On the road again.

The movers packed up everything except Nate's and my stuff. So our whole house was empty (for the most part) for a couple days. My room was messy and unorganized and cluttered with junk, but the rest of the house had one or two things in each room. 

On a Wednesday morning, we hit the road and headed east.

Every 2-3 hours, we traded drivers.

Elias even had his turn. ;)

Bright and early and ready to go.

 Kai is a great ipod DJ. :)

There's the path we took.

Washington --> Idaho --> Montana --> North Dakota

I don't remember what state we were in when Nate used his long arms to take this picture, 

but I'm thinking it was Montana.

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Glacier National Park was our one and only major stop along the way.

Our U-Haul truck was too long by a foot. 12 INCHES. oh goodness... so we weren't able to drive through the park. We could only drive about 5 minutes into the park and then turn around. We didn't even see glaciers. 

It's alright though. The views we did see were amazing!

I think their gift shop should have had shirt that said, "I went to Glacier National Park... 

and didn't see any glaciers." 

I would have bought it... 

Huckleberry smoothie- it hits the spot.

I could gaze at this view all day long.

I think this was taken in Montana too.

My first attempt at the gaga bow. :)

The start to Josiah's Chaco tan. He's so proud! :)

It's 103 degrees. No big deal.

We're so cool. 

And we're now pros when it comes to road tripping.

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About 5 days after leaving Washington, we make it to Grand Forks, North Dakota.

My dad flew to GF a few weeks before we got there to look at apartments, so when we got there, we were able to move in the next day! 

And so the unpacking begins! It was extremely hot outside, so bringing boxes and boxes and boxes and more boxes up to the third level of an apartment complex wasn't exactly glamorous...

Thankfully, we had an elevator! :D

It took awhile to gain enough courage to bring the couch up... Ha!

This is why it takes me so long to unpack... ;) 

I block it ALL out with a mattress.

the whole moving thing

Even though I've done it 4 times in the last 7 years,

this is how I felt. A little overwhelmed. A little nervous.

Look at all that junk...

But eventually everything works out and everything finds its way into boxes
(with help from my mom.) Thanks mom! :)

moving on & moving

as the denial wore away and the uncertainty of what i would do this coming fall burned more and more in the back front of my head, i scrambled for options. do i move to hawaii with my family? do i not? do i try to find a school in wa? what do i do?

before i had an answer from the program, my plan was to move to hawaii if the dental hygiene was a no. in other words, hawaii was the 'failure' route- if that makes sense. so when the answer was no, i was extremely against moving there. i spent long nights searching schools/other degrees in washington: radiology and diagnostic medical sonography (ultrasound stuff). i wanted to stay in the amazing wa state. i only needed to take two more classes to apply to the sonography school, but they were consecutive classes- meaning i would need to take one and then the other. that would have taken time and money. scratch that plan.

back to the drawing board. 

what to do. what to do. what to do.

and then one night it hit me...

WHAT IF I GO TO NORTH DAKOTA WITH MY BROTHER?!

whoa, this could be cool. 

(he had applied months in advance for the aviation program.)

ever since i visited a 'real' college, the university of washington, i had a little incentive to go to a university. the campus was beautiful. i think that once you attend for a few years, walk the halls, study your butt off, and receive a diploma from a university, a little bit of your heart stays there. you have a little pride in your school. at least this is what i think happens.

so i looked through the university of north dakota's (und's) catalog. what degree can a get in the medical field that isn't a doctor or nurse? and is there any degree i can finish in 2 or 3 years? 

medical laboratory science caught my eye. a 4-year degree, but from the list of classes required- it looked like i had already taken a quarter of them. one year = done. :)

I applied and was accepted* within a couple weeks.

that was easy... really easy. 

*let me clarify- when i say accepted, i'm talking about und, not medical laboratory science (mls). after about a year, i'll apply to the mls program, but supposedly it isn't hard to get into. i'm hoping that is true.

and then i had second thoughts... why am i moving to north dakota? why am i leaving most of my family (5 out of the 7)? i want to live in hawaii now. why? i had a few meltdowns; for a week or two, i was literally dead-set on hawaii. but i finally realized i was just scared about it new change. and i finally accepted that fact, and it helped. a lot. 

so back to north dakota. yeah... north dakota. NEVER in my wildest dreams had i ever thought about the idea of going there... moving there. ever. just a few months ago, it would have been more likely for me to visit australia or new zealand than to move to this northern very-hot-at-the-moment state. crazy how God works, huh?

more than just a few people have asked me why und (university of north dakota).  people from washington and people from und think I'm crazy. with confused faces, they ask, "so, why north dakota?" which is short for: why did you choose to come to a school in a super flat and boring state? my doctor jokingly said, "i didn't know there were schools in nd." and he asked if i was going to school for buffalo herding. he's a character, but he's almost right. this place is boring.

i don't really have a good answer for these people. but i do know God has a reason for all of this. He brought me here for some reason. i don't quite know why yet. all i know is i'm excited to find out. all my other plans have fallen through; this one hasn't, so there is a reason. 

as most of my family is hawaii bound, nate and i are north dakota bound. 

with the help from friends, we loaded up a car & u-haul truck and hit the road. 

