Oregon Roomies

While living with Julie there were a lot of other people who moved in and out - that tends to happen when you live with one person for more than 3 years but the other room in the house is available for rent. When I first moved in a girl named Lindsay lived there. She was from Utah and was a bit of a rebel as far as LDS standards go, but she was still super fun to live with (although she would not respond to her alarm in the morning and it would just beep and beep and beep - haha). She moved out not too long after I moved in because of differences in opinion from Julie, who is a bit stricter than Lindsey was, so I didn't live with her long, but it was fun while it lasted.

After Linds moved out we had a couple of months with no one there, and then that summer Julie's sister was doing an internship at Intel and she stayed with us. She was one of the sweetest, most soft spoken people you would ever meet. She spent a lot of time reading so we would often talk about books and the things we liked to read. She wasn't there for long, but she was fun to live with and have book conversations with. She left to go back to school at the end of Aug/beginning of Sept. By October (the wedding of our friends Lex and Barlow - mentioned below) she was engaged to a guy named Tyler. They are now happily married and living in Utah (I think).

After Laurie left this girl named Lex moved back in. I say 'back' because she had lived with Julie before, but she was in PA school so she left to go on rotations so she had to move out. When she moved back with us it was for a short period of time between her graduation from school and her wedding in October. I met her on the camping trip as well, but because of her rotations she wasn't around very often so I didn't get to know her as well as Julie, Jasmine and Mark. She was dating (and eventually married) this guy named Barlow who was my HT (and was also on the fated camping trip) so I got to know him pretty well, which was fun. We all took a road trip to Utah for their wedding in October - it is always fun to see two people you are good friends with get married to each other :D

After she moved out, Jasmine moved in for a while, which I mentioned the other day. That was a great time, as I already mentioned.

After she left this girl named Adrianna moved in. She had met Julie's sister in Cali not too long beforehand, but was moving to Oregon because it is where her fiance was from, and it is where she was going to get married so she wanted to be here to plan the wedding and get to know his family better. Her fiance didn't live in the area the whole time she lived with me, so that was hard on her, but she had been with him for a long time so she managed. She was fun to live with as well. She was planning her wedding the whole time, but she would always come and ask me what I thought about this or that and tell me all about her plans. And we would make late night Krispy Kreme runs too, so that was good (okay, not a lot of those happened - but I remember them vividly).

After she got married and moved out this girl named Becca moved in. She was in our Ward and she had been good friends with Julie for quite a while, and I didn't know her well, but I knew her enough to know I liked her. Not long after Becca moved in Julie got engaged to her fiance, so we both then had to move out, so we didn't live together long. She plays the cello amazingly, so it was always fun to hear her practice - although she was careful not to let that happen too often, she was kinda shy about practicing in front of people (which is odd to me since she would perform in front of people). She was (and still is) dating this guy named Aaron and they are really cute together. I miss living with Becca.

After moving out of Julie's house I found a place with a girl named Jenn, back in the same apartment complex I had moved into when I first came to Oregon - of course it was cheaper since I would be sharing with someone and not having my own apartment. Jenn is an interesting person, because on the surface she seems very down to earth and professional, but once you get to know her she is so not that way. Not that she isn't down to earth or professional (although that is what I just said, right?) but rather that she is so much more crazy fun than I originally thought. We spent every night for probably the first month I lived here staying up late and talking and giggling (obviously this is what it really means to me to be friends with someone). We get along really well. She and I are the same in so many areas - and not all of them good. The way we deal with stress for example (by ignoring it) and all other sort of things. Our sense's of humor are very similar and we have similar dating histories (or lack's thereof) and she is just fun fun fun. I like Jenn a lot. Wow ... clearly I can't think of anything else good to say about her, but there is a ton of good stuff, believe me, I am just too out of it to list them all off right now.

I know that I have been lucky all through college, and even since then, to have good roommates. I have managed to get along well (or at least decently) with all of them. I have learned so many things from them. So many things that I have already mentioned that I have learned, and so many things that I have to re-learn. There are a lot of lessons that I have learned from my friends and roomies all throughout my life - some have stuck and some haven't. Some are still trying to wriggle their way in there. I learned that I can get along with a large variety of people. I learned that I LIKE getting along with a variety of people. I learned that different people can teach me new things about themselves and about myself. I learned that I have things in common with lots of people, but I am also have huge differences from a lot of people - and both of those things are good. I learned that the differences between people is what makes things fun.