I have been living in Hawaii for three years now. Before Hawaii, I was living in Spain. I was studying Spanish and Spanish culture at a private school in Barcelona. At the time, I had a friend living in Hawaii who wanted to know if I wanted to live in Honolulu with him. I told him I would love to, yet I didn’t very much money. After living in Spain for three months I had used up the time on my visa and all my cash was gone. So I returned to Washington and my friend called me again. He said he had just talked to his mom who had a extra plane ticket because the credit card company screwed up and purchased two instead of one. I couldn’t believe it. I knew I had to go to Hawaii. Now, I just needed some cash. Luckily it was around the time when your tax money comes back. I had made a lot of money the summer before and had quite a bit coming back to me in taxes. So I was set and I moved to Honolulu.

     The first year was pretty rough, and I was always trying to make ends meet. I was pretty broke while working odd jobs. I started out at a temp service where they would give you random jobs every day on some part of the island. I was begining to lose some of my spanish speaking skills and I needed to find some place I could speak everyday. So I applied for a job at a Mexican restuarant  and I was a hired as a bus boy.

    A bus boy is a pretty low postion; my jobs were running the trash, cleaning the kitchen, making chips and salsa etc…. Inside the dining room I would clear guests’ plates and wipe their tables. I was getting paid minumun wage plus tips which wasn’t very much, but after nine months I was promoted to waiter which was a much better postion for me. I  was working directly with guests and utilizing my sales skills, plus the money was a lot more. I had been a waiter for a year and a half when they promoted me to manager. I couldn’t believe after two years of work in the resturant I was now managing the place. This was a lot more responsibilty, but I was learning so many new things about how to run a business. I worked as a manager for eight months before I stepped down from management.

    I still manage once in a while to fill in people’s slots when they need time off but school, I realize, is the most important thing for me. I want to double major in International business and Japanese. These majors are more important to me than a title as manager. I have been become a waiter again and will take a full load of classes in the fall as well as attend the NACOS language institute.

    At NACOS I have really advanced over the last three years. I started with no knowledge about Japan or Japanese and now I have been to Japan and speak fairly well. Japan and Japanese are very important to me. I’m working on my Japanese writing and polishing my lanuage skills so, in the next three years, I will have two degrees and a vast knowledge of Japan and its culture. Then, I think I will be ready to head to Japan and look for people to do business with.