While we don’t have an exact departure date yet and my math skills are dubious, I am fairly certain we have just passed the half-way point in our stay in Aotearoa and in less than 12 weeks we’ll be jetting back home to Hawai‘i. While I experience doubts during the course of each and every day regarding my process, when I look at the body of research I’ve done – books and articles read, reviewed and re-read, not to mention massive amounts of writing – there is no doubt that I’ve made a great start toward my Ph.d. Much credit needs to go to my supervisors, Dr. Henry Johnson and Dr. Dan Bendrups. The music department here is very dynamic and I couldn’t imaging being in a better situation.
I wish I could talk about my research and the various concepts that I will be applying to the research that I will conduct when we return to Hawai‘i, however, I am afraid that someone that I may want to interview might read it and be influenced by some of my thoughts and arguements. So for now it will remain in the very broad realm of “Hawaiian language in Hawaiian music”.
It feels as though the weather may be turning soon. The past few days and nights have cooled considerably, though still not much rain. Marie and M?lia are downstairs in the living room right now huddled under the room heater. There goes the electric bill! I also realized it’s been three months since I’ve driven a car. Dan offered to lend us his while he and the family traveled to Australia to visit family, however I didn’t feel confident enough never having driven on the wrong, er, left hand side of the road before.
I’ve Twitted a few times about the lunacy of orientation week around here. This comic from the student association’s “Critic” magazine tells it all. Yes, for some reason known only to them some students here think it is fun to get intoxicated and set furniture on fire. Sometimes they even manage to set themselves or other students on fire in the process. There is a more colorful (language-wise) comic in one of the more recent issues that delves into the love tolerate-hate relationship between UO students and the local community. As soon as it comes online I’ll point to it. The community sentiment seems to be that the university and city tolerate for fear that if they clamp down on the students’ “fun” that they would go to school elsewhere. There is supposed to be a street party (that is, a keg party in every home on the street) on a street parallel to ours but a block over tomorrow evening. The police have promised aggressive patrolling of the area; we can only hope.
