Saying Aloha to my struggles

As my month in Hawaii begins to tip over the halfway point, I'd like to make it known that it's not as glamorous as it sounded. A typical day for me here consists of hippies, dirt and bugs and only those things. But more on that later. 

If you've been in contact with me for the past year and a half, you probably know how much of a mess my life has been. It started when I was invaded by a demon or two or six in December of 2011. Ever since then, I've done nothing but struggle. Sometimes the struggles are small; sometimes they're big. Sometimes I sneeze every minute on the minute; sometimes my computer crashes when I open it up to use it for an exam. Sometimes my phone won't send text messages; sometimes my car breaks down on the interstate. Big or small, laughable or panic-inducing, struggles have been present for what seems like a lifetime. I tried to convince myself that this demon would be kind enough to leave me alone for a month while I try to relax in the Aloha State. I wasn't foolish enough to believe that my travels would be struggle-free, but I hoped and prayed to everyone and everything that things would go smoothly. The results reminded me why I never pray in the first place.

The pre-Hawaii struggle began when I spent nearly $3000 in one week -- a week I began with just under $1000. I won't bore you with those details, but I will just say that I am very grateful to my amazing parents for their help and support. The struggle continued when I got sick, went to Campus Health (who, as usual, could not tell me what was wrong with me), and had the pleasure of picking my phone up off the concrete and basking in the beauty of a newly shattered screen. An easy fix, especially with an Apple store so close to me, but the aforementioned bank account problems put a halt to thinking about phone repairs fairly quickly. Luckily I can record this on my list of small struggles, as my phone is still functioning just fine (aside from a charging scare I had last week). Next I had an issue with the USB ports on my replacement computer, which was a dire issue considering I needed a way to sync all my new music for my 12+ hours on a plane and month in Hawaii that were approaching. 

"The way my life is going, I bet the plane won't even take off next week." 

A dramatic reaction to a computer problem (that was easily fixed after a lot of tears and a lot of damage to my hair and scalp), maybe. But inaccurate it was not. My roommate managed to fix the first problem of our departure day by finding a replacement ride to the airport after our original ride canceled; hopes and prayers that that would be our only struggle again went unanswered, as our flight was delayed after boarding due to mechanical issues. Not a big deal for a relatively relaxed person like me, but the issue lay in the fact that we had a fairly short layover for our connection flight in Detroit. Once the plane finally took off, we literally ran with a nice couple who was also on their way to HI to catch our next flight. And if you know me, you know that running is something I like to keep to a minimum (even though running on the moving sidewalks was pretty exhilarating). We made that flight: major struggle avoided. We made it to Seattle with plenty of time to catch our next connection -- that is, we would have made our connection had our flight attendant from Detroit not sent us in circles to find our gate, which was right beside the gate at which we just arrived. So after running down about a mile of stairs, taking about 37 trains in circles, we get to the gate she told us to go to, where we're informed (very rudely) that we are in fact at the wrong gate and that we need to go back to where we came from. So again we board the trains and run back up those miles of stairs and we make it to where we're supposed to be with seven minutes to spare before our departure time. Struggle avoided again, right? Wrong. At this point we were informed (again, very rudely) that we were not allowed to get on the plane that was sitting right in front of us with people still standing under it because they stop boarding at a ridiculously inconvenient time, something like eight minutes before departure. So we're pretty much shooed away and told that there is no hope for our trip to Hawaii. After a very forceful phone call to a Delta representative by my roommate, we were transferred to another flight with a Delta partner. Struggle fixed, right? If you've been following, you can probably guess that the answer is a big ol' WRONG. We get to Alaskan airlines (miles of stairs and 37 trains later) and we're told that we can't get on yet another flight; I don't know if the aforementioned Delta representative just made up the fact that she got us on another flight or if the people running the Alaskan Airlines desk are just trained to be as difficult as possible, but they tell us that the plane is full and there's no way we can get on it. "We only have one seat open," they told us. After some more demanding, which was approaching a screaming hissy fit from the three of us, we're put on the plane (which meant that either the plane actually had more than one empty seat or two people were kicked off -- at this point I really didn't care which). So after a major internal struggle over whether or not to pay $10 for in-flight entertainment, deciding to forgo it, taking a sleeping pill and popping in my headphones, it was smooth sailing over the open seas from Seattle to Oahu, where we surprisingly managed to check in to our cute hotel, find food and get to sleep without a hitch. I even got to settle my craving for fried rice the next morning while waiting for our flight to the Big Island. It seemed like the rest of the trip was going to go smoothly with little to no struggles. Right? Stay tuned.