance of the song "He's my Savior" by Priscilla and me. I'm glad I didn't make any major mistakes like during practice. I believe it was the Spirit that helped me when I danced. Later, Naomi gave a short Easter sermon.

For lunch, Erin and I picked up food from California Pizza Kitchen, including pizza, pasta, and salads! The food was delicious, and we played an Easter trivia game afterwards and even watched the movie "An Ideal Husband". I think
Tiffany and (especially) Ericson enjoyed the whole thing a lot! It was wonderful to have guests come.. it felt very different from having just the four of us.

We were all very sleepy after the guests left... I don't know how I managed to stay awake during the movie. But I didn't take a nap as I just remembered that I had to draw refined sketches for my Flash video project, due tomorrow! So I spent a lot of time drawing in the afternoon and evening.

Not much went on for the rest of the night. For dinner, we had good food from the abundant supply of leftovers from today and before.
I am so happy that we could have our Easter service, and invite people for the first time!

Tomorrow me and four other people from English class are to do a short story presentation. However I am not sure how it will be as the other have not contacted each other at all! I was the only one who sent them a mail. Oh well, if it doesn't go well it's not all my fault. Heehee!

Phi Theta Kappa honor society induction ceremony!

I got to sleep in today. There wasn't much time to relax, though, because Priscilla and Naomi had to leave at 11:30 to go to Priscilla's audition by car, and I didn't want to walk over to the campus. So they dropped me off at the campus on their way.

The campus was so empty today... as you can see in this picture. After all it was Saturday, and there are very few classes on the weekends.

So I went to the computer lab and played with Macromedia Flash for a couple hours. I think I'm starting to get the hang of it, though there are still so many tools I'm clueless about.


At 2:00pm, I went down to the cafeteria building, where the induction ceremony for the Phi Theta Kappa society took place. There were twenty-something inductees who were accepted into the society, including myself. We sat in front of everyone for about an hour, listening to the important members give speeches one by one. I kinda feel bad, because I couldn't help but yawn a couple times!

Finally, we went to the podium one by one and received our certificate, along with a white rose. We were also sworn into the society, which meant that we had to raise our right hand and say "I do solemnly swear..." but I don't really remember what I swore!

It was over at around 3:30pm, and I spent a few minutes eating the Chinese food they had prepared, and talking to a Japanese student who is pursuing music. We got along pretty well, talking about music and stuff. She and her husband actually drove me back home.. it was very nice!


At home, we practiced our music and sign dance for tomorrow's Easter service. There will be a few guests coming over.. I'm so looking forward to it!!

~Happy Birthday Ericson!!~

Like I said in the previous post, today was a holiday because it was Good Friday. We got to sleep in till late in the morning. I used what was left of the morning to write a reaction paper for a literary event.

At 2:00pm, all of us went out to Kahala Mall to find things for our Easter Sunday service. We also got a birthday gift and a cute smiley balloon for Ericson. After we had bought everything we needed and had eaten a good lunch at the Kimuraya restaurant, we went back home.

During the evening, we got to practice our special music and sign dance for the Easter service. The special music is going to be "Open the Eyes of My Heart" and the sign dance song which Priscilla and I still perform is Jaci Velasquez's "He's My Savior". We were pretty quick in learning and memorizing the songs, but started to go hyper near the end of it. Heehee! It was fun!!

We didn't make it to the Good Friday service at the Kaimuki church, but went there in time to meet the church friends with whom we planned to eat dinner. In fact, this was Ericson's surprise birthday party... and I think it was a success because Ericson hadn't suspected it! About a dozen people in all went to the Islands burger restaurant at Ala Moana.

Actually, we had a little unexpected incident before we got there... remember I wrote above that we got a nice smiley balloon for Ericson? Well, while Naomi, Priscilla and I went into the church building and left Erin in the car writing "happy birthday" on the balloon, the balloon blew away in the wind! Erin said she chased after it across the road and was ALMOST able to catch it - then the balloon fell into the highway! LOL!! Imagine all the cars dodging a big, yellow smiling balloon! Too bad... but the story of Erin and the balloon was funny enough!

