The Saga Continues in 2002

If 2001 was a year of change then I guess you could say that 2002 was when I got back into the groove of things. During the past year I realized a lot of things about myself. One of them was that while my Santa Clara experience was important, I could move beyond it. Another was that I finally realized what I wanted to do with myself and had a plan to get myself there. Another year gone by and it seems as though time flew by.

The year started off simple enough. I officially had been working in SPC for about a month and things were going good. Slowly, little by little I picked up how to do things in SPC and tried as much as possible to help the students that came in. Honestly I don’t know how John knows as much as he does about doing stuff in the SPC. Even now after being there for a year there is still so much I have to learn and he always amazes me with some of the things he can come up with.

February came and went with my birthday having very little fanfare. However when we came to March there were two big birthdays—the first for my cousin Jacob and the second for my sister. Jake was turning the big 21 this year and we all new that we had to do something big for it. The night of his birthday I along with the Foodland crew took him and Gavin out (Gavin’s birthday was a couple days before Jake’s). Needless to say we had a lot of fun that night. Jake and Gavin both got inebriated and at one point we tried to push Gavin back to the car in a shopping cart.

Jake’s party didn’t end there though; about two weeks later there was an official party for Jake at a karaoke bar. That was fun as well. We all packed into the room with food, drinks, and had a good time. I sang a couple songs with other people, mostly with Jake though. Then in late March we had a big party for my sister at Buca over in Ward. That was another fun party. We had this really long table and I sat at one end with Jake, Jarnelle, and Ian and we had a great time just being together at a party. Good food and good times with my family always makes for memorable experiences.

As the school year came to an end it marked the first time since I was in high school that I had been with a yearbook staff for pretty much a full year. After the 2001 book I hoped that we could turn things around with this year’s staff. When we finally did get the 2002 book it was a vast improvement over last year’s one. I was very proud to say the least that the book came out as good as it did considering what the staff went through the previous year. However, as much as I would have liked to be there for the last two big events of yearbook, the luncheon and distribution, I had already made a promise to some friends and I couldn’t go back on my word.

This year pretty much everyone that I had come in with at SCU was going to be graduating and long ago I had said that when they graduated, I would be there. But this year was a little different, so many big things were going to be happening and I wanted to be up there to be a part of them with my friends. To do this I needed to fly up early. The day after my last final I flew up. Star Wars Episode II was coming out the Thursday of that week and we all knew we had to camp out again so I arranged to fly out Tuesday so at least I could be there to camp out for 24 hours again.

As soon as I got off the plane Justin picked me up and we went straight down to AMC Mercado 20 where Allen, Tim, and Panos were waiting. For the first 30 hours of my trip, Tuesday night to early Thursday morning was spent at a theater waiting to watch the new Star Wars. Though we weren’t first in line we did manage to still have some fun and it was great to have everyone there again to see Star Wars.

I was up at Santa Clara for just about a month and the whole time I had a blast. Once again Allen and me did the whole Star Wars marathon—5 times in 5 days starting opening day. On Memorial Day weekend Allen, Tim, and me went down to LA for the weekend. We saw Episode II again at the Chinese Theater, went to Disneyland, and ate out at a whole bunch of good places. Other highlights were playing paintball, watching anime and Star Trek DVDs, and going up to Palo Alto. Some of the best parts of the trip though were just being up there and seeing friends and people I knew up there and getting a chance to talk with them again. It almost seemed as though I had never left.

All good things come to an end though and graduation came up rather quickly. The night before graduation I had stayed up almost all night making everyone’s leis, about 30 in all. Needless to say that everyone was grateful and surprised when I gave them their lei and in some cases their CD. Everyone simply loved the CD. I have to say getting everyone their leis was a challenge in itself, but I got it done.

With graduation done, my trip back home was soon coming up fast. The last couple of days spent up there I said my goodbyes and packed things up. It also gave me time to think about things, the past month and how much fun I had and also about how things might have been different if I hadn’t left Santa Clara.

When I got back home it was summer and I didn’t have anything to do for about a month. Then KSIIS started, and for the next two weeks nothing else really mattered. Before I had left for my trip to the mainland John had asked me if I wanted to work in a summer program called Kamehameha Schools Institute for International Studies with him. Of course since I wasn’t doing anything else in the summer I agreed, mainly because it was an opportunity to make money. Other than this I had no idea what the program did other than bring in students from around the world.

So around mid-July we started prepping for the program, which was to start the following week. Once the kids started arriving the program took off and all of us involved had a great time, the students and the staff. It’s like no other program that I had seen or been involved with before. During their stay at Kamehameha the students do research work, go on field trips, learn about Hawaiian culture, and have fun.
And have fun I did. It was really fun to work with new people (Rick, Gabe, Lea, Kelly, Desi, and Fetia) and with all the students. Everyone seemed to bond together so well. Even after the program was done with even Rick said that this was one of the best years that the program has had. I knew from then that I couldn’t wait for next year to do the program again.

Around the same time International was going on my family got a very big call. I wouldn’t say it changed the lives of our family, but it did have a very big effect on my sister. I will never forget the day that I got home and checked the answering machine and heard it. In fact I had to play the machine again to make sure what the person said was true. In a mix up of the worst kind another Spencer family had received my sister’s acceptance letter into Kamehameha. I could hardly believe it. After all those years of trying, my sister was finally going to go to Kamehameha. Needless to say my family was happy and excited.

In late August Kamehameha and KCC started back up again and it was time to go back to school and work. Having my sister going to Kamehameha was definitely interesting. I got to hear what was going on around campus. The new year also meant that we got a new staff as well and I was very excited because I knew we had a lot of good people coming back so I was hopeful that we could have an even better book than 2002. At KCC things were pretty much the same, however I new that this would be my last school year there as I was almost done with taking all the classes that I could.

The rest of the year pretty much went on with the usualness that normalcy brings. I was kept busy with my schoolwork and working at Kamehameha. There were the usual weekend things like movies, UH sporting events, and the occasional party. My grandma was down here in October so we did stuff with her while she was here. Even our Thanksgiving trip to Las Vegas didn’t seem as exciting, mainly because I have been going there for a while now.

Two of the good things that came out of the past couple of months though was that my friend Noe had graduated and was now home so I got to see her more, something that being away at college didn’t help. We could hang out and just talk whenever. The other was that I also made a new friend in KSIIS with Gabe. Though we were both busy during the school week we occasionally got to hang out.

As December came around I realized that where I was right now was where I wanted to be. Everything was going good for me and like they say if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Finally gone were the anxieties of leaving SCU and things had seemed to settle down. I had a direction now and a sense of purpose. I was in the groove of things and now I just have to work at getting to where I want to go.