The Importance of Tipsy Nachos

It was one of my first weekends in town and my roommates and I were all still getting to know each other.  The alcohol had been flowing and as we searched for food at 1 am we ended up pulling out nacho cheese sauce, guacamole and mango salsa.  Not having any tortilla chips, we used some Nacho Cheese Doritos that we had lying around.  This weird concoction ended up being amazing and became known in our apartment as Tipsy Nachos.

Since that first weekend Tipsy Nachos has been the catalyst for new friendships and been the proverbial campfire around which secrets are shared.  I wouldn't give Tipsy Nachos up for anything now and I'm grateful for the connections that have been made through them!

The big surprise!

In my first post I mentioned briefly that on move-in day my brother and I were able to surprise my Aunt, Uncle and cousins.  The best part of the surprise?  We got to surprise them again and again!  Not knowing my uncle's church schedule, we thought we'd show up a little after 4.  Unfortunately, that's when they have choir practice, but my cousin Chad opened the door.  At first he looked at us with a very confused look on his face, kind of waiting for us to tell him who we are and why we were standing on his porch.  Finally it clicked and he welcomed us in to watch football.

After hanging out with Chad for a while, my uncle and two of my cousins got home.  Without much of a glance, my uncle said hi and began to tell us what dinner plans were.  Then my brother looked at him quite earnestly and said, "Uncle.  Come on."  At that point he dropped everything in his hands to hug my brother.

While that was going on my cousin Hannah began putting the pieces together and she hugged me.  Followed by Lili.  Then I made my way over to hug my uncle.

Joe, my brother, and I were settling in and getting pretty good at Fruit Ninja on the Kinect.  This is about when we were able to make our second surprise of the night!

Around dinner time my cousin Kimber, her husband Ray and their kids Ben and Freya arrived.  Kimber recognized us immediately and gave us hugs!  I still can't believe how much Ben has grown since the last time I saw him!

The last surprise came when my cousin back in Utah began Skype-ing her family back home.  Joe and I popped our faces into frame and she was pretty confused for a minute.  Kind of funny that I'm here while she's in Utah.

After all the surprising and catching up it was fun to feel myself so welcome in their home.  I'm starting to feel like I'm just one of the Monmouth Boyacks!

Meet the ladies of Spruce 201

For me, the scariest part of moving out here was not knowing with whom I would be living.  It took me a while to even decided I'd brave on-campus living.  Being able to have my own room in an apartment setting, however, sealed the deal and I decided I'd give it a shot.

I'm not lucky enough to ever really gamble; on anything.  But this time I totally lucked out.  I could not have hand-picked better roommates.  Each of my three roommates is crazy, fun, and amazing in their own way!  Get ready to meet the other girls in Spruce 201!

Dani is new like me.  We both moved in on the same day and are both finding our place in the apartment.  She's your basic white girl, which I say in the most loving and sincere way.  She loves coffee above just about above everything else.  Chipotle might come in a close second on that one, actually.  She has a record player in her room on which she plays her vintage Beatles record that she scored in some record shop in Portland.  Side note, she was in Portland trying to get her typewriter fixed.  Yes, she has a typewriter.  And yes, she actually uses it.  She's a total hipster from Southern California.  :)  She also plays for the girls' soccer team here and has a killer sense of humor.  I'm so glad that she's the one helping me find my place here.

Next up is Ka.  One of my biggest fears was that I'd be rooming with 3 18-year old girls and I'd end up mothering them.  Ka, however, is 28 and is super fun.  Like me she comes from a big family.  She's the youngest of 9 kids (an even bigger family than mine)!  Ka is a bit of a scientific anomaly, in fact I think scientists are in the midst of studying her, in that there is a large black woman stuck inside a tiny Asian body.  This girl has more sass and attitude than anyone I've ever known.  She also says the most ridiculously hilarious things, like when she told us all that we need to go to Rio so that we can get us some Jamaican boyfriends!

