Catching Up! Monday - Wednesday

I apologize for being so behind again. I need to get better at this. 

So! Monday. I knew that I didn't have to work on Maui Family Magazine this week, so Sandy scheduled me to do some tutoring. I didn't have to be at the office until 3:30 though, so I did a little bit of searching online, and I figured out which nearby beach was a popular place for kiteboarding. I ended up at Kanaha Beach In Kahului. There were a bunch of people on the water when I got there. A few people were beginners taking lessons, most were average, and three or four of them were definitely advanced. They were jumping and flipping and doing all sorts of tricks. Here are a fe pictures from that afternoon. 

This is only about a fourth of the amount of surfers who were out there. 

This guy was doing some great tricks! He was jumping 15-20 feet in the air and flipping around. Another surfer tried to do the same, but he failed. It was more of a small jump and a botched landing. 

This picture I took just so mom could see this girl's GIANT lens. :)

I left the beach around three and went to Sandy's office. I was mainly observing, so I sat with one student and his tutor while they worked on reading. The second hour I did the same, except this time I did a few of the exercises with the student. After that it was time to go home. 

Tuesday I went to the tutoring center early with Sandy, and I read for a little bit until I needed to work. At nine thirty, I sat with a student named Ryder while he took his assessment test. I basically just had to read him some instructions and answer any questions he had about the test. I think Melia came in Tuesday too to work on math. I sat with her and Sandy on one of the days anyway. I'm pretty sure I came back to the house and read after that. I don't really remember...it was a long time ago. I think my age is catching up to me. ;)

I went to the office early again on Wednesday and I worked with Ryder on math. We did some adding exercises where he had to carry the one, and we did some large number subtraction problems. After that we moved on to fractions. He had to write a fraction based on the number of pieces shaded out of a whole shape or a group. They have workbooks and plans all ready to go every day, so I basically just take him through the activities and make sure he's doing it right and help him when he gets stuck or confused. After we did several activities with fractions, we tried moving on to some multiplication. This was pretty new to him; they haven't done much with it in school yet, so it was sort of an introduction. 

After Ryder and I were done, I came back to Sandy's house and did a load of laundry and packed for the weekend. I went back to the office at 2:30 and worked with Noah on reading. We read some stories and had to figure out the main idea, and we worked on learning some new vocabulary. 

A little after four, one of Sandy's tutors, Laura, came to the office to lead me to her house. She had invited me earlier that day to go to the Maui Film Festival with her and her friends. I was excited that she invited me, because she is really the only other girl I know here who is close to my age. I followed her over to her house, and we stopped there for a bit so she could feed her dog and pack blankets and jackets to take to the movie. The view from her house is amazing. It is up on a little hill, so you can see the town down below and the ocean from one side, and on the other side is a great view of the West Maui Mountains. I don't think I could ever get tired of those views. 

When she was ready to go, the two of us and her friend Nikki drove to her sister's office and helped her move some furniture around. Then we drove to Kihei and bought some sandwiches, wine, and sides to bring to the movie. Technically, you aren't allowed to bring in outside food, so we snuck it in inside our bags and blankets. I actually tweeted about how I was having fun with my new friends sneaking food into the movie and the Maui Film Festival retweeted it. I guess that means they weren't too upset with me. :) 

The movie they were showing on Wednesday was a documentary about Eddie Aikau, a famous Hawaiian surfer. They had a short "opening ceremony" thing before the show, with a chant/dance and some words from the family of Eddie Aikau. I know it is small, but you can see in this picture a few of the dancers. It was the first time I had seen any traditional Hawaiian dances, so it was really neat to watch. 

The movie was excellent. It was all about his life and his surfing accomplishments and his love of Hawaii. He was a life guard on Oahu, with a record of over 500 rescues and 0 losses. Pretty amazing. When he was in his thirties, he was on a boat sailing to Tahiti. Shortly after they left the islands, the boat got caught in a storm and flipped over. After waiting for hours and no help came, Eddie got on the surfboard and started paddling back towards shore. No one knows exactly what happened, but he never made it back, and they never found him. It was such an interesting movie to watch; I was hooked from the very beginning. 

After that film there were a few minutes of local people from different islands singing in a Hawaiian music video, and then there was a second film. It was probably 10:45 when the second one started, and I'm pretty sure I fell asleep right away. Oops! :) We left before that one was over, because we were all tired. Then the big challenge: driving to Makawao in the middle of the night! Ahh! Just kidding, I made it back just fine. I didn't even need directions! I got back to Sandy's house and got to bed around one thirty. I woke up four hours later to get to the airport and fly to Oahu! Yay!