Pentathalon Semester 4

I chose this movie because it relates to my life. The movie is about two Native Hawaiian children who grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and they move back to Hawaii for a summer. Because I live in Hawaii, I am familiar with the culture and land, and I believe the movie portrayed Hawaii life inaccurately. The actors constantly say “mahalo”, but people in Hawaii rarely say mahalo. Normally when people are giving thanks they say “thank you” not mahalo. Furthermore, when their grandfather is in the hospital, he has a Kanaka Maoli, the native Hawaiian flag, crumbled up next to him. That is extremely disrespectful.The native Hawaiians would never scrunch up their flag. Additionally, the geographical aspect of the movie is normally inconsistent. For example, the children may be on the North Shore of Oahu, get in a car and drive for five minutes, and then be in Honolulu. To get from the north side of Oahu to the south side of Oahu takes at least an hour not five minutes.

On a positive note, the actors were played by Native Hawaiian actors which was exciting for my community. This movie is actually popular in Hawaii because our community is thrilled finally to have Native Hawaiians in a movie. Another movie from a couple years ago, Aloha, cast Emma Stone, a caucasian, as a Native Hawaiian pilot. People in Hawaii were furious at the “whitewashing”.

Because I was a leader of this event, I am supposed to compare and contrast the two groups that came into my breakout room since that is what Heather and Harold requested.

For the event, the leaders gave a quick introduction to the participants at the beginning. The participants were told they would spend 30 mins in the breakout room of their choice and then spend the last 30 mins of the event in a different breakout room of their choice. 

I was a leader of the guessing song breakout rooms, and led two different groups. The first breakout room with the group was messy and stressful. We initially started with 14 people in our room then in the last 6 minutes another person joined, but they could not participate because our activity only allowed 14 members. Furthermore, we ran out of time because we wasted at least 10 minutes introducing ourselves in the beginning.

The second round with the second group went much better, and we finished with 6 minutes before the breakout room ended because we cut the introductions part. There was no confusion since we kept 11 members the whole time and the participants clearly enjoyed themselves. 

I enjoyed leading the event because I like offering students fun activities to interact with their peers. Unfortunately, my brain was fried after the event because for the hour-long event, I was constantly attending to an issue or leading a part of the event. The hour flew by because I was constantly working. Moreover, the event would have been significantly easier to hold in-person because there were some difficulties with Zoom. For example, the leaders struggled to efficiently communicate over Zoom and Group Me, but I think we would have easily been able to communicate in person.

I completed one of the art therapy projects that is linked to the pentathlon instructions page titled “Only Use Colors That Calm You”. Initially, I chose this project because I wanted to start my spring break with a relaxing activity, and luckily I enjoyed the project. Specifically, I liked seeing a boring white piece of paper transform into artwork full of color is an exciting process for me. Simply put, turning something plain into a stunning piece is a process that I love. That is why I am an artist and participate in the Arts Scholars program. 

For my artwork, I created two lovers holding each other intensely because the love in my life keeps me relaxed, and I wanted to depict a scene that symbolizes calmness to me. For color strength, I choose very watered-down watercolor pigments, so my colors would have a dull effect and appear not intensive to convey a laid-back vibe. When arriving at my decision for color choices, I mainly picked hues that are calming according to the article attached to the project. For example, from the article I learned that blue is a relaxing color to look at, so I painted the color on the boy's shirt. Also, I learned that red can have an angering effect. However, I hypothesized that if I used a very watered down red, the color would actually have a calming effect because the color would be very pale and light. Based on my personal experience, I believe my hypothesis to be true.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed creating a piece of artwork focused on the idea of calmness.