Gianne is amazing!  She is smart, funny, and full of energy.  We both like to dance and once spent 3 hours on a Saturday "playing" Just Dance.  Playing is in quotation marks because it was too much trouble to play the game using the app so we just looked up YouTube videos of dances and mirrored them without scoring any points.  Being from Hawaii, Gianne is part of the Hawaii club and is teaching a hula for the upcoming luau.  She's even letting me tag along!  Like the other two, Gianne also has a great sense of humor.  She's also super gullible which makes for some really funny experiences.  Like when Dani told her that she (Gianne) was adopted, and for about 2 whole seconds Gianne believed Dani, then confusion set in.  In high school Gianne also wrote an essay about bananas titled "This Girl is Bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S". She got an A.

So, basically, I live with three of the most incredible girls on campus and I couldn't be happier.  Most every night we end up laughing until we start crying and/or getting stomach cramps!

The deal with my car

Driving up to Western Oregon University; my car packed to the gills, my brother by my side and a whole lot of car troubles.  We were making great time and were looking forward to lunch in Boise when we heard a terrible noise and my car decided it no longer wanted to move.  Stranded near Twin Falls, Idaho we were able to find a mechanic who was open on a Saturday and was able to tow us into town.

The diagnosis was that my AC compressor had seized up which shredded the serpentine belt.  A used compressor was nowhere to be found and a new one (around $1300) could only be located in Boise and would be available Monday.  Looking like I was stuck between a rock and a hard place I talked to my dad who asked to speak to the mechanic.  My dad suggested that they try a shorter belt that could bypass the AC compressor and allow me to get back on the road and into Oregon before my move-in time (which was Sunday at Noon).  The mechanic agreed to this and was able to locate a shorter belt.  After spending nearly 3 hours past closing time in his shop, and taking the nail out of my tire, the guys at Addison Car Care sent us back on the road.

We lost about 4 hours dealing with the breakdown, but I had a lot of support from back home, both in my nuclear family as well as in my BACA family.  We had only broken down for about 15 minutes when I started getting calls from BACA members in Idaho offering their assistance.  I don't know that 20 years ago I ever would have guessed that I could be nearly anywhere in the country and be mere miles from a BACA brother or sister.  But that's another post for another day.

Without further complications we made it into Salem, Oregon late and crashed hard.  The next morning we got some breakfast then headed out to Monmouth (about a 15 minute drive).  We drove to the few places we needed to go around campus, got all my stuff moved into my apartment, then headed out to run some errands and see the Oregon coast.  About 1 mile away from campus my car started acting funny.  I pulled over and popped the hood and was absolutely heartbroken to see that my new serpentine belt had walked off its track.  We got towed back to my apartment complex and tried to figure out what to do since no mechanic is open on a Sunday.  I tried to put it out of my mind so that I could focus on surprising my cousins, aunt and uncle.  Luckily the Boyacks live within walking distance from my apartment.

The actual surprise is a story to be revealed in another post, but for now I'll just say it was quite funny and long-lived.  Very kindly we were invited to stay for dinner, over which my car troubles were brought up, as was the fact that my cousin's husband Ray is a mechanic.  A fact that I had totally forgotten.  In exchange for babysitting Ray offered to take a look at my car.  After several trips to AutoZone and a more complicated issue than was originally thought, my car finally started running again!

I was so excited to finally be able to go grocery shopping and to get the few things I still needed.  The next day I went out and my car wouldn't start.  By this time I was beginning to get a bit frustrated and wondered if I'd be stuck in Oregon forever.  Luckily it was only a dead battery and after a quick jump start I was on the road!  Of course, just a few minutes onto the road and I got pulled over, but he let me off with just a warning. :)

Unfortunately, I'm still dealing with some weird electrical issues (one of which being that my headlight sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, which is why I got pulled over--it wasn't working at the time).  But my car is running more often than not and allowing me to get from point A to point B without too much trouble.  Lucky for me campus is small enough that I do pretty well without a car, and it gives me some much needed exercise as well!

I am here

Sometimes I feel like I need to pinch myself to assure myself that I'm not dreaming.  Or find one of those maps with the star marker that tells me definitively where I am.  I almost feel like I've been transported to another world.  Then I realize that it's not a dream; that this beautiful campus and beautiful city are a mere 800 miles away from home.  And despite feeling like a magical teleportation that brought me here, it was actually quite an ordeal.

Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, or the deep fog that rolled in on our way here that made the move feel so otherworldly, but now that I'm here, settled, and my car is (finally) running pretty well, Western Oregon University is starting to feel like home.