Eat the Street!

Because I know I promised pictures. :)

Eat the Street Kapolei was on Saturday, April 14 at Kapolei High School. It was pretty packed, like graduation was happening. My boyfriend and I circled the football field like five times because we were so indecisive. In the end I got Belgian-style fries from Street Frites (pronounced like freeeeets). They give you a choice of these unique dipping sauces, like shoyu sugar, vanilla milkshake, bacon jam, garlic rosemary aioli and many others.

The fries were perfectly crisp from being fried twice and pretty salty, just the way I like it. 

I'm a huge fan of fries; they're like my ultimate comfort food with ice cream. And these were super yummy. Just looking at the picture makes me want more! 

They even come served in these cute printed cones for easy, one-hand carrying. We ate these while walking around Eat the Street, me holding the sauces while he held the fries. 

I realized I just rambled on about french fries for like three paragraphs. I'm at Starbucks right now, with writers block and a grumbling tummy. So french fries is definitely a start.

Anyways the next photo doesn't look nearly as good as it tasted!

We also found a food truck called Koi 808 that had great-sounding plate lunches with affordable prices. 

We were torn between getting the hamburger steak (60% ground beef, 40% ground bacon) with bacon gravy or the roast pork with mushrooms and bacon gravy. In the end we decided on the latter, pictured right. Pretty good choice, I must say! It came with a lot too, we chose one scoop brown, one scoop white rice and tossed salad. 

Anyways, I love posting food photos and blogging about them (show me some of yours too!). This summer I plan to start a baking series. Stay tuned! :)

crunch time.

I absolutely haaaate the final weeks of school. It's like summer is so close yet so far away. I have so many things to do within the next three weeks, but I'm not going to bore my fellow bloggers with that. Instead since I've been super stressed and overwhelmed I decided to share a few tips on how to beat final exam stress, taken from College Fashion.

1. Avoid stressful people.Stress actually is contagious. During exam week, resist the urge to have a study session with your super-tense friend, especially if she’s complaining about all the work she has to do and breaking pencils all over the place. Her stress will only add to your stress. 
2. Eat healthy and exercise.
This seems like a no-brainer, but it’s a wonder how many people forget it. Skip the sugar, which will make you crash, and go for snacks like granola bars, healthy cereal or fruits and veggies to keep your blood sugar stable. If you’re studying for a long period of time, eat some protein too. Also, try to get some form of exercise. Even a 10 minute walk will leave you calmer and more focused.  
3. Just say NO.
I don’t mean to drugs, although I’m not recommending them or anything. What you need to say no to are the people who want to take up your time. There will probably be a friend who needs to talk to you for hours about her life, or a keg party the night before your final, and if you say yes, you’ll probably be tempted to blow off studying. Resist the urge. Say no to the distractions and be selfish for a day. You want a good GPA, right?
4. Force yourself to take breaks.
For every hour or so that you work, take a 10 or 15 minute break. Let yourself do whatever you want (check Facebook, check out that guy sitting nearby, stare off into space, call a friend, etc.) for those 10-15 mins, then start working again. This gives your brain a little rest and will help keep you more focused when you are actually doing work.
5. Visualize it all going right.
This is actually my favorite tip of all, even though it sounds kind of nuts. Imagine yourself taking the test and feeling confident that you know all the information. Picture getting all of the answers right, and focus on how relaxed you feel. Then picture the A on your test paper. When you imagine a happy ending, that’s often what happens, because you make the decisions that lead to it without even realizing.
6. If you’ve studied all you can, get up your confidence!When test-time rolls around, it’s time to get yourself into confidence mode. You’ve prepared as much as you could, and now it’s time to ace the test. The tip here is to do whatever works to convince yourself you are going to do really well. Again, I know this tip sounds a little crazy but you just have to try it for yourself. I think you’ll like the results.

Secretly, sometimes I can be that "super-tense" friend. So I need to surround myself with extra calm people in order to calm myself down. Coffee works too. My stress food is actually flaming hot cheetos, which probably isn't the healthiest food but they're so addicting. When I study I love to snack because, I know it's silly but, I think of them as little tiny breaks for my brain, haha. I never really have to force myself to breaks because for me I usually have a problem with too many breaks too often. I've found that I need to just sit, focus, finish (or complete enough) then watch an episode of How I Met Your Mother or if I'm hungry find some food, and then do it all again.
I like to schedule my study times so when people invite me to things I can easily tell them no, however I am easily persuaded to do something else than study but the final weeks of the semester is when things get serious.
A lot of the other sites said to get enough sleep. I'm lucky if I get six hours on weeknights. Sometimes it's because I'm interning, or I have to wake up ridiculously early, or I just can't sleep. Recently my mind doesn't stop thinking of more and more things I have to do and so in bed it's hard for me to just relax (sometimes). Some nights I just instantly fall asleep, but for the nights I toss and turn I've learned that lavender oil works wonders. My mom gave it to me because I didn't want to take sleepy medicine and the lavender scent is supposed to relax you. I just open the bottle and smell it and I'm so sleepy after. Hope those tips help!
I hope everyone has a great rest of the semester! Happy almost weekend! :)

it's finally FRIDAY!

