As I could feel every individual drop of rain on my face, we were welcomed by the smiles and cheer of the 4th grade class. In honor of them, we chanted I'a Wa'a Nui, and in return, they greeted us with a warm welcoming chant. Their classroom was brightly decorated and had this influencing feeling of wanting to stay there! They learned from us about the Hokulea, the World Wide Voyage and the idea of revolutionizing education. I myself, presented the whole idea of the blogs to them. They were very interested, and maybe soon they will create a website of their own and communicate through blogs. I hope that they will use everything they have learning and expand on it through their knowledge. Thank you Kamehameha Schools and the 4th grade class for inviting us to your beautiful campus.
Today was one of the most exciting days of my life. As we walked onto the Campus of Seabury Hall, I felt a great sense of peace and welcoming. Ms. Nelson, the head director of admissions conversed with us about the school and all the astounding electives. She introduced us to our shadow students. My classmate Max and I were paired up with a Senior named Calem. He took us along and guided us around the campus. Every little thing I noticed on the campus just seemed to welcome me, even the classrooms and pencils sitting on the polished desks. Everything had positive energy that made me feel like to stay there at Seabury Hall. The different freshman classes that we visited were splendid and were filled with creativity. Especially an engineering class where the freshman had to wire and build beautiful lamps. One lamp was especially gleaming with a warm purple light from a modified wine bottle. Lunch was high quality, my mouth watered before the smell and sight of the potatoes and teriyaki chicken. In the cafeteria was also a juice bar, a sandwich bar, and a fruit bar. I could see that so much effort was put into the quality of that school. Ms. Nelson and the Headmaster Mr. Schmidt later explained to us the curriculum and different academic subjects. " We want all students who care about education and qualify for Seabury to be able to come to Seabury", Mr. Schmidt says. Seabury was a very enjoyable experience and I would love to come there once more.
The Hiding Place was one of the most dramatic, touching and fantastic films I have ever seen. When Bill Brown, the producer of The Hiding Place talked to us, I could feel the love that had been passed on to him from Corrie ten Boom, the main character of the movie. When Bill met Corrie ten Boom, he embarked on a spiritual journey. He told us about a real event that occurred with Corrie and a man while she was in Germany. The man walked up to her, immediately she recognized him as one of the German guards at the concentration camp during the war. It was the man that she saw beating her sister, Betsey, lying on the moist cold ground. The man said to her that after the war, he became a Christian and spent all of his time devoted to God; he asked Corrie for forgiveness. Even with the sudden hate she felt towards him, she prayed to God and asked God to rid of all the hatred in her and give her the love for forgiveness. My soul filled with the feelings of awe as to how a person could forgive someone after the certain things they had done. He also told us many events involving the film, The Hiding Place. They were stories of the people who wanted to hear the story of Corrie ten Boom told and contributed greatly to the making of the film. The spiritual stories of Corrie ten Boom inspired me to always try to forgive and have love in my heart. Bill is a very spiritual and humble man who has had unimaginable life-altering experiences.
For the past week leading up to her Birthday, we have been giving riddles for Ms. Enriquez to solve, and with every solved riddle, a gift. With each of the gifts, a letter was given to her for the final surprise. 2 months ago, we embarked on an educational learning journey to O'o Farms, owned by the Culombe Ohana. With a little doubt, Ms. Enriquez said one little abrupt sentence, " I want to come here for my Birthday and eat brick oven pizza." That one little sentence remained trapped in our minds. On Monday, with her gift, we gave her a letter R. On Tuesday, letter A, Wednesday, letter M, and Thursday, letter F. It spelt FARM. She leaped with joy as her eyes read the four letters put together.
The farm was amazing, we all arrived there after school today and prepared the pizza ingredients and the party decorations. When Ms. Enriquez arrived with Makana panting in the flatbed of her truck, we all serenaded her with a Happy Birthday. The bright expression on her face gave us satisfaction that we had made her Birthday as best as possible. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MS. ENRIQUEZ, WE LOVE YOU! Everything was transformed, as if we were in Rome, in the Vatican, attending the Holy Father's daily mass. It seemed more spiritually influencing and Holy, like it was 1600 years ago. I can swear that for a short period of time, I felt a very ancient peaceful warmth through my body, I was truly at rest. I could almost touch God's hand as his presence was around me. Commuion was drastically different, as we knelt before the tabernacle, the priest placed the body of Christ in our mouth. Canon Moreau, who led the mass was wearing many traditional grooms that just created that sacred spark in me. Ms. Enriquez met Canon Moreau last week, one day while we were doing morning prayer she encountered him on the steps with tears in his eyes looking at how beautiful our gestures were during prayer. He said he was there to do the Latin Mass and invited our class to the next Latin mass.
