Monday 5/23/05 - Monday 5/30/05

Friday 5/27/05 - I'm beginning to pick up some Hawaiian terms.  I don't think I will ever pick it all up but with the revival of the Hawaiian language it is certainly going to be easy to pick up some common phrases from others.

http://www.geocities.com/~olelo/hltableofcontents.html

Some of the things I've learned so far:

Learning the vowels is the first step.  It has helped me to correct my pronunciation tenfold.  For instance:

It's not Poipu (poypu) but Poyeepu.  This is because the emphasis is on the i which is pronounced ee.

It's not Kee but Kayay.  e is pronounced a or eh (for the Canadians in the audience)

When giving directions to my place I say ma uka [mau' kah]  This means toward the upland; inland.  I remember it by thinking mountain since it it's beginning is pronounced like mountain. 

When stating where I turn to go to a location toward the sea I say ma kai [mah kai'].  ma uka and ma kai are used very frequently.  Even on the weather channel.

One of the other techniques is to pull parts of words or names of kings from the words.  This helps in breaking up the words to emphasize the correct part.  I think this will just be a learning process as I learn the history of the people.  So, for instance:

I live in Kapaa now.  Most pronounce this as you see it spelled but the the a at the end is separated because it describes the location so it's Kapaa [ka-pa'-ah] - the okina (backward apostrophe) indicating the presence of a glottal stop, as in the way the air stops in the expression “oh-oh!  I remember by saying cup o' a.  Like Cup of tea.

We'll see how I progress.  I still pronounce some words the typical tourist way but when I'm with my friends I try not to slip up.  They might tease me about being a malihini mâka`ika`i [mah' lee hee' nee MAH' kah ee kah ee] - A Tourist - Oh shiver!  Much worse than being called a haole I guess.  My Hawaiian friends do not call us haole's (not a nice thing to call people) but we call ourselves this often to excuse our lame efforts at fitting in sometimes.

Conversational Pidgin
 

"We cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love."
~ Mother Theresa

Monday 5/30/05 - Saturday night my new neighbors came over for a Lanai Party.  My upstairs neighbor Gayle said they often meet on a weekend and I said that would be great.  She is in the process of reorganizing her place so she organized and I hosted.  Carol, the owner I am renting from, came over, the resident manager, Ralph, and the president of the of Board of Directors of the units, Linda, and her husband Todd came around 5pm and we had a great evening.  Each brought pizza, pupus, and wine.  The weather is perfect here.  A nice breeze runs through my place and I had bought a nice lanai set my first day here so that was comfortable to sit and eat at.  I really enjoyed getting to know everyone.

Yesterday, I went to Kee beach.  The tide was so low that no one could get outside of the reef to the turtles so it wasn't very interesting.  I ended up reading my book and taking a nap.

Today, I went to the pool for a bit in the morning and have just been relaxing in preparation for next week.  I will not be teaching for the month of June so have decided to look around for another job.  I will try to get a 2 day a week job so that when I start teaching again in July I can still do the new job also.  I thought I'd go apply to work 2 days a week as a van driver that picks up the cruise ship tourists.  It should be easy to work around my teaching and home based support business.  Wish me luck!