Hawaii: My Second Semester OR The Semester With the World's Craziest Roommates (including myself)

My second semester at BYU-Hawaii was a heck of a lot more fun than the first one. I finally started to live - and to enjoy the fact that I lived on a beautiful island.

Shout-out to my British Sistah!!

My first step was to move out of my tiny, tiny dorm room (seriously, they were about the same size as a walk-in closet, and you had to share it with another person), and into a house with four other girls. Since I didn't go home over the Christmas break, I was the first one into the house. I fell in love with the place. I missed it when I was away from it. I found so much peace and contentment being in that home - for the first time in probably my entire life, I finally felt like I had found..... home. 

My little bed that I hardly ever slept in because I was always sleeping with my roommate. 

Well shortly thereafter I met the four girls I was going to spend the next few months with. I liked them all right away, and to this day I still love them. They were all so different. I know we didn't always get along (I suppose that's pretty typical for 5 girls living in one house, right?) but man I wouldn't have traded a single one of them. I don't know if any of my roommates read this blog, but if you do I hope you know I LOVE YOU. And please don't hate me for sharing these crazy stories about us.....  You have to admit, these stories are too priceless to not be told. I will try to keep them as anonymous as possible, out of respect to them, and I won't post any photos of my roomies.

So, without further ado, here are just some of the things we had going on in that house of crazy women:

- One day I came home to one of my roommates crying because she thought she had Toxic Shock Syndrome. Because she had a tampon in all day.

- One of my roommates walked around the house in her underwear, no matter the time of day.

- One of my roommates changed from regular clothes to tiny booty shorts when she knew our (young, attractive) home-teachers were coming over to (try to) give us a spiritual message.

- One of my roommates referred to herself as "Beyonce - AKA The Golden Booty Goddess." She would leave me notes like this on my bed:

Or give me coupons like this for my birthday:

- One of my roommates was lactose intolerant. We always knew when she ate ice cream because she would stink up the entire house.

- One of my roommates liked to steal my clothes without asking. It used to bug the crap out of me. I would confront her about it and sometimes she would admit to it, sometimes she would deny it. But I finally caught her when I saw a picture of her posted on Facebook wearing one of my shirts.

- I slept with one of my roommates almost every single night. Yes, in the same bed. No matter what. And no we aren't lesbians.

- One of my roommates was a vegetarian and we would always yell at her when she microwaved her Bocca burgers because they smelled like farts.

- I tried to go clubbing with one of my roommates on two different occasions, and both times we failed. Both times we got lost there and back, eventually found our way, chickened out, tried to find a hotel to stay in, and then just ended up driving home at 3am.

- One of my roommates liked to call me Multiple Sclerosis because my initials were M.S. Once she called me that on Facebook and she got yelled at by someone who really had MS.

- We kept a quote wall up, and I wish I still had those papers but I don't. Here are a few, though:
"I kill you."
"What's that?"
"I want that!"
"Touch my black face."
"You look so hot right now."
"What are you wearing?"
"Word to your mother"
"Motherrrrrr"
And, anytime someone didn't hear what you said, and asked, "What?" you just simply replied, "I said I like your shirt."

But the winner of them all?

- One of my roommates killed a baby chick. And it was even the vegetarian roommate.
Here's what happened. Chickens run around everywhere on Oahu, and this particular roommate thought it would be fun to have a baby chick as a pet, because they are so cute and fluffy? I'm not really sure. So she caught one, brought it home, and named it Two-Ply because he was going to live in a toilet paper box. That night I went to bed, as usual, in my other roommate's bed. When we woke the next morning, we were confronted by our Roomie. She said, "I have to tell you something, and you're going to think I'm a terrible person." Needless to say, we were a little freaked out and assured her it was going to be okay. She then proceeded to tell us that little Two-Ply had kept her up all night with his chirping, and by 5 in the morning,she had, quite literally, gone a little crazy from not sleeping.
"So, what did you do?" I asked.
"I took him to the ocean," she replied.
Now, this didn't sink in all the way at first. "Oh good, she set him free," I thought.
But then she continued. "I mean, I thought about putting him out in my car but I thought it'd get too hot in there and he'd suffocate. And then I read online that once you get your human scent on the chick, the mama hen won't take him back. So if I just let him loose, he'd die anyway."
I stared at her. A minute ticked by. And then it finally clicked.
"........What do you mean you 'took him to the ocean'?"
"That's what I'm saying! I drowned him in the ocean! I thought it would be the easiest way to do it."
My eyes grew to the size of my now-open mouth as I realized that my roommate was in fact a Chick-Killer.
"You drowned a baby chick?????" Of all the possible things you could do!!! I was floored. My other two roommates heard the news and were so distraught they spent the rest of the morning at the beach, trying to see if they could find its dead body washed up on shore (which was, yes, another crazy thing to do).




So you see? I wasn't lying about the crazy roommates (and again, roomies, if you're reading this, I LOVE YOU! Yes, even you, Chick Killer!) And even with all this chaos going on in my home, I still managed to declare a major (English!), maintain my babysitting job and photographer job, be President of the English Circle Club, date some boys (including my now-husband!), hike all over Oahu, work on my tan, eat Acai bowls as often as I could, and snorkel with the sea turtles. I even started a list of things I wanted to do before I left:

The best part about my second semester - besides meeting my husband - was when my "Little Sister" aka best friend from high school came to visit me. 

I took her out to eat the night she flew in. As soon as the waiter took our order, she got so excited she flung out her arms to give me a hug - she ended up Chuck-Norris-Punching her glass and shattered it everywhere. To this day I still have no idea how she did that, other than sheer excitement to see me.

She stayed for a week, we went exploring and dancing and hiking and swimming and she got FRIED to the max. We had to rub ice cubes and aloe vera all over her body and set her in front of our fan.

 She met my boyfriend (Adam), and she told me she'd kick my butt if I didn't marry him. Good thing I listened :)

 Man, it was the life. You'll have to wait for another post to read about meeting Adam, because this one is already getting too long. Until then, internet!