How is it the end of Week 3?

No seriously. How is the third week of the semester already over?! It doesn't help that February is so short; March is right around the corner already!

This week has been pretty busy. Work is starting to get busier with the semester underway. Tutoring is pretty slow the first few weeks because no one has any assignments due, but by Week 3 people start having actual papers and Spanish students realize they need to get their required visits over with, so they come in. Since I'm doing some of my Practicum II hours in a Spanish 1100 class (first semester Spanish), I feel like my tutoring is going better because I know exactly where the students are and what they've learned.

One of the best things, in my opinion, about the MATESOL program here at HPU is that we have so many opportunities for practical experiences. We have "microteaching" in most of our classes, which is when we teach our classmates a 10-minute activity. It's a great chance to get feedback from our peers. We also have a whole semester of Practicum I, which among other things gives us lots of observation hours in a bunch of different settings, which was so valuable.

Now in Practicum II, we're placed in one (or two) classes for a longer period of time. It's great, because you get to know the students and the class and the mentor teacher pretty well. What's extra awesome about HPU's practicum courses is that they're quite flexible and you can have a lot of choice in where you do it, so I'm really fortunate to be doing mine in two places this semester! For the first half, I'm in the SPAN 1100 class, and for the second half, I'm in an ESL academic writing class. I'm excited about it because not only do I get two very different and very valuable experiences to learn from, but the program will give me a letter saying I did student teaching in both English and Spanish, which will be great when I apply to future jobs! Since I'm not 100% sure where I want to end up in the future, it's nice to have the double option of teaching ESL or Spanish. Even though the MATESOL program is focused on English, primarily, lots of alumni go on to teach other foreign languages as well, so it really does give you a lot of options!

Anyway, speaking of Practicum II, I solo-taught an activity this week! I was pretty nervous, and it didn't go perfectly (does teaching EVER go perfectly? This is a real question!), but I think overall it went pretty well! My mentor teacher gave me some great feedback and I definitely plan to incorporate it into the next activity I teach. I was so nervous about this activity that I made my boyfriend be my "trial student" the night before, because I figured if he understood my directions, then a first semester Spanish class would. And I was right! Not everything went according to plan, but my directions weren't the problem. (Lost materials was the problem, and of course they were found about 5 minutes after the lesson!)

And now, because I feel like a blog post without a photo is boring (my father once told me that my blog posts were too long and no one wanted to read about all the minutiae of my day and to just post photos... and if my own father said that then I assume everyone else is thinking it!), here's a photo of me and my lovely classmate Kat on a hike we did over winter break at the Lanikai Pillboxes. It had great views!

Keep an eye out next week for an update on my trip to Kauai! :)

Maui!

Almost a year ago, probably, two of my friends from undergrad (they're twins) told me that their family would most likely be coming to Hawaii for their dad's 60th birthday this year. Well, it happened! And when two of your best friends from 5,000 miles away are going to be just a few islands over, you book a flight! So I booked a flight to Maui and spent a few days crashing their family vacation. It was a blast!

First of all, Maui is really different from Oahu. There aren't nearly as many people, which I think is great. People overwhelm me. (That's why I hate New York. People everywhere.) So right away, I liked Maui.

We stayed in a condo on the beach, so the first day I was there, we just relaxed on the beach. It was so nice after a long semester!

It was a pretty little beach!

Oh, and we saw WHALES.

See them, those two tiny specks? WHALES.

 The second day, we took a bus tour of the Road to Hana, which is one of the things Maui is famous for. Hana is this little town on the side of the island far from everything else, and the road out there is very windy and absolutely incredibly beautiful. I was glad we took a bus tour because (a) our driver was really knowledgeable and told us all kinds of stories and legends and information, (b) I didn't get car sick!, (c) we stopped at all the good spots. It was about a 10 hour day, with lots of stops of course to take photos. I took about a billion, but here are some of the more interesting (I hope) ones:

Again, I took about 300 photos but... I don't want to bore you all with them! It's hard to take a good photo from a moving bus. But take my word for it: Maui is gorgeous.

Look at this fabulous crew I spent the trip with:

Here we are on the beach New Years Eve, when everyone else in the U.S. was firmly in 2015 and we were still in the Old Year:

Coming home from Maui was a bit of a catastrophe. My flight was delayed for 6 million hours, and the airline I was flying was absolutely awful about keeping up informed. I finally got home after midnight and there was a raging windstorm on Oahu, which was actually pretty cool. 

Anyway, that was my first experience with island-hopping and I would definitely recommend it! The islands are very different and there is so much too!

