E Komo Mai to Washington!

Alright, so now for the "fun post" about my trip to the mainland.

I was so excited to go, despite the fact that Mark had passed away... For the few days prior to my going, I absolutely could not concentrate on anything. There were a few nights where there were girls in my room that just sat there and stared at me being excited and freaking out and happy and whatnot....it was probably pretty comical. I almost told Brandon I was coming so many times, and then I'd catch myself. SO CLOSE! Anyway...

Tuesday night, Teresa and Leilani and Thomas and I drove down to the airport and Thomas flew out to Utah and I flew out to Washington. It was a lot of fun, spending time with just Thomas in an airport going to Starbucks and talking stories and just kinda cruising. But then we had to go our separate ways to our own destinations, and I started missing him a lot. He's kind of been my rock here at BYUH. He's got this awesome calming quality that just makes you want to be near him all the time. It's an amazing talent that I wish I posessed. Thomas and I are really special friends and I thoroughly enjoy spending time with him.

So I got on my flight, which left Tuesday night (oct 16) at 9:00pm HST (12:00am PST) and I was so stoked, I didn't want to sleep. After we were in the air, I pulled out my scriptures and read the next lesson for the religion class I was going to miss, and I read several chapters of the scriptures, and then the in-flight movie started playing, and it was Evan Almighty. I was kind of wary about it, because I had seen Bruce Almighty and I did not enjoy that one at all, and I didn't really like Evan Almighty that much either, but I fell asleep in the middle of it. I woke up only an hour later, and decided to continue working on homework, since I don't sleep much (and if I do, it's not good sleep) on airplanes. We pulled into SEATAC about half an hour early, so I got off the plane, got my bag, and went to the bathroom, and then stepped outside into typical Western Washington weather in the month of October, and at about 5:45am--cold, rainy, dark. Mom and Dad picked me up, and we drove back to Bellingham, and I could not sleep the entire way, I was too excited and amazed by the big city and all the cars and things. I didn't realize a lot of things, coming to La'ie from Bellingham, but going back to Seattle from Honolulu is a huge culture shock. There's so much light pollution and so many people and such a lack of natural beauty. Dont' get me wrong--I think Western Washington is GORGEOUS. It's just that here in La'ie, it's very dark and quiet at night, not a lot of traffic, the town only has about 6,000 people in it, and you walk everywhere. In Seattle and on I-5, it's just about 200% opposite.

So that was the beginning of my Wednesday--mainland culture shock. It didn't last long, as my excitement about being home overcame any feelings of awe. I got to Bellingham, and was so excited to be home. I freshened up at home, and then went back to Squalicum High School to see Mayers and Bergman and Wisness. I was so excited to see them, it was a lot of fun. I particularly miss the time that I used to spend with Mayers, just talking about stuff. He and I became really good friends and he was always someone I could talk to. I honestly cannot even begin to describe how I feel about that man. And when I walked into choir to see Wisness, it happened to be Concert Choir, so my brother was there and I gave him a huge hug, and then Maren came in and was like "LANEA!!!" and so she and I freaked out together and she was amazed at "how tan" I am... Then I went to Les Schwab to pick up Ryan to go and meet Brandon for breakfast, but then Brandon didn't show because he wanted to sleep longer because he had to go to work at 2pm....and keep in mind, he didn't know I was there.....Ryan had been lying to him for about 2 weeks and had cooked up a story about how they were going to take Heather to breakfast because Brandon couldn't go to the funeral.... anyway! So it was just Ryan and me for breakfast, and then I went to the funeral and bawled my eyes out and got to see a lot of people that I hadn't planned on being able to see. After the funeral, Lyzz came over to my house and we decided that between the funeral and the family dinner was a good time to go suprise Brandon, especially since he had to go to work at 2:00.

So I called Ryan, and Brandon was still at home, so Lyzz and I got in the car and drove out to Blaine to Ryan's house.... we snuck in through the garage and the kitchen and down the stairs, and the entire time, Lyzz was videorecording on my camera. So she pushes open the door to the room the boys were in, and announces "and now for something completely different." and I walked in behind her. However, Brandon was sitting on the couch and had a baseball hat pulled low over his eyes, so he didn't see me at first.... and he just asked "Lyzz, what are you doing here?" and she walks over to him, still videorecording, and says "oh, gee, I don't know, you might want to take your hat off though" and he's like "no, not really" so she took it off for him, and he looked up and saw me and he just looked at me and said "WHAT THE HELL!?!?!?!?" I just started laughing really hard because I thought it was funny, and then Ryan started laughing and I think Ryan's laugh is really funny, so I started laughing at that too...I was laughing so hard I thought I was going to die. Anyway, Ryan's like "yeah, man, this is why I wanted you to come to breakfast" and Brandon's just totally confused looking around at everybody and so I walked over and gave him a huge hug and then lyzz stopped recording, and we just kinda sat there, and Brandon was totally in shock, and just didn't really have anything to say, and he had to go to work like 5 minutes later, so the rest of the afternoon was pretty much uneventful...

