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Hawaii at 18

fivecatsandachug

In my late twenties, when life calmed down a bit, I used to joke around that I lived in Hawaii for three weeks. Sounds more like a vacation, right? A nice, long vacation to the islands...

But no, it wasn't. I took my mom's adventurous advice, sold my truck and bought a one way ticket to Oahu. Sold everything I had which wasn't much. Flew out from San Francisco and was excited. Did I plan out anything? Sure, kind of. The main character in The Impact Zone

kind of winged it, so I was planning on doing something similar. I had the transfer of the tech institute I was in, I had a few bucks, I even arranged a place to stay next to the University of Hawaii, the YWCA. It had women's dorms for something like $15 a night. Landed in Oahu, took a cab to the YWCA. I remember the taxi driver asking how old I was. And then responding, you are here by yourself? Yep, that's right. And I plan to live here forevveerrr.

We all know that didn't happen.

After getting dropped off at the dorm, I checked in. It was a really nice facility to be fair. Mostly they had international students at the University stay here. I had my large suitcase and got to my room. Two beds, one side was fully lived in. No roommate yet. Let's see. This was at the beginning of April, so I unpacked and quickly left to walk around the area and enjoy the weather. I met my roommate that evening, she was super nice but we had no communication outside of polite smiles. She spoke Korean. I did not.

Three weeks later I left.

So...what happened was...the transfer for the tech institute took place but I had to pay $10k to finalize. That didn't happen. I applied for job after job after job. No luck. My only experience working was at a Baskin Robbins for a bit back home. I ran out of money. To be fair, I came with like $700 after buying the plane ticket. I spent $250 on a mountain bike to help me explore and go to job interviews. Food was expensive, and no money coming in. 18 year old me didn't plan for any of that. Just was hoping for some luck. No luck. Money was out. I traded my bike back in for some cash and bought a one way ticket back.

But I had one problem. I had nothing to come back to. No car, no home, no job. Nothing. Again, just hoping for some luck..

I got there, eventually.

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