And here is the birthday boy! That hat is one of the gifts he received, and the sticker on his shirt reads: "It's my birthday, and I am an incredibly smart, exciting, good-looking person!". It came with the birthday card from us!


Here follows some more pictures.

Priscilla and moi!

Mmm... their burgers are the best!!

Oh I look so weird in this one.. it must have caught me when I was just about to blink!

Well anyway, we were glad that we could do this for Ericson.. it was fun and the food was good! Tomorrow is Saturday! I'm going to go to the induction ceremony for the Phi Theta Kappa society while Priscilla will be going to an audition somewhere.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERICSON!

This seemed like a long school week

Today was the last schoolday of this week, because tomorrow is Good Friday. This seemed like a long week of school, and I'm so happy it's finished! Only 3 weeks + finals left!!

During this morning's music class, 4 students gave their presentations. Some were boring powerpoint presentations, but one girl brought all kinds of real Tahitian instruments and that was really interesting. And I got my take-home quiz back today. Another 26/25, along with a compliment from the instructor: "My dear Maki, you are always so on it!"

Theatre class was all practice for the final scene again. This time, my group had to practice outside the building the whole time.. while it was so windy! I just sat on the grass and faced against the wind to keep my hair from blowing into my face. After some effort, I think I've succeeded in memorizing all (or most) of my lines. The character I'm playing really talks too much.

After lunch with some of the other students at the cafeteria, I participated in the Phi Theta Kappa society's induction ceremony rehearsal, since I am going to be in it during the real thing on Saturday.
During Geography class, we got our midterm exam part 2 back! I got a 98 this time.. much better than the one before, and I'm very happy about it. :D

At home, we had a prayer meeting during which we decided what we're going to do for our Easter service. We're planning to do a sign dance and a special music, and invite one or two people... so exciting!
At night we watched the romantic comedy "While You Were Sleeping". It was really cute, and I liked Bill Pullman in it. :)

Hurray for tomorrow, which is a holiday!! I think I'll still have to study though..

Fun with Flash!

This morning's art class was really fun.. we started learning the basics of Macromedia Flash. I think that the movie-making we did in the Newsies a few years ago helped me grasp the concept pretty quick. We still learned only a little today though.. so this is what I ended up with by the end of class. lol!
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c223/Gwaihir_WL/couple.gif


English class was pretty uneventful again.. I'm so glad I could hand in my project today and get it off my mind. For the rest of the semester, we will first do a group presentation of a chosen Hawaiian short story, then read out a Hawaiian stage play and write a scene for it for the final.


After getting home by car, I wrote my character analysis for theatre class. It was pretty lengthy, and turned out to be 5 pages long in length. It's a long description of the character I'm playing.. what she wants, how she gets it, what are her obstacles, what she should be wearing, etc etc...

For dinner, Erin cooked tonkatsu and rice. Mmm!! I didn't watch American Idol tonight, but I'm happy that it wasn't anyone I liked who left the show.

We are now trying to discuss what our church should do for Easter, which will be here in 4 days.
Good night!

Maki turns into a spoiled 14-year-old girl

Today seemed like a long day, but that's probably because we got to go home between our morning and afternoon classes, and I was doing my project during most of my time at home.

Music class was very fun and relaxing.. from today, there will be no lectures by the teacher, but the students must come out one by one and do 10~15 minute presentations on whatever topic they chose. Today's students picked Kabuki and Chinese music. I'm sure we'll be getting many Japanese, Chinese and Korean music presentations in the following weeks, my own included.

Then came the theatre class. Today was the first time the instructor looked at our undeveloped final scenes. She looked at three groups today one by one while the other groups practiced outside the building. My group (me and Oswald) was the third group, so we sat in the grass among bugs and practiced our lines until we were called in.
This scene, from the Diary of Anne Frank, is where Mr. Frank, the father (Oswald), is putting his daughter Anne (me) to bed. When I told the instructor that this scene is right after Anne has had a nightmare, she suddenly said "Oh good! Let's start from the part where you wake up from a nightmare!"