After that, Ryan and Lyzz and I went to the family-and-close-friends dinner, and got to see and talk to Heather and Deb, and Deb walked up and gave me a hug and started crying on my shoulder and I was thinking "oh, wait a second, hold on!" because I totally wasn't ready to comfort her, and I felt bad...and she was saying "you missed our big boy, lanea" and I wanted to cry, and then Heather yelled "mom, stop crying, you're going to make me cry!" and so she stopped crying and stuff, but it was hard. We ate dinner and looked around at pictures and a slide show that John made and that made me cry too... The rest of the day was spent at the mall with Lyzz and Sam and then at the SQHS Choir Concert and at Applebee's (which I haven't been to in months). I was up until about 1am, which means that between Tuesday and Wednesday, I got 1 hour of sleep in the course of 42 hours. I was exhausted. That night I only slept for about 7 hours, too, because I got up and started doing things with people the next day.... so around 8 hours of sleep in 2 1/2 days. YIKES.

Thursday, I went to lunch with Maren at Our House Cafe and it was sooooooooooo good, holy cow. Then Emily's family came up to visit, so I spent a few hours with them, and then Brandon and Ryan and Heather and I went to Canada to dinner and then to the Colossus to see Game Plan and that was good. We didn't get back until pretty late that night either. Brandon and I did a lot of talking and seemed to bond a lot more.

Friday was my cruising day, where I did pretty much nothing all day long because Brandon was sleeping and Ryan was working and Heather was busy doing stuff. Friday night, though, my family took me to Thai food for dinner and then we went to Baskin Robbins for ice cream, and it was so awesome because it wasn't fake Hawaiian ice cream, it was real!!! Oh man! Quarterback Crunch, if you haven't tried it, try it! Anyway, after that, Heather came over and we did hair and makeup like old times and we rode down to Arlington with Ryan and his friend Laura to the YSA dance (it was a barn dance....it was kinda weird, but fun) where we met up with Brandon and David and Alyssa and some other people....Rob was there too, that was really great to see him, because I wanted to but I didn't know if I was going to be able to. So after the dance was over, we went to Denny's and then Brandon drove me home, and we sat in my driveway talking until about 3:30am...I gotta stop doing that.

Saturday morning I got up and felt like poo because I was feeling sad and a combination of other negative feelings combined with not wanting to come back to Hawaii and confusion over why I'm coming back to Hawaii (I still don't know what I'm doing here). So Mom and I went out to Heather's house to visit with she and Deb and, of course, I left the place bawling my eyes out, partially because we'd been talking about Mark and partially because I was leaving Heather again. Then I went home and made my reservation for the airporter, got on the airporter, got to SEATAC, and flew back to Honolulu where Staisha met me at the airport to ride the bus home with me... I love her. We rode the bus to Kane'ohe, but got off there because Allan and Nathan wanted to come and pick us up because they had permission to use the car late at night....so we didn't get back to campus until after midnight, and Teresa and Leilani were waiting for me in the courtyard and attacked me with hugs, and everyone walked me to my room, which they had sneakily decorated with pretty letters and balloons and papers and stuff.... I probably seemed rather ungrateful because I was so tired and I could not figure out what time my brain was telling me it was because I'd never gotten over jet-lag going east, and now I had it going west. Blech. So I went outside to meet up with Jake and Nathan and Allan and Staisha and Marci and Taylor, and we spent about half an hour together and I had to go to bed, so I did.

Anyway, that was my week of fun for this semester. I needed a break, my mainland ohana needed me, so I went. I don't really know if it's been a good thing or a bad thing for me in terms of how much I miss people, being away from home, but I am really glad I went, I had tons of fun. I miss home a lot, and I've decided that I need a serious mentality shift if I'm going to make it through college alive and without depression over missing Washington. Those people are my life-blood, and I don't feel like I have anyone like them here in Hawaii. I love it here--really, I do--, but I wish I had some or all of them here with me.

Anyway, that's all I have to say for now--I've got to go catch up on homework and I wanted to take a walk to the temple, and then I'm going to go to bed very very early tonight. Aloha.