NOOK has been my family away from home for most of the time i've been on this big rock. let me start from the beginning...
i remember hanging out with the club a bit in my freshman and sophomore years, but i didn't really like it. it was pretty much a clique of students from Hawai`i. i guess i wasn't ready for it at the time... i was still in a sort of "discovery" mode in which the last thing i wanted to do was hang out with people i didn't know who were from hawai`i. i guess i didn't really need the support aspect of the club, which tries to make students from Hawai`i feel more comfortable and ease their transition to student life at UCI. i was more into meeting people from different backgrounds, learning new things, experiencing stuff that i never had the chance to do back home... heck, that's why i came up to the mainland for school in the first place, so i could get away from everything that was familiar to me.
then my friend annie brought me back into the club in 1997. i actually knew annie from circle k, a community service club at UCI, and she kept bugging me to come back and check out the club. my memory is somewhat fuzzy but i seem to recall going back in january, right when preparations for the annual Lu`au were in full swing. i think it was a combination of factors that made me feel more comfortable in the club at this point... i was certainly less shy than before; president Keola and the board were very welcoming to me; and of course the club always welcomes potential male dancers for Lu`au hehehe! but the club had changed significantly because most of the "Hawai`i clique" had graduated the previous year, taking with it a huge chunk of the membership and leaving only eight members left, who were mostly "mainlanders"! the board officers were worried that they would be running the meetings and talking to themselves! but Keola and the board took a new approach that has become the foundation of the club today... welcome anyone and everyone to join. i guess in the past everyone was welcome, but it was an unspoken rule that only those from Hawai`i be actively invited. the club gained new life from a diverse group of members from all sorts of backgrounds: those from Hawai`i, those who had some kind of connection with Hawai`i (relatives, friends, etc.), and even those who were just interested in learning from and hanging out with the "Hawai`i Club"... after all, what cooler-sounding club is there! and so the club was transformed into a welcoming environment of new experiences and friendships for me, not to mention the fact that, among all the mainland folk, it was suddenly very cool to be from Hawai`i!!! =) what better way to make people feel welcome than to make them feel special?
"and da rest, es heestory!" as Grandpa Kevin Nadal once said (quote from the Lu`au 2000 skit, hehe). four years after graduation, six Lu`aus and two board positions later, i'm still an active member! i'm sure people wonder what this 25-year-old is doing still hanging out with college kids. i suppose i should be on to "bigger and better things". but really, what are the bigger and better things? i look at my other friends who graduated with me or a little after me, and their lives are pretty much the same as mine... full-time job, or perhaps grad school, and free time is spent hanging out with friends. is it really a problem that a lot of the close friends i hang out with are still in college? to be honest though, lately it has been getting a lot harder to relate with them... i'm most definitely sick and tired of talking about "studying" and "midterms" and "finals", and telling them that "i don't have to deal with any of that anymore HAHAHA!!!" is getting pretty old too!
and so i've started to slowly "retire" from the club. i finally moved away from the UCI campus this past december, i'm not going to meetings much anymore, i'm done with NOOK trips too (i'm sooo tired of the poverty conditions that occur when you stick 30 people in a ski cabin or hotel room!!!), and i'm certainly not dancing or acting in the Lu`aus. nowadays i pretty much just hang out with them when they do something outside of the "club" environment, like a trip to L&L's or The Loft, a member's birthday party, and so on. i certainly don't regret spending all these extra years with the club, as i have developed many close friendships with these "young 'uns" which will extend beyond the club as they graduate and enter the post-college world in which i exist. i'm still tempted to delve into the politics of the club, advising the current board officers and observing who will be on next year's board. but it's really time to let go and leave these college kids to their own devices. it's been very rewarding and a lot of fun though... kinda sad that it has to end, but you know, "all good things yadayadayada". my new mainland family is the NOOK alumni community, hehehe! we're gonna start planning our own ski trips, Vegas trips, and other get-togethers. and i'm sure we will be members of the audience at NOOK Lu`aus for many more years to come, because we will never forget the good times, fun times! =)
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