School in Hawaii(+/-s)

Today I've decided I'll write about some of the pluses and minuses of attending school in Hawaii. Here goes...

+ Tropical Paradise
Hawaii, in case you didn't know, is tropical. The temperature is pretty much around 85 every day, except in the "winter", when it's like 5 degrees cooler and rains. As Steve called and reminded me, many people come to Hawaii for vacations, because the weather is so nice, and there are many beaches.

- Tropical Paradise
It's sometimes too warm and humid for me here. Not a minus at all if I had a car, but since I walk everywhere it's really hot, especially with my backpack on. It's gross because I get way sweaty. Also, It can become a distraction when you're trying to do schoolwork when the beach is less than 2 miles from your house.

+ Diversity
I guess UH is the most ethnically diverse campus in the US. At least that's what everyone keeps saying. So that means there are lots of different kinds of food to eat, and people to meet. Very cool.

-Bugs
Okay, there are tons of freakin bugs here. If you try to walk anywhere once the sun's started to go down and it's started getting cool, (you know, when it doesn't suck to walk places because it's too hot) you will invariably almost step on about a million cockaroaches(read it like Tony Montana). This is disgusting, and definitely a minus. On the other hand, there are almost as many lil' lizards, which are fun to try and catch.

+ Asian stuff
I'm an Asian studies major, so this is pretty cool for me. I posted pics of the Center for Korean studies last week, but there are much more cool things here than just that. For example-

East West Center- The East West center is an education and research organization established by the U.S. Congress in 1960 to strengthen relations and understanding among the peoples and nations of Asia, the Pacific and the US. There are a lot of seminars and other pretty cool stuff that goes on there.

Thai Royal Sala(pavilion)- This was given by the King of Thailand earlier this year to replace one given in 1967 or 68. It has the royal seal( I assume that's what I took a picture of in the bootom right) and was reassembled on site by some Thai dudes. As you can see from the picture in the bottom right in particular,it is very detailed. Pretty cool, no?



Japanese Garden- There also happens to be a very beatiful Japanese style garden and tea house on campus. Check it out.




You get the picture I'm sure; I'm digging all the cool asian stuff.

-Cost of living
I'm definitely not digging the cost of living here. I pay 600 bucks a month for a room in a crummy apartment. Luckily I only signed a lease that's through the end of the year. Food is a lot more too. Even dollar menus at Jack in the Box and Mcdonald's are considerably smaller, beacause a lot of the typical value menu stuff is a bit pricier here.

Overall though, the pluses outweigh the minuses, and I am happy to be here.

Be excellent to each other

Today in class my teacher said the Chinese emperor during the Han dynasty was "morally excellent... excellent." I couldn't help but think of the dynamic duo that is Bill and Ted, and I of course, began to chuckle. My teacher noticed, however, and asked what was so funny. Everyone of course looked at me, and gave me that look, you know the one. I responded "oh it's nothing", but he insisted. I just couldn't tell him, because honestly, it would have been a little weird. It was an awkward moment, to say the least. But the chuckle was worth it.





Thanks guys.






OK, onto more serious business. Tuesday I read an article in the newspaper by a guy named Cal Thomas. I didn't know, but this dude's a pretty famous columnist. It's an interesting article, titled "The End of 'We the People'". I found it again here-http://www.calthomas.com/index.php?news=2395. It's about how in Connecticut there was a recent ruling by the state supreme court allowing same-sex marriages. The ruling cannot be appealed. You may think, "so what? The world is becoming more tolerant of homosexuals, and so this seems pretty normal." As far as I'm concerned, homosexuality is not even the issue. The problem I see with this is that the judges have the power to create sanctions which deprived Connecticut citizens of the legal right to limit marriage to the legal relationship between a man and a woman. Whatever happened to "We the people"? Doesn't a ruling class of judges seem super unconstitutional? If judges in our present time are to be as powerful as King Solomon in their rulings, I wanna be a freakin judge;)

That one hurt...real bad.

Well, that was embarrassing. Unless something crazy happens, BYU just lost 32-7 to TCU. I knew it wasn't gonna be good when I noticed Max Hall was telegraphing his passes in the first quarter, but I had hoped it would be a little closer. The worst part about it is that I'm gonna have to read about how the team was a "pretender" or something like that for at least the next week. Well, in spite of the loss, I found something else I read the other day that made me smile. Read Matt stairs' quote in the fifth paragraph down of the article at this address.
http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/phillies/20081014_Just_A_Win_Away.html
If you don't see what I'm talking about, don't ask.

BYU v.TCU

Today I get to watch my first BYU football game of the season. Thank heavens I have I have Versus(I never thought I'd say that). The Game started out rough. Max Hall fumbled on BYU's first series, and then it only took 2 plays for TCU to score. Then they drove down and scored again pretty quickly, and Max Hall threw an interception. It's not looking good...I actually want to vomit. On a related note, Versus sucks. The announcers have said that O'neill Chambers got "jackknifed" when he was tackled on a kickoff return, and that when the officials checked to review a call it was a "mangled mess". I could come up with better crap than this.

Yesterday I met with the counselor for the Korean Flagship BA program, and she was very encouraging. She asked why I wasn't in a higher level Korean class, and I said I didn't know, they just put me in 302. Apparently she thinks I'm better than that. Nice! I feel like everything is working out for me, even if it's not going just like I expected. I'll write more after the game- maybe

Center for Korean Studies

This is the Center for Korean studies at UH Manoa. It was built in the 1970s, and adopted the design of the throne hall of Kyongbok Palace. It is very authentic. The granite around the bottom was imported from Korea, as were the carpenters who built it.

It cost 1.5 million to build at the time, one third of which was supplied through gov't grants and donations from Korea.

I have classes here 3 days a week. Well, inside the bigger building, not this pagoda looking thing. Niiice!

First post!

Well, I've finally arrived. I had so much fun reading everyone else's blog, I decided I had to get in on it. My guess is this blog will be one of the most popular on the internet, so consider yourself lucky to have stumbled upon it in it's infancy.