Graduating from BYU Hawaii

Graduating from BYU Hawaii was one of the happiest and saddest times in my life. Happiest, because Sam was coming home from his mission 2 weeks later. Oh and I was done with my student teaching! But saddest, because I had to leave Hawaii, which had become my bsolute favorite place in the world during the past 5 years -yes 5 years, I took my time :) AND I was having to leave one of my absolute favorite people in the world, my sister and roommate, Ashley. Ashley and I were roommates for a year and a half and spent just about every minute together. We bascally did no schoolwork and spent all our time at the beach. A few funny memories:

1. Ashley and I worked in the cafeteria at BYUH. We were in charge of "prepping" the meals, which basically meant cutting vegetables and occasionally huge portions of gross meat. Ashley hated when we had to chop onions, because we would have to do hundreds and so our hands would reak of onions for days. So when our boss, Leva, told us to do onions one afternoon, I went on about how Ashley would be so excited because onions were her favorite thing to do. So Leva saved the onions for us from then on, and we got to do them just about every shift. We smelt of onions from then on.

2. Another cafeteria story..... we had this HUGE disposal that was used for everything. It was about the size of one of those big trash bins at the park. It had a big, heavy duty, curtain over the front of it, so that food wouldn't splatter everywhere. I was dumping a lot of something one afternoon, and I accidentally knocked the curtain in the disposal. There was no way I was getting my hand chopped off and going after the thing, so I casually walked off like nothing had happened. A minute later the disopsal was making all sorts of very loud, horrible sounds and everyone was running over and yelling panicked, "The curtain's in the disposal!!!" Luckily everyone was around the disposal except me and Ashley so I could tell her I had done it, and no one was around to see us cracking up.

3. Last cafeteria story... there was a huge walk in refrigerater where they kept the prepped food for the next days meal, along with 2 days of dessert trays. At least twice during our shuft Ashley and I would sneak back and cram as many desserts as we oculd down our throats. Occasionally someoone would walk in while we were stuffing ourselves and we would throw our plate to the side, smile with our cheeks stuffed with desserts, and hope they didn't notice (yeah right). Our favorites: Rice krispie treats, chocolate mouse pie, choclate haupia pie,...the list is too long.

4. We didn't have a car, so we either took the bus everywhere with a bunch of crazies, walked, or orde our rusty bikes. We walked all the way to Castles, on the beach, with our huge longboards. Crazy to think about. We rode our bikes all the way to Haliewa to get shaved ice (over 25 miles each way!). Our first year we either walked or rode our bikes to Hukilau every single day.

5. Foodland had a rack that they would set out every night, that had reduced priced bakery items on it. This was the highlight of every night for us. We would head over at 7 and wait for that rack to come out, looking for a Ted's Chocolate Haupia Pie.

6. We only ate about 4 different thigns during the whole year and a half: cereal, bean burrtios, ravioli, and choclate cake mix cookies.

7. While I was student teaching at Waialua High School, I was the cross country coach. On my team was Jason Oga, a very nice but mentally slow kid. Ashley would go to the meets and help me, and Jason was soon in love with her. It was soon around the school that he was taking her to the prom. Jason loved telling us about his dates, in which he would pick up the girl wearing a white tux with a big heart stitched on the back... you can imagine the rest. On our last day of cross country he very tearfully got down on one knee and sang a Boys2Men song to me and Julia.