The Best Part(s)

The best part of coming back to Hawai'i was that, this time, I knew I was going somewhere I wanted to go. I feel so much more at home here and at peace here than I did last semester...I did love it, even though I didn't really know what I was doing, and I still don't, but this time around I'm here because I love it, not because I'm trying it out. Last semester, I flew between Hawai'i and the mainland twice....and both times when I returned to Hawai'i, it took me a few weeks to get back into the aloha groove. Both times I had a hard time getting back into a mindset where I was happy with my life...it always took me a while to start to feel at peace with being here....but I always did. This time, when I came back, I could say, right away, that I was home, and I jumped right back into everything....and it feels great. I am so excited about all of it...classes, basketball season, the beach, the culture, my friends, living in the hales, barefoot, geckos, everything!

My classes are: Introduction to Linguistics, World Religions, Choir, Contemporary Pacific Studies, Western Culture (Humanities) and History (World Civilizations to 1500).

I am in love with all of them, even though I'm going to read myself to death this semester... I am learning so many things that I've always wanted to learn. This semester, while knocking off some requirements for the General Ed and for the ICS degree, I'm also taking mostly classes that I WANT to take...I'm not really headed for a (specific) degree at this point--I'm just taking the classes I am interested in. As a result, I think I've discovered my major...TESOL. That is, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. I am still interested in ICS, so I might minor in that still, but TESOL is sounding really good to me at this point.

My least favorite class is Contemporary Pacific Studies, which is bizarre, because History has always been my least favorite subject....ALWAYS. Out of all the history classes I've ever taken, the only one I enjoyed for the content of the class was World History during my Junior Year of High School...but I thought I enjoyed that because it seemed like more of a religion class, and I've always had a fettish for learning the teachings of other religions. But this history that I'm in right now is FASCINATING....and that class and my humanities class are on the same schedule, so I'm learning about the same things at the same times, and it's awesome. For instance, we just finished learning Mesopotamia in both classes, but we learned things like the Epic of Gilgamesh and other literary/cultural works in Humanities, and in History we learned the kings and emperors and conquerors and developments. Now we're doing Egypt. It's way interesting because (this is the best part of my life right now; and as lame as that sounds, it's NOT!) in History, we are totally able to connect it all to the Old Testament, which is my absolute favorite stuff in the scriptures--I don't know why, but the Old Testament has always been my favorite. And I feel like I'm finally learning things that everyone else seems to already know....like what the heck the Rosetta Stone is, and just other random things about history that I never learned! Haha. Plus, I still adore Choir with Brother Ottley, and my World Religions class is wonderful as well--I am still obsessed with learning all about other beliefs. Linguistics may sound boring, but it's tons of fun and really interesting and great to talk about and informative/interesting, and best of all, the textbook is not boring! In fact, I think I only have one boring textbook this semester, and that's for CPS.