1,500 miles, 5 days, and 4 states later, we enter grand forks, north dakota.

my mom and three other brothers did the trip too. so the vehicle/driver ratio was 2:3. 

while we're in the midwest, we're visiting family in minnesota/wisconsin/illinois/canada. 

busy busy busy summer! i can't stress enough how much driving we're doing. 

it's a good thing i don't mind road trips/driving. :)

we like hanging out in the back of the u-haul. (before it was loaded with mine and nate's junk.)

we said hi to napoleon and kip and tina and deb and pedro and uncle rico :)

good thing we weren't planning on staying...

oh, the life of a trucker. ;)

(doesn't my baby brother's car seat adds a little something to this picture? hmmm)

not as confused

A while back, I blogged about my disappointment in not being accepted to the dental hygiene program in Washington State- click here to read it. I was extremely confused and, well, disappointed. For awhile, I lived in denial. I didn't want to believe the letter they sent me. How was it possible that they wouldn't accept a student with a 3.96 GPA and above average test scores?

A few days before.

I didn't get an email with my test score numbers, so I went to the testing center, and asked the lady at the desk what my scores were. She looked them up and printed them out on a paper. All three scores were above average. Excitement. Hope.

I get 'the letter'...

Fast forward a couple weeks.


I'm finally able to get an appointment with the director of the program. She looks at my transcript and test scores on her computer. Then, she starts the I'm-sorry-you-failed speech. Ok, she wasn't that harsh, but it seemed that way. I cut her off before she could finish it by handing her the paper with my test scores. Then, she was confused.

 "With scores like this, you should be in the program," she said.

 "Really?!" I'm shocked, but not ready to believe it. I already accepted the fact that I'm not in, and I don't want to be let down again.

 "Well, I don't want to take away someone else's opportunity to be in the program," I said. (They only accept 20 students per year.)

 "Oh no, I would have to make an exception and have 21 people in the program."

My excitement is rising, but I stay composed. She still has to talk to the testing center to figure this whole mess out. I leave her office a little happier than when I walked in. I call my mom and tell her the whole situation, and then I tell my brother the whole story as we drive home from school. I know my happiness can flee at any moment with a simple phone call, so I keep myself level-minded.

And as we're driving home, I get that phone call. It's a lady from the testing center- the one who gave me that paper with the scores on it a few weeks back. She apologized as much as she could. She probably said 'I apologize' and 'I'm sorry' 15 times during our 2 minute conversation. The story goes that when I went to see her in person, she gave me the scores of a different person. Yeah. Big mistake. I'm not mad at her though. It's probably because I stayed level-headed. I knew something was up, something I couldn't fix. People I've talked to say I should be mad at her error and at the whole program. But why? I was over it a long time ago. No reason to get upset. It wasn't God's plan, and I'm not arguing with Him. One things for sure, I'm not confused anymore. :) To this day, I don't know my scores, and I'd like to keep it that way. I honestly don't want to see how badly I did on them. Some things are better kept a secret. ;)

I'm planning on blogging about my next steps in this journey called life soon. Stay tuned.

awk and awe 7/7/12

Hello, blogging world! Long time no see. I wasn't able to get on my laptop/internet these past couple of weeks. /: And if that's not a lame enough excuse, then I'll list some more excuses for not posting...

-the blogger website doesn't work very well on my tiny iphone screen. 

-my brother and I are in the process of moving to North Dakota (we drove there from Washington), while my parents and other three brothers move to Hawaii. 

-my brother and I have been trying to figure out class transferability and schedules. (We both have associate degrees, but we're kind of coming in as freshmen...)

Yes, this summer has been the most chaotic and complicated years for our family yet. 

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Now, onto the fun stuff :)

the awkward
1. taping my hair to boxes while packing up our stuff x259787. ouch.        
2. seeing this font (Courier) on other blogs and 1) freak out, because my microbiology lecture notes were printed in this font.:P And 2) feel surprised, because I can pronounce everything. There aren't words like Staplococcus aureus or Schistosoma or Helicobacter pylori. haha!
3. using my brother's baby shower cards for my graduation thank you notes. Yay for baby blue.
4. walking from the house to the car and getting bit by four-ish mosquitoes, and then killing five that followed me into the car-- all while using my iphone light as a way to find those evil bloodsuckers. hello Minnesota.
5. Leaving our couch in the garage because it's too big and bulky (and just NOT worth the pain of bringing down the alley, through small doorways, and up three stories to our apartment...) 

and

the awesome
1. writing and sending 29ish thank you cards. Finally done! :D
2. watching my baby brother yawn.
3. safely driving from Washington State to North Dakota in a U-Haul!
4. visiting family that we only see every 2-3 years.
5. not living in a dorm.