Busy Bee

I am a masochist.

I perform much better when I am ridiculously busy. Currently, I am in either in class or at work from 8am until 8pm every day. Then I cram homework until midnight or later, then get up somewhere between 6-7am. I am super tired, my mood swings from super happy to despondent, to verge of anger every few hours. I love work, I love school, I almost love homework, 40 min lunch and dinner breaks are heaven, and I CANNOT wait until the weekend.

And yet, I did the same thing last semester and received the best grades I've gotten since 4th grade. Go figure.

Beach and Breakups

So Christmas Break was amazing. I wish I could have spent more time with my Utah friends, but being in Vegas with my fam was also priceless. The Pitbull concert for New Years wasn't half bad either. ;)

Anyway, the moment I arrive in Hawaii, all the drama I'd left behind is once again unleashed...

One of my best friends here broke up with his girl of nearly two years over the holiday. I had assumed he wanted a listening, commiserating ear, but no. He wanted to date me. I tried to explain that it was way to weird to go from just close friends to lovers in a matter of minutes, but he wasn't having any of that. It's been two weeks since he confessed his love for me and his desire to take me to the temple. School started barely two weeks ago. So, I have a new ruined friendship on my hands.

My first weekend back, two of my girls got a surfboard. So we tried to paddle from Bikini Beach to Pounders with all three of us on top of it. Needless to say, it didn't go very well. But it was a ton of fun.

The long weekend was spent at Sunset Beach, seeing The Green Hornet (hilarious), church, weekly phone-call home, homework, Surfin' Tacos, Walmart run, and work. My new job requires that I Skype with international students for 10 hours every week. It's a real pain for me to try and reschedule, especially since most of my students are in Mongolia. So I went in on Monday and spent three hours in the office alone. Of course almost half of my students didn't even show up for their appointed time...but that's okay. I sat and watched netflix during the time I had no one to talk to--don't tell the boss! haha.

Roof over our heads

My roomie and I were really bored. So we decided to make a quick trick to Foodland. It was grey outside, but it had been all day. We began our ten-minute walk with high spirits--excited to finally have escaped from our a/c-less dorm room.

It wasn't until we were about 1/3 into our journey that it began to sprinkle. As most know, Hawaiian rain is nothing to worry about. It rains for awhile and then stops. We continued walking. About two steps later, it was pouring. It is important to remember when traveling that when it rains in Hawaii, it is buckets for five minutes, and then sun. Usually. Probably about 99% of the time. Generally. Yeah.

Roomie and I were nonplussed. We quickly slipped under a palm tree and remained predominately dry. Just as suspected, the rain stopped approximately 2 minutes later.

We continued our journey, walking a bit faster than before--just in case. We turned the corner down another street and were rewarded with another torrent of rain. And of course, this was the one street without palm trees of any kind.

After shrieking with laughter and running a few yards down the street, I had the brilliant idea that we take refuge under the eaves of someone's house. So we did.

Around 25 minutes later (apparently this was the other 1% of Hawiian rain trends) the rain had almost stopped. Just a tiny bit of sprinkling. We edged from under the roof, only to be met with the tenants of the home who had been sitting in their open garage.

Roomie exclaimed, "Thanks for letting us use your house!!" She was met with stifled laughter. My response was somewhat less controlled as I doubled over in near hysterics.

Giggling, we dashed down the street, partly to avoid any more rain and partly to remove ourselves from the awkward situation. We got some pizza, browsed the one clothing store in our small town, and checked out the supermarket for the 3rd time that week.

The walk home was uneventful. No rain, no random nice people offered us a ride home, just me and Roomie dragging our feet back to our stuffy room.

Funny thing is, this happened again yesterday. Only this time, I was walking home with several house mates and I had a date in 30 mins. We took shelter for about 10 mins under a different house, but when the rain didn't seem to be stopping, we decided to run home.

Luckily, someone did take pity on us--but not until we were 3/4 of the way there. We were drenched. And yet, I changed my outfit, dried my hair, reapplied makeup, and was completely ready for my date with time to spare. I'm just that awesome.


The funny thing is, I have 4 umbrellas. Two super huge ones, and two mini ones. Now if only I could remember to use them...

