As I said, I thought it would be a good idea to go somewhere else, and so when I decided to go to college, I was thinking California would be a good place to go. I applied to one school, University of the Pacific, which accepted me, but it was quite expensive, so I decided to wait a year (that's a whole nother year) and apply to other schools.

I went back to my high school and talked to a guidance councilor (not my guidence councilor, as I really felt like he couldn't understand me) and said I wanted to go to college (I was actually attending a community college at the time, so I was really just going to continue studying elsewhere at the end of the program). The guidance councilor set me up with a computer and I typed in the requirements I had, low cost, Business classes, Japanese language (surprisingly few schools had Japanese classes at the time), and I got a list of schools across the country I could apply to. I remember there was one in Washington, and I think one in California which I thought would meet my needs. Also University of Hawaii was on the list, which I immediately dismissed as a place to go on vacation, not to study. I discussed the list with my mother and mentioned in an off hand way that oddly, Hawaii had shown up on the list. She told me I should go to Hawaii. I began to think about it

At this time, I was attending a class held in my college for high school students to study Japanese through a teacher by video. The teacher was in the school where I was, and there were two groups of students, one in a typical school and the other in Chinatown (I guess, since all the students were Chinese). There was another girl there who came to study Japanese. I talked to her and told her about the list and the inclusion of Hawaii. She told me she was from Hawaii and that was the place I should go.

So, I filled out some application to several schools around the country, I think I skipped applying to UMASS Amherst, but did apply Hawaii.

Soon after, I got several acceptance letters from several of the universities, but nothing from Hawaii. No acceptance letter, no rejection letter. Nothing...