Places I've Lived

I haven't owned that many vehicles (see Tyler's blog), but I've lived in a lot of apartments. So in short, the places I've lived as an adult prior to getting married. This is long, I'm trying to keep it to just some info about the places I lived, and not a life narrative.

Just after graduating from high school I moved into the dorms at BYU and attended the summer term. There is nothing else to say about that semester except that I didn't spend much time in my dorm.

Then I moved in with B and H in Longview, Washington, around September 1997. I had a bedroom in the front of their house, my first time ever having my own room in my life. I was pretty awkward there, partly the situation, and partly because I guess I didn't know how to make friends without my more outgoing sister around. So I never had friends over, except for the boy who became my sort of boyfriend, who wanted to be my hero I think.

Then I moved back home to Missoula and lived with my parents again in May 1998. I worked 2 jobs and spent any free time hanging out with people from the LDS institute there.

I got accepted back into BYU and headed down to Provo in January 1999. I moved into the dorms again (Deseret Towers) and this time experienced what living in the dorms is really like. My roommate was the only one I've ever had that I wasn't particularly friends with, she had got engaged over the Christmas break and so spent most of her time with her fiance. They got married halfway through the semester and so I had the room to myself after that. The girls next door to me were super friendly, and between them and 2 other rooms, we had a good little group for going to movies, ice cream, etc. I never really hung out in the "common" rooms, but more often in the other girls' rooms, one room had a small tv where we watched movies, other times we'd just pile around on beds or on the floor for late-night talking.

With the girls from my dorm floor we all moved to the apartment complex Roman Gardens in the fall of 1999. Six of the girls rented one of the larger apartments just above the one I rented with my roommate. Mine was on the bottom floor, and the smallest apartment in the complex. It had just one bedroom, for 2 renters, and had cinderblock walls. I loved my roommate. I can't count how many nights we starting talking in the bathroom while getting ready for bed, one of us washing our face, the other sitting on the side of the tub in pajamas, and somehow that conversation kept us talking in that tiny space for hours on end.m In the summer of 2000 she went home for the summer and I roomed with a girl I'd never met. We got along great as well and that summer was one of the funnest I ever had. The complex looks kind of like this one:

I lived in that basement apartment for a year until I went to Jerusalem in the fall of 2000. There I shared a room with 3 other girls whom I also grew to love. We lived in the BYU Jerusalem center and couldn't have asked for a better setting. Each dormitory room there has its own balcony overlooking Jerusalem. The hallways are open air with trees growing up into the sky and cobblestone floor walkways. My apartment number was 310 and sometimes we had dance parties there, mostly the idea of our roommate from Spain, at those times the apartment was referred to as "310 Underground."

Our semester in Israel was cut short by about a month so I didn't have a place to live in Provo. I moved in with my cousin Amanda and her husband Ryan. They had a small apartment really close to campus with an extra room and despite being newlyweds, were nice enough to take me in for the remainder of the semester.

In January 2001 I moved back into my basement apartment at Roman Gardens. I don't remember this time as fondly, perhaps I was tired of the atmosphere there, or maybe because things really took a turn for the worse with my boyfriend around that time too.

In May I went with BYU's archaeology department to a field school "dig" nearby Escalante. I lived in a tent provided by the department with one other girl. We had cots to put our sleeping bags on and besides that pretty much lived out of our duffels/suitcases. We went to bed not too long after the sun set and got up just before it rose. I felt healthier than ever then, probably because of being saturated in such a natural environment.

The dig lasted 2 months and then I moved back to Roman Gardens around the beginning of July. It was a larger apartment and I shared it with 3 other girls. The girl I shared my room with had also been my roommate in Jerusalem and I'd asked her if she wanted to room together again. I really admired her and she was lots of fun. I probably wasn't the best roommate then, I was still going through a hard time with my old boyfriend, he'd began dating a different girl in the complex and I hated seeing them around together. Then we began a sort of friendship again that often left me confused and hurt. I got closer to the other 2 girls in the apartment as well though and I think we all had a pretty great fall semester then. It was my senior year at BYU and that fall was the first and only one I went to any football games. We all bought tickets together and went to the games, painting our faces and shouting along with the cheers (though I admit I knew nothing of the game then.)

In January 2002 I moved to a different apartment complex with some friends from Roman Gardens. I had to "sell" the second half of my rental contract at Roman Gardens but I was lucky enough to get a buyer. The new complex was called The Academy and it was across from the old Academy building in Provo, that is now the city library. There were 4 of us in the apartment. I didn't like the complex as much because it wasn't as easy to make friends and there was no central place to hang out--no rec room, no courtyard, no pool, etc. I started dating my old boyfriend again and spent a lot of my time back over at the Roman Gardens complex. The Academy Apartments looked kind of like this building:

I graduated in April, but moved back to Roman Gardens for the summer. A couple of my old roommates were still there and I moved into the 4-person apartment I'd been in before. I had a job on campus and then swam in the pool or sat in the hot tub almost every day. I was looking for all sorts of different jobs, getting a little discouraged that I didn't know quite what I wanted to do or what I wanted to happen to my relationship. But I didn't want to stick around Provo and didn't feel like my relationship had much of a future. I took the job teaching English in Japan and left in mid-August 2002.

The school I was working for in Japan was privately owned/managed. At most times there were 3-6 teachers employed and we lived in the owners home. Her home was a more modern Japanese one, attached to her mother-in-laws much older home and a large room connecting them made up the "school" though most of the classes I taught were in smaller buildings throughout the area. I had a room up a very narrow set of stairs and hated that I could hear rats running through the attic most nights. The ceiling was paneled and sometimes I dreamt that the rats pulled back the panels and watched me sleeping. The town was considered the countryside of Japan, or in fact, more like the boonies, but houses were still packed together. The land was very green though and I loved being next to the beach and bamboo-covered mountains all at once. This is a scene of Toyohama:

I cut short my 1 year contract in Japan to come home in April 2003. My sister was getting married and I was ready to move back home. I stayed with my parents (who had moved to Ogden area just a month or so before I left for Japan) for just a few weeks before finding the house on 700 east that I moved into. I lived in that house for 2 years with 3 other girls. At first I was in the smallest bedroom upstairs but moved into the larger downstairs room after one of the girls moved out. The first year I spent a lot of weekends away, driving to Las Vegas or Hurricane (St. George area) to visit my college boyfriend. But I was already in love with the neighborhood, the perfect downtown location 2 blocks south of Trolley Square and 1 block north of Liberty Park.

This house quickly became my favorite place I've ever lived. I think I felt most free there to be myself than anywhere else. My roommates were wonderful and I began to go out a ton. I started my Master's Program at the U and started dating Tyler. I moved out in May 2005 when I got married. I still love to drive by that house.

Those are the places I've lived, between 1997 and 2005.