It's spring semester?

So... I'm not sure how this happened, but it's spring semester! It's FEBRUARY. January was over so fast!

We're 2 weeks into spring now, so I guess I should post an update about all the things going on! There's a lot going on.

I'm taking 4 classes again, which is a lot of work but so far I'm managing. They are:

• Second Language Writing: As a writing tutor, I am really excited about what I'm going to learn in this class! So far it's been really interesting.
• History of the English Language: I love the super linguistics-focused classes, and this one is no exception! It's a night class on my longest day of the week but it's so worth it. I love this class!
• Practicum II: This is basically student teaching. I'm splitting mine between a Spanish 1100 class and an ESL Academic Writing class. Both very different experiences, so I'm excited to learn what I can from them!
• Capstone: This is basically preparing my portfolio. Which is a lot of work! If I could give advice to anyone in the program, it would be to get started early. Work on it over breaks. It's a lot. But it's kind of interesting too, and it's cool to think that this could be what I show future potential employers! It's a good way to reflect on how much I've learned in the program and how far I've come from just 2 years ago!

In addition to school, I'm presenting at two AL Talks this semester (February 13 and February 27). AL Talks are hosted by the Applied Linguistics department, and they're just sort of extra-curricular opportunities to learn a little more. Sometimes we have visiting professors or speakers and sometimes it's students in the program and sometimes it's other things. On February 13, I'm part of a student panel on technology in language teaching. On February 27, my classmate (also named Sara!) and I are presenting something about our curriculum development project from last semester.

On Valentine's Day, we have the Hawaii TESOL Conference... How romantic, right? The student panel on technology is presenting there, too. I'm so nervous! I've never presented at a real conference before. But it's exciting, too! 

That's about it as far as spring semester so far. Between four classes and work and everything I'm pretty busy! But I'm also so aware that this is my last semester and I want to enjoy everything Hawaii has to offer, so look out for some fun-stuff updates this semester as well :)

Speaking of fun stuff updates, I have two big ones to make about winter break! I got to visit Maui and Kauai, and I had a BLAST. Coming soon, I promise.

Fall 2014 Recap 6: The Final One!

So by now, you're probably sick of reading about my fall semester, and we're starting the spring semester! Time flies, doesn't it? Here is my very LAST post about Fall 2014, I promise. Anyway, I ran out of themes for my posts, so here is an assortment of photos of the random things I did this semester.

I saw the cast of Hawaii Five-0!!!! They were filming right here on Fort Street Mall. I walked out of class and BAM - celebrities. Pretty cool! That was one of my goals for my time here.

 I ate my first fresh coconut! We have coconut trees in our yard, and you have to cut the coconuts down or they can actually be very dangerous! They're huge - that box is really big!

I survived a "hurricane." Everyone FREAKED OUT and bought all the food & water on the island. It all amounted to a rainy, windy day off. The boys decided that buying enough pizza to feed the entire army was the best (and most economically practical) way to prepare for a hurricane. We had pizza for days!

 I went to a luau and ate delicious food. So much food. We went to the luau at the Hale Koa Hotel in Waikiki. "Hale Koa" means "house of the warrior" in Hawaiian. It's the military hotel here.

My pictures are awful but the luau was SO. COOL.They performed dances from all over the Polynesian world. I was amazed, honestly. It was so much fun.

We went to the luau for my 24th birthday. Not a bad way to ring in a new year of life! Obviously, for a luau, we had to wear our best Aloha gear!

We had dinner at the Oceanarium, which is this restaurant/aquarium where you get to eat with the fish! While eating... fish... They also have a mermaid! Our waiter was from Mexico and we became best friends once I told him I spoke Spanish. 

I gave my first "AL Talk." Applied Linguistics (AL) Talks are professional development events from the department. They happen every other Friday. Sometimes professors give them, sometimes guests give them, and sometimes students give them. I got to give this one, along with 2 of my classmates, about the language teaching jobs we had this summer.

I rescued a cat! Jack here was a neighborhood stray who was always very friendly. One day I came home to find him limping. We took him to the vet and got him fixed up, and it turned out he had a microchip. His mama was tracked down and we discovered that Jack had been missing for almost TWO YEARS (pretty crazy for a 3 year old cat!). His mama had moved to Virginia in that time. She was so grateful he was found, and he flew home to her that weekend. After so long, they got their happy reunion just in time for a Christmas - how's that for a miracle?

