If I could go back, I would. Such a beautiful and green place. I love the rain and I love the cold. I wish Nanakuli was like this; we're the complete opposite; hot, dry, and brown. Besides my admiration for Waimānalo, I thought that this trip was very interesting and informative, but I wished that we got to do more hands on activities instead of just pulling weeds. That made the trip less fun, but still awesome to learn the history and the ability to practice our culture.
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One word...senioritis. I have come to realize that senioritis is real and you can't let that get in the way of your studies or your grades will suffer like mines. Anyways, I thought that this quarter was a wake up call, not only for Malama Honua, but for all my classes because it's senior year, which is one of the most, if not, the most important year of High School. As for Malama Honua, it isn't a difficult class, but like any other class, if you don't do the work, you won't get a good grade, and that's exactly what happened to me. I slacked for a bit on the blogs and because of that, I had a F. Currently it's an A-, but I'm sure it'll drop down in between a B+ and a C+, due to my effortless Ku'u 'Aina research paper. I am disappointed with myself knowing I am making the same mistakes I made in freshmen year. I know I can do the work; it's just the matter of actually doing it. I can't change anything as of right now, but what I can do is take this quarter as a lesson and make sure not to do it again.
After I read the reflection, I couldn't disagree because what the author said was straight facts. We step on native plants, not because we don't care, but because we don't know. We walk through forests, but we know nothing about it's history. We notice that it rains, but never thank ke Akua that it does. We go surf, but never take time and observe the wave; to most it's just another wave to catch. What I interpreted from this story is we implement Hawaiian traditions in our lives and we call ourselves Hawaiian, but we don't even know what it means to be Hawaiian. Also, we tend to blame the haoles for the fall of the Hawaiians; while that might be true, we live in a world where we can access the internet at the tips of our fingers. But do we educate ourselves about our history? Sadly no, we use the internet for Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and etc. To me, we can't just blame haoles for everything; even though they might irritate the hell out of us, we have to blame ourselves too for not wanting to learn about our Hawaiian history.
There are two things that I'm looking forward to at Mokauea: the history of Mokauea and giving back. Before Mr. Blake told us that we were going to have a huakaʻi to Mokauea, I didn't even know Mokauea existed. That day we had a guest come and give us a brief discussion about the history of Mokauea, I was in awe because I never knew back then our people used to live there and that there are bones of our people still there till today. I never knew such small islands could hold so much history and value. Hopefully the day of the field trip, I get to learn more than what I already know of Mokauea. I feel upset with what the state decided to do with part of Mokauea, which was to make a runway, so that airplanes could have a place to land. The reason I'm ready to give back is because I want to get down and dirty! I feel it's important to give back, even though this is my first time even hearing about Mokauea because of what happened in the past and how we can prevent that from happening again. #IMUA
A Hawaiian scientist is a person who mainly studies or is an expert amongst things relating to nature in the state of Hawaii. A Hawaiian scientist could also be someone who is really observant of all the negative situations going on; again relating to nature. Like for example, a volcanologist is a geologist that focuses on the eruptive activity, the formation of the volcano, and their most current and past eruptions. Hawaiʻi is known for volcanoes since that's how our islands were formed and as of right now, there's an active volcano flowing through the island of Hawaiʻi. To elaborate more on an observant scientist, for example, a scientist could be taking a stroll along side the beach and starts to notice trash all over the place. He realizes a pattern, it brings to his attention that there's more plastic than any other type of rubbish.
Hurricane Lane was insane in Nanakuli! SIKE, just kidding. The three days that Hurricane Lane "hit" was nothing more than a miracle, miracle being it actually rained in Nanakuli because if you've ever been to Nanakuli, it's dry and hot like hell. The first day was pathetic, I was expecting heavy rains and strong winds, only to get weak drizzles and puny winds that occurred here and there. The color of the sky was really bias that day, switching from a nice light blue to a gloomy dark blue multiple times. The second day, the skies and rain and whatnot were all the same, but the waves were coming hard! That same day was the day they closed all parks across the island and had police secure the area. Funny thing is that the cops left around 6 P.M, so my friends and I went to park to shoot hoops. As I'm walking to the park, I notice something unusual, the sunset and sky resembled a cotton candy color. It looked quite beautiful and was soothing to watch. The third and final day was a banger! Rains actually became rains and winds actually became winds, waves still were pumping, incoming fog was thick and unsee-through; felt like I was in the movie The Mist. All in all, I was glad to experience this "hurricane", but also thankful that it wasn't to the point where we'd be the next Louisiana.
Malama Honua actually means to take care of the world and to me, itʻs very critical that we do so because if we donʻt do what our ancestors did, then we lose apart of ourselves, but most importantly, our culture. Our culture was on a major decline, but itʻs slowly making a comeback. Like the great Kevin Garnett said, "ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!!!!!!"
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