Found a church

It only took me seven months, but I managed to find a great church really close to my house. It's called St. Ann's on Haiku Road. I wanted to go there and check it out, and I loved it - it's big and beautiful, and all the people seemed really nice. I guess that generic description could fit any Catholic church, but trust me, it's awesome!

Reading Log: Hawai'i

Yeahhh, Kaneohe Public Library!

I thought it would be fun to keep track of the books I have been reading since coming to the Aloha state. Some are from the library, some are not. I was originally recording the dates, but have given that up. I also didn't start recording until February 2008.

Completed Books
Bass Ackwards and Belly Up by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain
Get Well Soon by Julie Halpern
Anatomy of a Boyfriend by Daria Snadowsky
Boy Toy by Barry Lyga
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Gone Baby Gone by Dennis Lehane
Atonement by Ian McEwan

Currently Reading
A Whistling Woman by A.S. Byatt
Elements of Style by Wendy Wasserstein
loosing my espanish by H.G. Carrillo

Voting in Hawaii

Yesterday I voted in the Hawai'i Democratic Caucus. It was pretty crazy! A ton of people showed up.
So two precincts, including mine, had to vote outside.





A little chaotic, but we got the job done!



Fired up & Ready to Go!

Quotes from Class

"Hey you're fat!" (One student totally randomly poking another student (who is quite skinny, btw) on the stomach)

"We like you as a teacher...it's just, you make up some WEIRD dances"

"It's not what your teacher can do for you, it's what you can do for your teacher" - Student X (I laughed for 10 minutes)

"We can prevent global warming" (in response to what we can do to have better behavior in class)

:-)

I am so lucky, I got ANOTHER amazing care package in the mail today! Thank you Aunt Tami, Pap, & Grandma - I looove all the cool stuff, and my students do, too :-) This is perfect timing cause I was just starting to run a little low on pencils and paper, and I looooove the dice that lights up!! Soooo cool!!! And the socks, bandannas, and everything. I have the best family ever :)

super tuesday 08

School is kind of crazy right now, but I forced myself to leave early on Tuesday to go to a watch party in Honolulu for the Barack Obama campaign. Since I saw his speech at the 2004 DNC and then read Dreams From My Father (and later his second book, The Audacity of Hope), I have been an Obama supporter. I saw Obama speak in Cleveland last spring, and was totally inspired. Even though he wasn't there, this event was no different - I left feeling re-inspired and motivated.

When I arrived, I signed in, registered as a Democrat in Hawaii (I had already registered to vote at City Hall, but I didn't register as a Dem yet) and saw a line for phone banking. Two other young girls were looking for a place to sit in the already-crowded restaurant and bar, so I joined them. They were making phone calls, so I decided to, too. A middle-aged man offered us seats at his table, so we joined them. It turns out the girls were actually high school students, not even old enough to vote yet! This was our first campaign. The man was a professor at a local college. Throughout the night, I saw a crowd composed of people young and old, of all different ethnicities, of all different backgrounds, but we were all there for the same reasons. As I waited in line in the women's room, an older woman told the rest of us, "He's SO much like Bobby Kennedy." I had known that some friends were planning on going, but we also ended up seeing even more people we knew. One of my friends told a story of an Obama volunteer who is a registered Republican, working to get Barack elected. "That doesn't happen," we remarked. But with this campaign, it does. I know I'm young and don't know much about politics - but even I can see that this is not a traditional campaign.

My own phone banking experience was pretty anti-climactic - it was early afternoon, and most people weren't home from work yet, so I left a lot of messages. But it was cool to do something, even though it was very small. Obama's sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, was there, and spoke to the audience briefly about the campaign and what the support of Hawai'i means to the candidate. She was extremely gracious and friendly, coming around to greet almost everyone in the packed bar with a hug and a kiss.

The best part was seeing CNN put up the names of the states Obama had won, and all of us getting even more excited and hopeful. YES WE CAN!