Well, I was already ready on stage and there was no choice, so I just lay back on the substitute "bed", pretended to fall asleep for a while before doing something that went like this: "no.. no! NOOOOO!!!! Don't take me! help me Daddy .. *toss & turn* PLEASE, nooooo!!!"
Well, it was very strange, but the teacher seemed to like my character, and my partner seemed impressed that I did that without practice. *sigh* The things we do in show business...
I'm going to try to take a video of the final scene, so I'd better do my part well!

After theatre class, Priscilla and I were picked up by Naomi and went home. During the two hours we had at home before geography class, I worked on my English project, which is very dull.
Geography class wasn't much better either, until we finished the lecture on soil (how exciting) and did a quiz game! My group didn't win this time though.. how sad. :(

Aside from dinner and American Idol, I spent most of the time finishing up that English project. It wouldn't have taken so much fun if only it had been more interesting to write.. it was so boring to write I kept losing my train of thought as I wrote. :P

Well, that's about it for today. Tomorrow we start learning about Macromedia Flash!! :D

Art project #3 is finished!

This morning I had my art class, during which all the students finished up their webpages and put them up on the projector for critique one by one. Our works were all submitted to the teacher at the end of class, but I copied my webpage and put it up on my little geocities homepage. Here it is (sorry about the ad... it's a free site so it can't be helped):
http://www.geocities.jp/eaglemodjp/index.html

Mine is actually one of the more decent ones... some of the others used topics like child and animal abuse.

This was the only class I had today.. again! English class was non-existent today because the teacher says she wants to give us the extra time for us to finish our project, which is due on Wednesday. I don't understand that concept though... I think class should be class, project should be done outside of class time. Well, maybe that's just me.


After walking home and eating ramen for lunch, I remained there the rest of the day except for a short trip to Times supermarket in the evening with Priscilla. I finished up some homework as well... the music take-home quiz took some time to finish. I had to describe things like "Agbekor", "griot", "jalolu", "gankogui" and "axatse". Before you ask, these words are all terms used for musicians and instruments of Africa.
I also wrote the first page of my English paper... after all, the English class was cancelled just so I can work on it.

Priscilla made fajita for dinner, which was really good. Now I am just about to finish my post on this blog, as you can see (yay!) then go to bed.

Another "Happy Day"!

This weekend seemed really short for some reason... can't believe school already starts tomorrow again.

Today, Priscilla went to play drums at the Kaimuki church for the 8:30am service, so we started our service at home after she came back at around 10:00am. It was Naomi's turn to lead today, and we listened to Pastor's sermon from last week, entitled "In the Spirit". It just feels so much like being in Japan when I hear Pastor's sermons.

After the service, we went to Happy Days for lunch, since none of us were really hungry, and Dim Sum is perfect for such occasions. :P There were a couple of naughty kids around our table, but the food was still good. Aah their shumai is just wonderful!
<<--just thought this was cute!


After getting home, I spent the rest of the day chatting with my family and friends, drawing, and reading a Hawaiian book that I have to read for English class. It's a really boring book... very feminist... the only cool thing is that I got to see the author last month at a literature reading event and shake hands with her.
I was also exploring an interesting, well-made site onthe TV series "Lost". I've never watched the series, but this site is made to look like the official site of the airline company whose plane crashed in the series. There are lots of secrets hidden throughout the site... and there are many crazy "Lost" fans who spend hours looking for those hidden surprises.
Priscilla went babysitting from 5:45pm, so I was alone in the room during the evening and night.


This week is going to be a bit busy... gotta hand in the art project tomorrow morning, do a take-home quiz for music class until Tuesday, finish up my English class project by Wednesday, and on Thursday... okay I'm not going to think about it anymore. Good night!

