The Day to Day

In these short computer lab bursts, I find it difficult to think of things to write in my blog. I take life here on a day to day basis. There's not so much of "What are we doing this week?" It's more a "What's happening in the next couple hours thing?" This is perhaps a bit of a self-defence mechanism, because when i look at our calendar as a whole, i get caught between the two competing thoughts:

So much to do in so little time!

and

Oh my god, so much time left before I see Michael again.

Both ideas of too much time and too little time can overwhelm me a bit, so I take things moment to moment, hour to hour, day to day. For the most part, it's a steady schedule that is well balanced with fun stuffs, cultural experiences, and work.

We've had some crazy excitement here. I've now seen a volcano -- an active live volcano -- in person. I saw lava flowing into the ocean. I saw spurts and sprays shoot into the air. I saw that crazy red orange glow. It's awesome. I want to go to the Volcano National Park, because I hear that from there you can actually look inside the volcano and see the churning lava. This one "volcanic event" has actually been going off and on since 1983. I remember when I was a kid I had this idea that volcanoes erupted for a week-ish and then were done. I was kind of afraid I'd miss the action. But no, the action goes on.

My roommate Kristina went to the emergency room the other day because she was lightheaded and fell down. She talks about it like it was a brush with death, but really, she was out hiking a long, steep hill, in the hottest part of the day, with no water. She could have sat down to rest and drank a bottle of gatorade and saved us all a lot of time and energy. I haven't told her this, but I think she's been a fair sight over-dramatic about what happened. Of course, I wasn't there on the hill so I could be completely wrong, but the more she talks about it (and she talks about it a lot), the more I think she was overreacting. Ah well.

We've started meeting with the teens, both the new group who are going into their Senior year, and last year's group who are going to be starting college this fall! This is really cool. Because they don't have adults in their families who have been through the process before, it's a real help to them to have someone tell them step-by-step what they should do to make sure they get their applications, tests, finances, etc. all in order. It's so complicated to go to college. These kids are awesome for stepping outside of the norm and going after their degrees.

We also wrote and have begun practicing our skit for Asthma Camp. Our audience will be 6 to 12 -year-old asthmatics. Our play is Hamakua Jones and the Temple of Wheeze. I get to be the bad guy, Villain Von Vog who talks with a terrible German accent (since Indiana Jones villains are always Nazis). Mostly I'm comic relief, so I get to jump around like a jackass, claim that asthma is all in your head, and then have a terrible asthma attack because I don't mind the early warning signs. Fun stuff.

We're going to create the backdrop this afternoon, then practice some more tonight. It'll be great. Asthma Camp starts tomorrow. We'll lead the crafts session tomorrow night, and the skit is on Friday. This'll be a lot of fun, I think.

Next weekend we're going to hike up to the top of Mauna Kea and have a picnic under the stars. Oh, I can't wait for that. I'll have to layer up my clothes because I don't have proper warm wear anymore and this is the place in Hawaii where snow happens. Also, we're going to get to go to a taro farm next week and get some local cultural experience. Oh! And also, over the weekend I learned how to string leis! It's so cool.

I'll try to remember to bring some pictures into the lab so that I can show off all the cool stuff. But it may be a few more weeks yet before I actually follow through with all of that. But it'll be worth the wait. I've gotten some good shots.

peace,
kati