A new beginning for the new year.

Aloha everyone, and welcome to my new blog!
Where to begin...so much has happened the last few weeks. I finished up my first semester at UH Hilo with A's in all of my classes. I then immediately flew home to spend three weeks with my family. Much of the time, I was working at my old job at Food 4 Less, which kept it from being a true vacation, but on the plus side earned me more than enough money to pay off my books for this semester. Since I am taking seven classes, six of which require books, that's a good thing.

Since someone will probably ask if I don't put it up here now, these are the classes I'm taking this semester: Principles of Astronomy II, Gravitation and Cosmology, Electromagnetism, Introduction to Modern Physics, Calculus IV, Partial Differential Equations, and Complex Variables and Analysis. (Note that Electromagnetism is not the same as the Electricity & Magnetism course I took last semester)

The last few days have been a bit of a jumble as I flew back to Hawai`i and have been getting adjusted and ready for school to start. I can still hardly believe it's tomorrow. Thankfully, I think I have everything ready. (I hope so, because I'm going up to Mauna Kea tonight for stargazing and imaging)

Going from cold to warm quickly is always a shock to me, and this time was no exception. The weather here is so different from Northern California. It's very dry this winter, I've been told, and the sun shines pretty much every day (whereas, in CA, I think I hadn't seen the sun since the 23rd). The air, however, is actually cool, and the Trade Winds are blowing, often at a decent speed. All in all, very nice, but still a bit of a shock to the system.

Although I realized pretty quickly last semester that I was essentially blogging in my emails, writing an 'actual' blog is still slightly intimidating. I've decided to start this up for a few reasons, however:

1. I don't like spamming your inboxes with too many emails, so I'd wait a long time between writing my email updates. That meant I'd sometimes be trying to recall details about something that happened over a week ago, which usually doesn't go so well. With a blog, you check it as frequently as you like, so I don't mind writing more frequently.
   
2. Because I was writing about so many things, my emails would usually be monstrously long. That made me a bit unwilling to write them, and they needed a large chunk of free time. Shorter updates more frequently is the goal of this blog.
3. Finally, with a blog I'll be able to weave pictures and even videos directly into my narrative, which should prove a bit more interesting.

Well, having said all that, I need to go get ready to head up Mauna Kea now. I hope you are all doing well, and keep watching for new things as I figure how this whole blogging thing works.

Aloha, a hui hou! (Goodbye, until next time!)

Edit: Well, turns out I'm not going up to Mauna Kea after all. Just as I was walking out the door, I got a call saying that the driver who was supposed to be there today couldn't make it, so I had no ride. I don't mind too much; I can certainly put the newly-free time to good use. Maybe next week.