But, before I can party it up on Saturday I'm going to spend the morning ....
at work!
Yep, I finally managed to score some part-time employment. It's looking like I'll only be able to take on one shift or so a week, but it's better than nothing. And guess where I work: A crepe restaurant! How fitting, right?
That's most of the major developments in my life, though. Birthday and boulot. Other than that it's been pretty normal college stuff. I've really been enjoying my classes. On the music side of things, it's really cool to get to spend so much time both learning how it works (theory) and making it. And on the language front, I'm regaining my French (thankfully) and learning a lot of cool things in Linguistics about the foundations of language. I've pretty much cemented my morning routine, which involves Starbucks and regularly getting to my first class 15 minutes early.
And once classes are out and homework is done I get to enjoy the social part of school (which is just as big as the academic part). I don't go to the beach as much as you think I do, which is a bit of a shame really, but I try to at least go down on weekends. Often on Saturday nights a group of us will head down to Waikiki and sit by the water and relax. Other than that, it's a lot of hanging out in dorm rooms, laughing, and generally having a good time.
As you might have noticed, I tend to post
less about my day-to-day now then when I was in France or Costa Rica. I
guess I feel like since it's in the USA it's pretty standard stuff. But
when I think about it, Hawaii is completely different from anywhere on
the Mainland. The continental US is very European, because it was
started from the east just expanded westward. But Hawaii's influence
comes from the other side. Instead of employers looking for bilingual
Spanish-English, they're looking for proficiency in Korean and Japanese.
Campus dining has bento boxes and sushi and and loco moco (which is
very typical Hawaii, rice topped with a hamburger patty topped with egg
topped with gravy). Flip-Flops are called slippers.
Certain
"stereotypes" are very true. There is an Aloha Spirit. People here are
friendly and smiling, and I tend to have lots of little passing
conversations anytime I go anywhere. There are a lot of traditional
tattoos. It's sunny. There are lots of tourists.
I'm officially in love with Hawaii. I love the people, the weather, everything. (Well, I'm not really a fan of the vog, the volcanic ash fog that blows in when the conditions are right.) Come visit me?
-Sophia