Log 42: Tales from the Kitchen Floor

The social dynamic at the hostel is very foreign to me. I wake up every morning to see at least one new person unpacking their things in my dorm. We ask each other the basics: where are you from, how long are you staying, what brought you to Hawaii, etc. Maybe you grab dinner with them once or twice. Maybe you even become friends, albeit only for something like 72 hours. 

But, as I was discussing with Carl - the only man currently at the hostel, who happens to be staying for about as long as I am - hostels truly have the best people watching. The day I checked in, there were two other girls in my dorm. Alissia and Natalie were a year or two younger than me, from a little town in Washington called Yakima. They were sort of the first people I met at the hostel, so even though they were leaving the following evening, I spent a good chunk of their remaining 36 hours with them. Natalie was an Aries and Alissia a Libra - best friends, on a gap year, fresh out of high school. An infallible recipe for chaos. 

The first afternoon I spent with them, I had been getting ready to go to the grocery store. They needed some things too, so we all went together. When we arrived at the store and got our bikes locked up, I asked, “So what did you guys come here to get?” They both looked at each other. “I thought you needed something,” Natalie said to Alissia. “Oh, I thought you needed something. I don't need anything,” Alissia said to Natalie. They ended up buying one loaf of bread, for purposes unknown. “We could make a pb&j!” Natalie suggested as we biked back to the hostel. “We don't have jelly,” Alissia pointed out. 

On their final day in Maui, the two of them got into a small fight. As a result, Natalie disappeared to one of the bars in town, and Alissia reacted as anyone would, and spent the afternoon getting a spontaneous tattoo across her forearm. In the evening, I sat on the beach with Natalie and some friends watching the sunset (Alissia chose not to join us). I checked my phone for the time. 8:48PM. I swear Natalie said their flight was at 11:00PM…

“Don't you like, have a flight to catch?” I inquired. Natalie glanced lazily at her own phone, then sighed.

“Yeah.” We got up right then and returned to the hostel.

When we arrived back, Alissia had already ordered an Uber to the airport, and it would be arriving in 5 minutes. Which would've been great, if they had already packed up their stuff. They had not. Alissia rushed around the hostel frantically, trying to make sure she had everything she came with. Natalie dragged her suitcase into the kitchen, took a seat on the floor, and began shoving clothes into it. Once she was finished, she grabbed a jar or peanut butter from the cabinet. “I don't think I’m gonna be able to fit this in my suitcase,” she said, looking disheartened. “Why would you want to bring that back with you?” I asked. “I brought it from home, I was worried they wouldn't have any here,” Natalie explained. I paused. “You thought they wouldn't have peanut butter in Hawaii?” They were only here for a week and the jar was practically still full. “Better safe than sorry,” she shrugged. Can’t argue with that.

Finally, the two of them were all packed and out the door. Then, about 30 seconds later, they came back in. Their Uber had left because they had taken so long. They ordered another, and then they were off for good. Like I said, chaos.

Natalie left behind one swimsuit in the kitchen, a hard iced tea in the shower, and half of a granola bar on my(?) bed. She later explained about granola bar that “Shonnah, the roomie before you, gave it to me when I as dying of a hang over.” So that cleared everything up.

Highlight: After Natalie and Alissia’s departure, Dominique, who lives at the hostel and is Daniel’s (the owner of the hostel) girlfriend, was reminiscing on the scene that unfolded when they had arrived a week prior. Check-in at the hostel is at 3:00pm, but the two of them stumbled in the door around 9:30pm. They had no bags of any kind - each just had a big slice of pizza on a paper plate in hand. “Are you guys checking in?” She’d asked them. “Do you… have bags?” They shook their heads, and proceeded to sit on the kitchen floor and eat their pizza. Funny how things come full circle like that.