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)