Fall 2014 Recap Part 5: The Fisher House Hero & Remembrance Run, Walk, or Roll

The first weekend in September, we did the Fisher House Hero & Remembrance Run, Walk, or Roll on Ford Island. The event is all volunteer-run, and it's to remember the members of our Armed Forces who have been lost in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It's an 8k route, and all along the route are boots - one boot for every person lost. There are so many boots. It was such a nice event, but also so emotional. It was so strange and sad to think that for every boot, a person had died. Each boot had a picture of the person with their name, branch of service, and the date they died. Walking with so many people in the military, it was especially sad to see the people I knew looking for friends they had lost. To me, the people on the boots were strangers, but to some people there, they were friends or brothers or sisters or fathers or mothers. It broke my heart. One boot (pictured to the left) honored one of the heroes depicted in the movie Lone Survivor. (If you saw that movie and didn't cry, how?!)  At the last straightaway, I started to look more closely at the boots, and suddenly I couldn't stop crying. Some boots were tied together - people who had died together. One pair was tied together but had different dates; then I realized they were brothers. The poor parents. Most of the photos were from military IDs, but some were personal photos. One of a soldier with his newborn baby. One of a soldier with his dog. Neither of them would ever understand why their soldier never came home. Some of the boots had been decorated with leis or other offerings. Someone set a beer next to one boot, sharing a drink with a lost friend. One widow had left a letter for her husband. I cried so hard I couldn't read it. A little boy walked with a shirt honoring his father. From the Ford Island bridge, you can see Pearl Harbor. It was almost overwhelming how much loss was represented there that day. It was a heavy reminder that the people who are fighting our wars are not statistics or faceless strangers. They are real people, and they leave real loved ones behind when they go off to fight.

Fall 2014 Recap Part 4: Some pretty Hawaii views :)

One of my favorite things about Hawaii is the VIEWS. So here are some of my favorite views from this fall. Please note that, once again, my little smartphone camera doesn't do anything justice.

This is actually the view from our back balcony one Monday morning around 6 AM. I hate Mondays as much as the next person, but this made getting up a little easier.

This is the view from Tantalus Lookout. You have to drive up a VERY winding road to get there (I thought we were going to die a few times), but the view from the top is amazing.

 Sea cliffs out by Koko Head, on the way to Hanauma Bay. Hanauma Bay is a GREAT view too, and SO MUCH FUN, but I didn't get any pictures of it. If you like to snorkel, GO TO HANAUMA BAY. If you've never snorkeled, GO TO HANAUMA BAY. I've never seen so many fish in my life. My favorite was this HUGE parrot fish. So beautiful.

The view from Nu'uanu Pali lookout. You can't tell from the photo, but it was just about the windiest place I've ever been! I thought I was going to blow off the cliff! Nu'uanu Pali is the site of a very bloody battle in which Kamehameha I conquered Oahu. The pass used to be the only connection between windward Oahu and Honolulu and it was really dangerous and tough! There are ghost stories about the old highway today, and according to Hawaiian folklore you can't carry pork over the Nu'uanu Pali, especially at night. Allegedly, if you have pork in your car when you drive over it, your car will stop. This is because the goddess Pele didn't want Kamapua'a, a half-human, half-hog god with whom she didn't get along, crossing into her territory. For better photos, Google Nu'uana Pali!

This is the view of downtown Honolulu from the Aloha Tower, which is actually right down the road from HPU! We visited on a day with strange weather, and were lucky enough to catch a double rainbow. The second one if faintly visible at the top, see?





Well, I hope you've enjoyed my snaps of just a very few of the great Hawaiian views I got to see during the Fall 2014 semester! What's your favorite view in Hawaii?

Fall 2014 Recap Part 3: Camping & Hiking

If you like to hike or camp, Hawaii is a great place to do it! Also if you like to hike and camp, you should date my boyfriend. (Just kidding, he's mine!) 

This fall, Devin dragged brought me on the longest backpacking trip I've ever done - 20 miles round trip. To say that I was sore and blistered afterwards is an understatement. (Remember when I said I would never run a marathon? Yeah.) But it was worth it! We camped for a night in the middle of nowhere and had silence, incredible views of the ocean, the mountains and valleys of Oahu's North Shore, and the STARS. My photos don't do it justice, but wow.

Waialua and Haleiwa.

The view from our little campsite.

SO BLUE.

I never get tired of looking at the Pacific Ocean from the top of a mountain, honestly.

Our little campsite in the morning.

You can't tell in this photo, but I was sore, sweaty, and covered in blisters.

Like I said, if you like to hike, Hawaii is a great place to do it. There are SO many hikes, even just on Oahu!