But if you were thinking about a Christmas gift, this would be great:

Hello World

I have recently inspired by one of the blogs I follow to "jump start" my blogging. Or in my case, restart it. I looked at the suggestions, and have decided to disregard all of them because they seem boring. BUT I will be posting more often. Hopefully. For sure. Yeah, for sure.

So...in April I went to graduation. Lot's of my other friends were there. I went home in June, helped my fam move to Vegas, and got back to School in mid-July. Fall semester has just begun. I"m taking 18 credits. Actually, that has a kind of funny story.

I have been going back and forth on getting a PSYC minor and I keep deciding against it and then thinking about it again. So, in a mad rush on Thursday, I decided to add Developmental Psyc. On friday I begged the teacher, and SUCCESS! I'm in. I had to have my adviser approve it though. She counted up my credits and remarked that 18 was a very full load. I gave her one of those two-thumbs-up-smiling-I-can-do it grins and exclaimed, "I'm excited!!" She laughed. So 18 credits and 19-hour work week. I really am stoked.

I have a new roommate. She's from Washington. I really, really, really like her. I just joined TESOL Society, Mongolian, and Tahitian Club (I will learn that dance, dang it!).

Now I'm going to the beach. It's only just above 70 outside, so it's a bit chilly. Hopefully it warms up. To the last day of relaxation!! :)

Winter Semester

Fall semester went well, it was pretty stressful near the end as I had 5 finals on the same day and left for the airport an hour after my last final. Still I managed to get the grades I was hoping for except in Chinese. However, I am determined to get the best grade ever in Chinese this semester--we'll see how that goes.

Christmas break was spectacular, I got to do all of the things that I had hoped to accomplish and more. Clubbing, modeling, shopping and sledding were some of the highlights. Although I'll admit that Utah is just too cold for me now.

So far for this semester, work is pretty good. Everything seems to be flowing quite nicely--so far we haven't had any major problems unlike last semester where it seemed like anything that could go wrong, did.

I guess I should mention that my old roommate, Emma, applied for an internship in Florida working at Disney World. Luckily she was accepted, so she'll be spending the next 9 months working in the hotels as she is a Tourism Management Major. So for this semester I have a new roommate, Kiki, who is a freshman from Hong Kong. I'm really excited to become better acquainted with her.

It's a little sad walking around campus and realizing that many of my friends either graduated or left for their missions or simply ran out of money and won't be returning, if at all, for a few more years. However, the people that remain have been overjoyed to see me and I've had plenty of activities to keep me busy.

The beginning of the work was mostly just work and getting ready for school. On saturday, however, I went to the beach with a bunch of girls from Mongolia and a recent transfer student from Denver. I definitely got sunburnt around my eyes, so I looked like I'd been crying or something, but it was still a lot of fun.

Directly after this, I went out to dinner with some friends from Hong Kong. We went to a local restaurant, Chop Suey, and afterward had a sweet red bean soup that Yoko made for us. To everyone's surprise, I thought it was pretty good. After such a full day (spent mostly at the beach which is enough to drain anyone's energy) I got home around 7 and was asleep by 8:30pm.

Today was church as usual and afterward I went to choir as most of my friends are in it. But I spent the rest of the day just lazing around and talking to friends/family back on the mainland.

It was nice being in Utah for awhile, but I must admit that I cm glad to be back "home" now. Of course, I've scheduled another mainland visit this summer, but until then I'll be working on my tan. :)

Fall Semester

Alrighty, it would appear that what began as an almost daily activity has become sort of a monthly special. This is mostly due to the fact that I do the same things every day. Maybe I'll take up some sort of hobby just so that I can entertain you guys...but then again, probably not.

So, my job is still going well. I really enjoy the people that I work with and I've finally begun to feel like I'm not completely useless. That has been my biggest beef with this new job--trying to do something to make my presence in the office worthwhile. I hate feeling like I'm stealing people's money. So this week I spent most of the allowed 19 hours setting up the online grading system and getting everyone's assignments online. I'm fairly familiar with how the program works now, so it's surprising to me when my other teachers in different departments aren't using it.

You cannot believe how frustrated I felt when I realized that the majority of my new classes don't post anything at all online. I wanted to get on there, find all of the course syllabi, print them and take them to my new classes today. Unfortunately, only two of my six classes have anything online yet.

Anyway, I did well in my First Term classes, better than I had done during Summer term. Either I'm getting a hang of this new college thing, or I just got smarter at picking classes. I think that it's probably a mix of both.

