First Week

Aloha Readers,

I write to you from our program house near the town of Waimea on the big island of Hawai'i. I flew to San Diego January 9th and spent a week at Alex's house. We had fun visiting Sea World, walking her dog at the beach, hiking around Torrey Pines, and overall just enjoying the nice weather.

January 14th Alex and I flew from San Diego--> Honolulu--> Kona. I learned what a small world it is when I met a Waimea native on the flight that was married to a man from Syracuse and knew all the popular spots! I felt the culture shock when we landed in a mostly outdoor airport. We met our program director, Alex Moore (who I will  now refer to as Kumu, which means teacher in Hawaiian), who greeted us with leis and brought us back to the house.

Our Ohana (family) consists of 16 students, Kumu, her 10 year old daughter Ellie, a program assistant, and a course assistant. I am enjoying spending time with and living with these people other than having to fight over a dozen people for one of three bathrooms!

So we have a list of chores/tasks that are rotated throughout the house and one of them was to start/update the class blog. That was my task this week, so if you want to hear about what we learned check out the site!

http://hawaiieesfieldsemester.wordpress.com/