Ice Age 2 again! :D

This morning, we woke up late in the morning. Naomi, Priscilla and left home at around 11:30am, and after a few stops at various places including the post office and Borders, we met Ericson in front of Ward theatres and watched Ice Age: The Meltdown again! For Naomi and Ericson it was the first time to watch the movie, but even for Priscilla and me who had already seen it once before, it was still fresh and fun!
The only annoying thing was that the fire alarm went off in the middle of the movie and turned off the screen for a few minutes. Hmph... well I'm glad it was a false alarm and that there was no real fire.

After the movie, which finished at around 3:00pm, we went home and stayed there until all of us went to what was supposed to be Brandon's birthday party at the 12th Avenue Grill. There was a total of 24 people from church there, and we were allowed to stay at the grill from 5:30 to 7:30... but Brandon and Christi were unfortunately ill and couldn't show up!! So, we just stayed and ate, and said happy birthday to Danny, whose birthday is the closest to this day.
Although it didn't turn out to be a birthday celebration since the birthday person wasn't there, the food was delicious! Mmmm the steak and the calamari!!

After dinner was over, Naomi stayed out with the others while the rest of us went home. It's kinda late now, and since Priscilla will be waking up early tomorrow morning to play the drums for the KCC service at 8:30am, I might as well go off to bed too. Good night!

My longest Friday on campus

Usually on Fridays, I don't spend much time on campus as I have only one class, but today was an exception. I walked to school and arrived there at 10:00am to work on my art project at the lab. It's actually really nice, because there's hardly anyone in the room, and I get to use the nice computer.
So until 12:00pm, I worked on turning my artwork into a very very simple webpage by using Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is really cool, but it'd be even better if I knew how to do more things with it. The theme of my webpage is going to be "alcohol & pregnancy".

After lunch at the cafeteria all by myself (*sniff*) and some research at the library, I went to our geography lab class, where I met up with Priscilla. It wasn't difficult, just bothersome and time-consuming to do what the assignment tells us to do. After this class was over, Priscilla and I walked home together.


All of us attended the evening service at the Kaimuki church. Priscilla was playing the drums again, and the worship was really good and spirit-filled. After service was over, Naomi, Priscilla and I went out to eat at Big City Diners with Ericson. Wow we hadn't seen him in some time. Tomorrow we are planning to go watch Ice Age 2 (again) together. I love that movie.. it's going to be fun watching it once more! :P


I just realized I haven't put pictures on the blog in some time... so here is a very random picture which I dug up from my computer. This is from my parents' concert from last year and is the concert hall where the piano recital will take place this May. Are you nervous about it yet, kids? :D lol!

Midterm finished!

This schoolweek is quickly drawing to an end! Today's music class went on just as usual, except that we received a take-home quiz to complete at home, because we didn't have enough time to take it in class. From next week, we're going to start doing student prentations, where students will give 10~15min presentations of their own music culture one by one. My turn won't come until the 25th of this month.

Theatre class was a bit unusual today. The teacher didn't come and left the students to plan out our final scenes by ourselves. Me and Oswald planned on some actions and stage setting for our scene. I am going to be the 14-year-old Anne Frank, and Oswald is going to be my father. :S Somehow I find that thought funny... I have yet to confirm the scene with the instructor though.

During and after lunch, Priscilla and I studied hard for our geography midterm, which was about to take place in 2 hours. Kaori and Sam, two of our classmates, studied with us. Just like Part 1 of our midterm, we took notes on a 3x5 index card and took it with us to class. My brain felt crammed after all that studying, but the actual exam did not contain much of the questions we had studied.

The test consisted of 25 multiple choice questions, 3 essays, and bonus questions worth up to 6 points. I got 2/3 of the bonus correct, so it at least means I get 4 points added to my final score. I sure hope I didn't screw it up...

After getting home, I took some time to relax, and made mabo-dofu for dinner. Erin and Priscilla were gone, so we didn't eat until after Priscilla came back. Well that too, but I went to my room after finishing cooking, and promptly fell asleep! That's one other reason why dinner was late tonight. :P

That's about all that happened today. Tomorrow I am planning to go to the campus lab to finish up my art project.


Oh, and the beaches which had been closed because of sewage spills and contamination caused by flooding, were opened again yesterday. I feel so sorry for the tourists who were here... no one was allowed to even step into the water during the time.