I've been waiting for Friday for what seems like forever. So I told myself, as I pretty much always do, that I wasn't going to spend money this weekend but guess what's coming to Kapolei? EAT THE STREET! So tomorrow after I sleep in and attempt to do homework, that is where I'll be! I've never been to an Eat the Street event before so I'm pretty excited. Just looking at the vendor list gives me way way way too many choices and being the most indecisive person ever, I'll never decide what to eat. But I love that all my choices will be in one place. 
Have you guys ever been to Eat the Street? Let me know if there's anything I should definitely try.
I'll also bring my camera with me so I can post photos in my next blog post.
Here's more info if you're curious: http://www.streetgrindz.com/eat-the-street-kapolei-2/
I hope you all have a yummy and funny weekend! (:

Everyone needs a laugh, here's one for today. :)

Are you so in love with this coke? Jords sure is.

This is my best friend Jordan, probably the most random and creative person I know. When I told him I had to create a commercial for my video class he thought of doing a pest control one, dressing up as cockroaches and doing kung fu. But that was a little too hard for me to try and film. Instead this was a lot easier and funnier because I love commercials with songs in them. 
We're always making up random songs so I thought I'd let him just do that for my commercial. He wrote the remixed lyrics one day, we recorded them the next day and shot the video the day after. So it's definitely not the best, but I still laugh when I watch it. It was a lot of fun to do but I've learned that video recording is so not my thing. 
But yay! Now I just have one more video project to go! It's a documentary, which after writing about the pinwheels for child abuse prevention, I think I want to do it on child abuse and what a horrible problem it is. What do you think?

Behind the Scenes with Olena Heu

During my internship at KHON2 this semester, I've met almost all of the reporters (except the weekend ones) but by far my favorite is Olena. When I first started and didn't know much she really helped me get used to things at the station. I thought she'd be a perfect person to feature as the subject of my photo story.

Throughout the past semester I've had the privilege of following her on assignments. We first went to a doctor's office where we interviewed the mother of a child who had a seizure a few years ago, was in a coma and is now doing better. They were hosting a fundraiser that weekend to raise money to cover the medical costs. I learned a lot by watching her interview the mother about a sensitive subject. Then I interviewed the doctor and got tips from her along the way. Since then, I've seen how much she cares about people, even just those she's just met. We went to a street in Aina Haina that was flooded after the heavy rains and while interviewing a home owner there she made a lot of calls and went out of her way to get them help. Instead of just getting interviews for a good story, I learned that building relationships with people is way more satisfying. 

After filming this interview, we learned that she had won an award for a story on a Marine coming home who had never met his baby. Congratulations! She later told me that when she became a reporter one of her goals was not only to be 'the reporter that when she walked in people would know that she would get a great story,' but to be an award-winning reporter. Congratulations x2! What a great accomplishment for such a deserving reporter. I'm hoping that one day I'll be able to do what she does. Who knows, maybe one day you'll see us on the news together. :) 

Throughout this experience I've learned so much that I wouldn't have necessarily learned from a book or in class. It's been one that I definitely don't want to end. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the photo story! Let me know what you think! :)

back to the grind.

Spring break was waaaay too short. This adjustment back to school is so not my favorite. Unfortunately I got almost no homework done this break, but hey we all deserve a break every once in awhile. Anyway, I hope all of you enjoyed the short break from school. I sure did. My favorite part? Sleeping in. It's a once-a-week luxury for me that I got to enjoy almost everyday! No coffee needed this week. :) Here's a few of the highlights of my break.

 "If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends." Karaoke was crazy fun with these kids. Our room for 20 people was upgraded for free to a room for 60. It was a party room for sure. 

My not-so-baby cousin had a birthday party at the Kroc Center so the boyfriend and I were on baby duty watching the kids in the kiddie pool. After they got tired we got to ride the water slides, so fun! 


We also went on a Bubbies date because I was craaaving mochi ice cream. My favorite! 


Sleeping in and eating were pretty much my favorite parts of spring break. Now it's back to waking up early, catching up with homework I was supposed to do but didn't and hardly any time to paint my nails. Oh well, just a few more weeks until summer time! :)