east of omaha

I moved!

The day I signed a lease for my new apartment, I came home from work to hear that we have to be out of here, TONIGHT, from one of the roommates moving with me. Apparently the landlord wasn't too thrilled about our plan. About forty minutes later I had all my stuff thrown into my suitcase and into the back of a friend's car and that's the last I saw of any of them. I got to the new place at around midnight and there I've been ever since.

It's nice. We moved into the place with no furniture whatsoever and ... I still don't have anything, so I've been sleeping on the fake wood floor every night for the last week, which ... actually has been great for my back (my air mattress at the old place was really shitty), and the apartment is newly renovated and beautiful. It's about a block from Honolulu's Chinatown which, if you know Honolulu, isn't a great neighborhood, but it's better than Kalihi for sure, plus it's got all sorts of tourist attractions and neat stores and restaurants nearby. Nightclubs, too. And the fruit market! It's awesome.

And I feel like I'm back in grad school again! I was still going, before, I just haven't felt present for a while, and I was essentially doing the bare minimum required of me for a couple weeks there. Now I'm submitting proposals for my final projects and it's exciting but frustrating, a little bit. I'm trying to write papers on endangered sign languages, mostly, and thanks to that I've been having weekly meetings with a very well known name in the field, which is exciting as hell, and I'm learning so much.

I'M GONNA BE A REAL LINGUIST SOMEDAY.

Probably.

Damn, have I really not made a real update in two months?

I live in Hawaii, now! I've lived here for about three days? I've walked an average of maybe six miles on each of those days, and not doing fun touristy stuff, more like trying to register for classes or how to get to Walmart to buy essentials. I did find a beach in Waikiki yesterday, and stood in the ocean for a minute or two (I don't actually own a bathing suit at the moment) and I walked aimlessly around the giant Ala Moana mall that I guess is a bit of an attraction. Mostly though I've been tired and somewhat miserable, which sounds super ungrateful when, hey, I live in Hawaii, but the adjustment's been pretty surprisingly rough.

Not helping is the fact that I forgot a lot of stuff in Arizona. Like, for instance, the power cord to my laptop.

I'll update more about my living arrangements later, I guess -- I live in a very crappy house in one of the more terrible sections of Honolulu, apparently, but there's some cool stuff too. Like the languages. In my neighborhood you hear a lot of Korean and Indonesian, and on the island in general there is a fuckton of Japanese, it's awesome.

Today I have to take a final exam I haven't studied for -- it's in phonetics, so I technically got an A on a similar test before ... like, a year and a half ago. Aha. If I can get a B or better I get to take something cool in addition to all my introductory courses, and if not, well, introductions are fine, too.