Studying for tomorrow's exam

This morning, I woke up early again for the art class. Today our teacher taught us the very basics of web design using Dreamweaver, a software for creating webpages. It was pretty fun, but I wish we could learn more about things like that. I have to finish up my project and have a web page completed by next Monday.. but now my 30-day Photoshop tryout has expired. :(

English class was all discussion today, and most of the class was too quiet for any interesting discussion to take place. The next project for this class is due next Wednesday.

Priscilla picked up all three of us at 12:00pm, and we all went home except for Naomi who had a meeting. During the early afternoon after lunch, Priscilla and I went for a quick trip to Tower Records. I got a CD for a pretty good price.. yay! I think it's the first time I actually bought a CD from a normal Tower Records store, not the online store.

During the rest of the afternoon and the evening, Priscilla and I wrote down our midterm study guide for tomorrow's Geography exam. It's nice that the teacher gives us all the questions she's going to ask, but there are just so many of them! This is actually Part 2 of our Geography midterm... for some reason, it's separated into two.

Erin cooked dinner, and we watched TV as we ate. From 8:00pm was American Idol... I was slightly shocked to see Mandisa leave as she had been doing pretty good until now.

Well, I'm back to studying for the midterm. I don't think it will be too hard but then there's no such thing as studying too much for an exam like this one!

Wow.. so much to do before the finals!

This morning, my music class went on just as usual. Most students still seemed dull and out of it after spring break, but our instructor was, as usual, very enthusiastic and made the class interesting. We continued learning about African music of tribes like the Ewe and the BaAka. Soon I will have to start writing a 5 ~ 7 page-long paper, though... I hope it won't be so hard to write because I am having a hard time gathering enough information.

Theatre class was like lecture, too. From today, we are going to work on our final scene, so the teacher spent the whole time explaining to us what we are supposed to do. Me and my partner Oswald have not yet decided what scene from "The Diary of Anne Frank" we're going to perform.

After having lunch with one or two other theatre classmates, Priscilla headed off to her tea ceremony and I to the library. Priscilla had invited me to come to the tea ceremony as a guest, so at 2:00pm I went to the International Cafe. There they served me a little snack and that wonderful thick tea. Mmmm... I love the stuff. I think I will try to join the tea ceremony people next semester, if my schedule allows.

Geography class was simply a review class during which the instructor just answered questions asked by students. This is because there is going to be a Midterm Part 2 on Thursday! Horror!! We're going to have to study for it tomorrow...


Back at home, I did some homework, then we ate Naomi's good cooking for dinner while watching American Idol. Today's theme was country music, and it was much better than last week. At night I chatted with some people and prepared for tomorrow's art class... now I'm ready for bed!!

Tomorrow we're going to learn a little about Dreamweaver.. looking forward to it! :D

5 weeks of school (plus finals) to go!

Today was the beginning of school again. All 3 of us woke up pretty early in the morning. Priscilla dropped me and Erin off at campus before driving to the airport to pick up Naomi.
I went to my 8:00am art class, but I was sooo sleepy because I hadn't woken up this early in over a week! Anyhow, I managed to stay awake and got a thumbs up from my teacher, who seemed to like the work I did over the break. She also gave me back the recommendation form for Phi Theta Kappa, which says all kinds of nice things about my grades. *grins* :D

I thought my art class was very empty and sad (only about 2/3 of class came), but it was nothing compared to English class! Including me, there was a total of 8 students, out of 19 in that class. I think some people have decided to lengthen their spring break or something, especially since it was sunny today. Oh, and I got my English class project Anthology back, and the grade is... 100%! :D She wrote that it was "excellent", and "the best so far"! *jumps for joy*


Priscilla picked me up to take me home. Naomi was already there and unpacked when I arrived. It was surprising to find our dining room table heaped with snacks from everyone. So a big THANK YOU to everyone in Japan for all the wonderful goodies!