The mass seemed very spiritual and ancient to me, it was very interesting to see a mass done in a different culture. Thank you Father Moreau for inviting and hosting the mass for us, God bless you. There were many minds dwindling, thinking of the wildest of things as we spoke to them. By looking at the expressions on their faces, I could imagine different gears of all sizes working and rotating in all directions. We taught them about learning journeys and the various experiences we had. They also learned about Hokule'a and the voyage to sustainability and peace around the world. We displayed our website to them and described our blogs. Our blogs are an important aspect to the freedom of creativity we have in our class. After lunch, they stormed onto the playground and gathered around the tire swing. They just went crazy over the tire swing, the said the tire swing was one of the best things they encountered on their trip. I can tell that they received a very good impression from our class and school. I want to thank Mrs. Holaday, Bill, and all of St. Anthony's 6th graders for their time at our school, I hope all of you learned something new today and enjoyed your visit!
Today was our 8th grade class' first visit to Holy Nativity School. We all woke up at 4:30 in the morning to drive to the airport and catch our plane on time. As soon as we arrived in Oahu, Mrs. Ogata, the 6th grade teacher, picked us up and drove us to Holy Nativity School. I was stunned to see how similar their school was to ours. It had the same shaped courtyard and setting. When we met the 6th and 5th graders, they were such a cheerful little group. I was looking around their classroom and saw all the cool science equipment they had and all the activities hung up everywhere. We introduced ourselves and shared with them everything that we had done at our school. We even showed them how they could create their own website and blog about their adventures. Spending recess and lunch with them was extremely fun, especially when they had all these funky structures and a huge field. We also met Mrs. Overton, the 5th grade teacher, who had a very outgoing personality. She showed us around her classroom as well. The 5th grade class was three times as big as the 6th grade class. I could tell they were very interested in our school and everything we had shared with them.. I would like to thank Mrs. Ogata and Mrs. Overton for hosting us today and showing us their beautiful school and church.
Today was a mysterious and exciting day at the MACC. Along with the 7th grade class, our 8th grade class went on a Learning Journey and visited an exhibit called, "Taken By Wonder", created by West Bruce, an aspiring artist. The exhibit, an abandoned fort with a fictional background, was made out of recycled materials found on Maui. The interior of the fort was a very creative, elaborate, and wacky piece of architecture with secret rooms, bizarre models, and cool artifacts. There was even a secret fictional language encrypted all over the fort that we had to decode. After much time exploring the fort we went to an architecture class. We were creating our own mini forts with various materials provided by Jonathan, our educational guide. Each group at each table then put all of our structures together which resulted in remarkable outcomes! After the end of our Journey, we gave our exhibit director appreciation statements and took our structures home. I really enjoyed that class trip and I hope we will be able to do an activity like that again!
Today was the epic conclusion in our sailing adventures. We worked hard to get the Bics down into the water which was faster than any other completed task. As soon as we set off into the ocean Curtis supervised us and took us all the way out into the clear almost endless glistering water where various types of boats were docked. He put us to the test and had us tac and jive around all of the catamarans and trimarans. We all set a designated racing course around the boats. For the first two races the force of wind was nothing special. Then, there was a huge alteration in the wind that our Bics were propelled instantly into very fast speeds. During lunch we had a very delicious salad with peperoni and cheese pizzas. The week before we had been working on an appreciation project involving burgees ( sailing flags ) all strung up in a perfect line with beautiful drawings and letters of thanks. When we presented it to them and I can tell that they were speechless at first! Then there was a huge debate in where to hang the burgees in the Yacht Club. The volunteers and staff of the Lahaina Yacht Club were all very joyful that they could keep a piece of gratitude from us.
There is a tradition that on the last day of class, the LYC lets there students do whatever they want. After our class heard this immediately we said, "Pirating!" We paired up and started docking on each others Bics and capsizing them! We all had an amazing time and no one was hurt. After all the work was done in getting the Bics unrigged we all gathered together and came as one We were all pretty bummed that it was our last class Today was a community service day for our class. We arrived at school with our gear and set off into Honokowai valley in the back of Mrs. Stockham's truck.. It was a very different experience in the back of the pickup truck riding through the beautiful valley. As soon as we got deep into the valley and settled in with all our gear we performed a blessing with Puanani and prayed that we would all be safe during our visit. Puanani started off with an ancient Hawaiian chant. It was so powerful that I could sense the presence of all the positive and the wise spirits around me. We soon set off with various tools to a dried grass patch. We rooted all the dried and dead plants and completely cleared the area. After lunch we planted beautiful native plants and watered them. With all the hard work we put into our garden we knew that it would grow and flourish to be a unique class project. It was one of the times that our class cooperated together and became interconnected with the earth.
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