Saturday, August 27, 2011

First Week of Classes

My first weekend in Hawaii went by in a flash.  Shane and his roommates are super nice and told us like everything there is to do on the island (which is a lot).  We went to the beach and downtown Honolulu and had a good time.

I met my roommates and they're all really nice!  We've done a bunch of stuff together and want to do a lot more!  I'm sharing my room with Kelsey, and Janelle and Esther are in the other room in our apartment.

As for our apartment.... I don't know what to say about that.  It's not like Bromley Hall at Illinois, that's for sure.  It's an older building and everything's not perfect, but I don't plan on spending that much time in here anyway.

Sunday, we had our orientation for our ASH program.  Our director, Anna, is really nice.  I think she'll work out well.  We met the other students in the program, and then we went on a tour of the island with this crazy tour guide lady who told a few good jokes.  We saw different beaches, coves, a cemetery, a great reef for snorkling, and learned a lot about the island in general.

Fun fact:  Did you know there are no bilboards on the island?  They were all taken down a long time ago because they wanted everyone to look at the beautiful view instead of the ads.

Also:  There are no seagulls on the island, either.  The water is too warm for them.

Monday was my first day of class.  Syllabus day - my favorite day of the year!  I don't think HAW 100 will be what I was originally expecting.  I thought it was going t obe more of a language course to get me around the island, but it might turn out to be more about the island in general and it's culture and history, which will be interesting all the same.

MICR 130 might be my hardest class of the semester, going off my first impression.  The professor only took 5 minutes of the class to explain the syllabus and that this course was going to go at a pretty decent speed.  I don't think he was kidding.  At least he doesn't have an accent.

ANSC 200 might be my favorite class.  The professor is pretty cool.  We watched a youtube video of a kitten frightened by two apples the first day.  It was adorable.

I went to the gym that day.  It may have been the dumbest place to ever come to existence and still be a place of business.  The only perk about the place was that students got in free.  First of all, you walk in and it's like a little dump.  The gym at the Community Center in Geneseo was 10x better.  Even the basement of Bromley hall blew it out of the water.

It was janky too.  There were like 20 small lockers, all without locks, and the employees make you put your bags in there.  There are also signs saying that the gym is not responsible for lost or stolen items.  Great, right?

Second of all, you need to bring your own towel.  We went to sign in and the guy asked to see our towels.  Kelsey and I looked at eachother like wtf.  Apparently, if you don't have a towel, you can't work out.  But there was a promotion going on and we signed up and receieved a free towel.  I think they do that because 1) who the hell brings their own towel without prior knowledge and 2) he didn't want to send us back home sullen, downtrodden, and bad-mouthing the gym.  Which I'm doing anyways.  Sucks to suck. 

Third of all, you couldn't use the cardio machines without signing up to use them at the front desk.  If I was on the treadmill and wanted to transfer to the empty stationary bike right beside me, I had to make a detour to the front desk so they could check me into the machine.  And here's the kicker: you can only be on the cardio machine for 1/2 hour.  Max.

I also heard through the grapevine that cut-off t-shirts are not allowed.  Pardon my language, but that's the douche-iest place ever.

Tuesday (or Syllabus Day Part II) was decent.  I only had two classes, so I thought I was going to get done super early.  It felt a little longer than I thought it would, considering both classes are longer than an hour.  But I still got done before noon.

I was the first of my roommates to get done with class, so I basically lounged around and waited til they got out of class.  Then we went to the beach for a solid twenty minutes.  I'm really starting to dislike the bus system around here.  We went back and ate dinner, and then strolled around campus and towards downtown Honolulu just for something to do.  Kelsey introduced me to Mochi, a Japanese (I believe) dessert consisting of a ball of tasteless dough with ice cream in the middle.  It was heavenly.  It combined two of my favorite things of food: ice cream and the texture of bread.  Deliciousness all up in my mouth.  Then we came back and hit the sack.

Wednesday wasn't too bad.  In two of my classes it was like student introduction day, AKA lame icebreakers from middle school to ease the tension.  Nobody wants to do them, but we'd rather do them instead of homework so I'm not complaining.

I don't really want to talk about school-related stories on this blog because, let's be honest, who even wants to hear about them?  We all go to school, and school is school whether you're in Illinois or Hawaii.  Unless I have something truly amusing to say about school, I'm going to use this blog to pretend like I don't go to school.

But I wouldn't pass up saying that right now U of I is being dearly missed.

After class Wednesday I ran around town by myself doing some errands.  I stopped at the humane society because it's really close to my building and I wanted to look around and stuff.  I asked about volunteer opportunities assisting with surgeries or even walking the dogs or something.  They seemed super nice there and in need of volunteers, so I hope I get a call back!

Then I went to a publishing place to pick up a book I needed for one of my classes.  Found it easily and life was good.

Right by the publishing place was a little market which was perfect because I needed to fill out a paper for one of my classes on prices of animal meats and their byproducts.  I didn't find absolutely everything, but most of it I did.  When I needed to know where something was, I conveniently asked the cute employee.  Bonus.

Thursday was great.  I got out of class before noon so my roommate Esther and I went to the beach for a few hours.  I was even productive and took some notes for my bio lab.  Studying and sunbathing you could call it.

Or learned and burned.

Friday was the best day on the island yet.  All of my roommates were out of class relatively early, so we navigated to Hanauma Bay which is famous for its reefs and sea life.  We bought snorkeling gear and spent like an hour and a half searching the reefs.  We found all kinds of fish, some were huge and were colored like a rainbow.  It was amazing.  But no turtles =[  Then we hung out on the beach for a while.  I even opted to be buried in the sand, just for funsies.

On the walk back to the bus stop, I found a coconut hanging out on the side of the road.  Another fun fact: Did you know you can mail coconuts?  Like straight-up write the address right on the coconut and ship it away.  Parents:  you shall be receiving my fine find once I figure out where a post office is.

We came back and there was a bunch of stuff we could do, including a foam party somewhere, we were were kind of exhausted so we all just ordered pizza and hung out, planning the rest of the weekend.

Post on that soon!!

Aloha!

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