I stayed at home and wrote my theatre critique in the afternoon. It was so hot today we left the AC on. For dinner, we went to Kaka'ako Kitchen, a local fast-food type of restaurant, because Naomi felt like it. The food is pretty good, though pretty big (as everything here goes). The pastrami sandwich was gooooooood!

Tomorrow there will be three classes, and I will stay on campus most of the day.

And here is something I found today which I found amusing:
http://lotrspoofs.net/spoofs/misc/4b0ryph0n3hl.gif

Thus ends the 10-day period of no school

Today, we started our Sunday service at 10:00am, as we usually do. Erin led us through worship, then we listened to Pastor's sermon on the CD, entitled "A Seed of Faith. Every time I read or listen to that parable of the sowing of the seeds, I can't help but recall those pictures drawn by Mrs. Sato that were used in our Sunday schools long time ago.

For lunch, we went to Ward Warehouse and ate at Chowder House. Mmm the clam chowder they serve there was excellent! I also had an interesting shrimp salad sandwich. Before going back home, we went to Logos bookstore and took a look around.

In the afternoon, we stayed at home. It was mostly sunny/cloudy today, but I sometimes heard the sound of distant thunder. I hear they're still giving warnings for flash floods. Now that would be scary!

At 6:30pm, we met Aunt Jean and Reed at a restaurant in Hilton Hotel. It was a nice place made for people in the military. The food was delicious! This is what I ordered. It's mahi-mahi (a kind of fish) with mashed potatoes and some vegetables. Love the macademia nuts topping!



This second picture looks weird... it's actually the tree in front of the restaurant, and there are lights hanging down from it. I was walking while I took this so it turned out like this.


Naomi's coming home tomorrow!! *is excited* And school will be back as well. I hope I haven't forgotten everything!

The ice is melting!! *major panic*

Today was sunny most of the day!! It felt so good to be out in the sun again after so long.
In the morning, we cleaned up the house just like we do every weekend. :D It's nice and clean now.

After a quick lunch, Priscilla and I went to watch Ice Age 2: the Meltdown. We went to the Kahala Mall's theatre, only to discover that the whole place had been flooded by the earlier rain and was closed. The movie theatre's screen was broken too, from what we heard. :(

We went to Ward Theatre instead and watched their 12:30pm show. The movie was really funn.. I liked it as much as the first one. Scrat had more scenes and actually played a very important role in the story! I also like Diego and Manny a lot. I'm so glad Manny gets a girl in this one!

We stopped by at Borders bookstore after the movie. Then we tried to go to Kapiolani Park because I was thinking of going to this Scottish festival thing.. however, it had been cancelled.
So we drove back home at around 4:00pm.

Let's see... what did I do in the evening? Oh yes, I worked on my art project, the one about underage drinking. I actually had a hard time finding good pictures of liquor and stuff to use for my artwork. For now, though, I've made a couple of them to show my teacher on Monday, when school starts (shock horror!).

After dinner, which was unagi-don, we watched the first half of "Gone with the Wind". Yeah, a real classic, but I had never watched it till today! Shame on me... Well, I can't wait to watch the second half, even if it is probably very depressing. Tomorrow is Sunday.. then it will be just a day before Naomi's return (and also the school's return.. lol)!

Wow.. already Friday!

Today I stayed at home almost all day during daytime. I spent a lot of time experimenting some more with Photoshop, and also practiced drawing with charcoal. My hands are still slightly black from the charcoal... it is the messiest medium ever!

Oh, and I took a couple pictures from out our windows:













Surprisingly, the sun came out briefly during the afternoon. It was a little surprising because we hadn't seen the sun in a while.

At night, we went to the evening church service at KCC. Wow, it had been so long since we'd been there last... it was nice to see some of the familiar faces. Erin and I arrived in late so we only got to hear the sermon, but the sermon was done by a guest speaker and was very good!
After the service, Erin went out to dinner with some church people while Priscilla and I picked up food at Jack in the Box and had a nice, fast food dinner at home.

Only a couple more days before school starts again. I'm really hoping that there won't be a thunderstorm tomorrow.. it usually comes pretty loud and close.