This semester will be my first semester here. I was feeling so proud of myself for going to college and getting good grades and then suddenly I realized something. The two terms that I just finished (when combined) are equal to one semester. That means that this semester is going to be 3 months long. I've been here for 3 months. And let me tell you, those 3 months seem to have started forever ago. How am I ever going to survive?

My classes include Japanese 101, English 201, History 201, Psychology 111, Book of Mormon 121 and Self Defense. After this term I will have close to no GE requirements left and will therefore be able to focus solely on my major once Winter starts. So this is the last semester that I will take that will feel like high school, after this it'll all be business. I'm really excited.

I have officially found my (semi)permanent ward. After a ton of confusion (which was completely out of my control), I have finally settled into the 8th ward here at BYUH. I had originally thought that I was supposed to be in the 8th ward, however after being told twice that I was actually in the 7th ward, I gave in. A few weeks later, 8th ward demanded me back. The very day I came back to 8th ward, they gave me a new calling as Visiting Teaching Coordinator. I find this calling a little bit frightening as I've never actually had a visiting teacher before...(I'm beginning to think that the wards here are incredibly disorganized. I've been here for 3 months and I've had neither visiting teachers or home teachers.)

In addition to my ward calling, this Sunday I'm going to be giving a talk, please wish me luck. I think that the last time I gave a talk I was about 14 years old. But then again, maybe I'll just mess it up so badly that they never ask me to do it again. haha

I went to FHE on Monday and had a fabulous time. We played dodgeball for about an hour (way too long if you ask me), but I was with my friends so it was actually pretty fun. The ward is huge now, so tons of people showed up. So many, in fact, that when we were finally ready for refreshments, there weren't enough plates. So the girls paired up with one another for a plate to share, while the guys had to share the two icecream buckets. Sometimes, one really has to appreciate being born a girl.

Anyway, while I'm happy with the classes that I'll be taking this semester, I'm even more happy that I'll get a chance to go home this Christmas. It'll be nice to be in Utah again, even though it snows there!!

First Term

It has been exactly 2 months since my first class started here at BYUH. It has also been 2 weeks since my 2nd term started. Now that's a lot of twos.

Anyway, I have my brand-new classes and I really like all of them. I also finally started my job. Yay! Yesterday I even got my first paycheck!! This is the first time I've gotten paid since April...that is a long time to go without getting paid. I'm a teacher's aid...

So far I have set up the online coursework for the classes Teacher Dude will teach during Fall Semester, I have formatted a ton of his old assignments and finished up designing a powerpoint presentation for him. Lately, I have been helping him transcribe the scribbles that he writes all over his papers into a word document. I've just got to thank my dad for that one, without his horrible handwriting I wouldn't have the right skills for that last job. :)

I like having a busy schedule, but at the same time I don't like that I don't have any free time until at least 4 pm, and usually 5 pm. I am busy all day, and once I do have time to myself its time for dinner and then homework. Not that I have very much homework this term.

My Biology teacher is from Africa, but spent 7 years in France. This means that he has a mix of a French and African accent. Usually I can understand everything he says, but whenever he cracks a joke I am always confused! Its like I can only understand him when he's speaking about Biology, anything else and I have no clue to what he means. However, I think that this experience is good and I actually picked this teacher because of his accent (and the fact that his class started so early in the morning). What makes it even better is that he gives very little homework and his tests are multiple choice.

English is not my favorite class because it is too easy and because all the students there are fresh out of high school. Some of the people in this class remind me why I was so excited to leave high school. It is, however, easier to relate to the other students in this class than in my other classes. I have found way more friends here than anywhere else.

D&C is interesting, but we don't really have a structured system for learning the material. We basically spend the 2 hours of class time asking questions. Strangely enough, there never seems to be a lack of questions and we always ask someone to save their question until next time.

Today I will be working with my friends (both from Singapore) on our Biology Presentation. We'll be doing it on the effects of humans on the environment. It only has to be 10 minutes, so it shouldn't take too long, right?

So, even though it's Saturday, I'm not really doing anything "fun." But like having a day to relax. This new schedule is exhausting! I can't wait until I finally get used to it.

But, that's all for now. I don't have anything even vaguely interesting left to say. :)