Reflection #1 Tuesday, June 12th, 2012

Today, during class, we learned a lot of valuable things. We learned the symbolic
importance of the kapu because it shows that we must learn and depend on our kapuna and
our peers. If we don’t, our language will not last. It may not seem very important to some but
we all must face the fact that if we don’t maintain our heritage and our culture, it will be gone
in less than a century. We also learned our basic vowels and consonants so we at least the
know the roots of all the words we will use. I really liked how the kumu showed us the process
of making poi and how we’ll be quizzed tomorrow on the questions that were presented in
class and the process of making the poi. It should be fun. I think that we’ll have a great summer
school and our class we be great.

Reflection #2 Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

Today, during class, we learned many things that seemed childish but eventually
displayed a daunting challenge. My sisters tried to show me my different body parts in the
same song but I always messed up. The numbers are probably going to show that they will be
the hardest of them all. I never studied Hawaiian numbers when I was in elementary because
I went to a school where only English was known. I have the first ten down but I can’t really
seem to put the extra part of the word into the larger part making it a larger number. That
will probably mess me up for a while but I’m going to study because like kumu said, “Practice,
practice, practice.” And I agree. Practice does in fact make perfect but only if you practice the
right material. If you don’t, you’ll be perfecting the wrong way of doing things and that won’t
get you very far.

Reflection #3 Sunday, June 14th, 2012

This was the first week of our summer school course. I really did enjoy it but a lot of the
things that we covered were very foreign to me. Before I came, I never knew almost any
Hawaiian words. Before I even came to this school, I had known no Hawaiian whatsoever. But
by joining this class, I now know some things and yet to learn more. On the first day of class, I
was nervous, knowing that I would look like a fool for not knowing any words. But I soon
realized that a lot of people didn’t know so I felt a lot better. The beginning of class was
somewhat relaxing because Kumu was working on his computer for a while. Afterwards, we
went out and watched a very interesting demonstration of how to create poi. The process is to
take some water and wet the board for which the kalo will be pounded against. Then, you take
the pohaku and pound the kalo in an almost scraping fashion but eventually leading up to
interweaving between pounding and wetting the board and the poi in process. After the initial
poi is done, you then pound it into a yet a finer poi and finally, serve it onto a type of leaf which
was taken around sampled by students. It was a fun exercise and we learned the ranks in our
families which actually make a lot of sense. Once we got back inside the classroom, we then
began practicing our simple questions. I didn’t get it at first but I don’t think that anyone really
did unless they knew Hawaiian before-hand. The phrases were very simple in English but when
spoken in Hawaiian posed a real challenge. The next day, we began testing. I had practiced the
day before for at least an hour. I had the test in the bag and Kumu said I had an ‘elima out
of ‘elima. Speaking of numbers, that same day, we had started to learn numbers. Many people
in the class knew ‘ekahi to ‘umi besides me. The elementary school I went to had no connection
to Hawaiian language or culture at all. When we tried to count to twenty, I was pretty much
mumbling the whole time. I had no idea what we were saying. When we had gone around the
class counting to 100, Kumu told us we had a test from zero to 100. But Kumu was generous
and didn’t give us the test the following day. The next two days sort of intertwined with each
other because we simply did almost the same thing but on Friday, we had a new assignment
that seems somewhat easy but also hard. Kumu had given us five more questions to answer
and they will be added to the list which we’ll be quizzed on Monday. I have to study, especially
the last question because it is long. Well, that was my week. I hope that everyone had a great
week as well.