Bry and I have spent the last five years trying to get our butts graduated and back to China. Now that we're nearly so ready to return that we're looking into plane tickets, it has had us wondering: What were things like back when we were first getting ready to go?
In the beginning of 2008, Rachel and I were Sophomores* at Humboldt State University.
*Technically I should specify that we were in our second year at HSU. Credit-wise, we were probably still iffy.
Here are some fun facts from 2008:
We never quite got this bad: go here!
A more typical day in our house now looks more like this:
So, let's turn back time to 2008 and make a few comparisons!
I work five days a week, Monday- Friday at The Depot on the Humboldt State University campus as a "cashier"- which is really the umbrella term they give to someone responsible for money but ALSO anything else that needs done (cleaning, stocking, subbing for other positions, being harassed by angry customers). On Monday, April 22nd, I had my first shift at Alice's Steak and Sushi Restaurant in Blue Lake Casino and Hotel. My schedule there is Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday- but they want to add me on Saturday as well, probably next week. SO- I calculated that I may be working 50 hours per week soon, but only while HSU is in session.
Food:
In 2008 we really did not have a lot of it. Our shopping trips consisted of filling a shopping cart on payday, and pushing it all 1.63 miles back to our apartment. We found the dollar section of CVS really helpful, and began grabbing instant coffee mix from there. This is where our coffee habit really took off since we got up at 6 AM after going to bed a midnight on a regular basis. (Ah, to be young again...) The lunches we provided ourselves for work consisted of rice cakes, peanut butter and honey sandwiches, some fruit, and a Caprisun. Dinner was some pasta variation most nights, with either frozen peas or corn to make sure we were a little healthy. (We would later learn that neither of these are a vegetable.) Our roommate was a vegetarian, so meat was usually not on the menu... but even when it could be found in our house it was in the form of canned tuna. Yum.
Here in 2013 I would love to tell you that we're better off, but I can't*. With four people living together the food supply runs thin pretty quick, and our shopping trips are few and far between. This may be because each of us has a steady supply of food available to us outside of the house. I work with food everyday, and can grab some whenever I want when I take a break. Alia visits me at work several times in one day, and will help herself to whatever is available or easy to grab. Rachel has a WalMart right by her workplace, and shops there to keep her locker fully stocked with snacks. David grabs cafeteria food for lunch most days since I am just too overwhelmed to make him a nice lunch like I used to.
*Our food choices and cooking skills have grown dramatically, but our budget and time limitations do not allow us to craft any masterpieces in the kitchen.
Apartment:
Clearly we've learned to party harder.
In 2008, we had just moved into our first apartment and were lacking in furniture. The green couch seen above was a hand-me-down from Mango, but our other couch was carried home from the side of the road by me and our roommate Gabe while my boyfriend at the time carried the cushions. The green couch was huge, but held together in one spot by staples, and the (formerly) white couch was sooo comfy in part because it was JUST THAT OLD and in part because it did not have any legs. It sat right on the floor and was full of spiders. These two pieces of furniture were a huge improvement from the pieces of foam we had layered on the floor previously to form some couch-like structure. Other than that, the only other piece of furniture we owned was the table (that had been in our family for years, and was still covered in teeth-marks from teething twins and crayon doodles) and chairs (held together by wood glue) that were also from Mango. Bry and I were sharing a room. Our furniture consisted of nothing. We were allowed to take home things worth under $50 left behind on campus as we cleaned dorms, and slowly over the summer gathered enough twin sized foam mattress toppers to each have a three inch thick bed of sorts in which we laid our sleeping bags over. Our "desktop" computer was set up right on the floor. We didn't have internet, however, so we never really used it. We filled our kitchen in much the same way. Any plates or kitchen utensils left behind in the dorms made it into our backpacks as we left work.
Nowadays we have real furniture! The very couch I am sitting on was purchased AT A FURNITURE STORE!!! It has a matching reclining chair. Our TV sits atop a rather heavy TV stand purchased at Target. Our apartment, though messy as all hell, is actually furnished with real people things. (Mostly because when we moved into this apartment a year ago this month,we went on a giant dump run and got rid of most of our old stuff which was quickly followed by a subsequent gargantuan shopping spree.) Also, there are four of us here,as opposed to three back in 2008. This means our individual rent is stupid cheap. It also means four people fighting for one bathroom...
Saving:
I already said we worked for HSU Housing and Dining Services in 2008 as student housekeepers, and you know we managed to save money by taking the stuff students left in the dorms after the move-out date. We found such exciting things as: pens, entirely unused notebooks, a textbook, plates, cups, books, movies, a microwave, decorations, Christmas lights, skinny jeans (of which I only recently disposed of), and so much more! Every single day was like a scavenger hunt. I believe we collected the loose changed we gathered then as well, though not much was to be had. Really, we saved money by splitting all our food, hardly washing our clothes, reading for entertainment instead of leaving the house (though we DID see The Dark Knight midnight showing, one of the only movies we saw all summer), and keeping our shopping limited since we got free stuff everyday anyway.
At present, we are saving money through several means. Firstly, we have set up our GoFundMe site. At the time of this blog being written, we've raised $685! We have also been rolling coins. We've got $73 from rolling coins, and we'll be cashing our current rolled coins on the first. This rolling coins plan turned out to be a pretty good idea. Another great way to save money is to convert it in your head. That $15 dress at Ross that is SO CHEAP is actually 90 yuan. That $15 dress will buy me 90 bottles of water. That $15 dress will buy me six shirts. That $15 dress will buy me 36 bubble teas. That $15 dress is one jiao I can hand out to 900 different beggars on the street. That $15 dress... is gonna stay on the rack.
In the beginning of 2008, Rachel and I were Sophomores* at Humboldt State University.
*Technically I should specify that we were in our second year at HSU. Credit-wise, we were probably still iffy.
Here are some fun facts from 2008:
- 2008 was designated the International Year of Languages
- Cyprus and Malta adopted the Euro
- The price of petroleum hits $100/barrel for the first time
And let's be honest, I'm reading these off of Wikipedia. Here's the link!
Pretty cool stuff, though. In any case, Bry and I were in school. Bry was learning to play saxophone while I attempted clarinet. Times were good. We were getting along in life just fine living off of financial aid. It wasn't until we returned from China that the need for jobs as well as financial aid would become an issue. The Spice Girls were on tour again. Frankly, for a self-involved college student, times were awesome!
In May 2008, Bry and I began working for HSU cleaning dorms. We also rented our first apartment. We owned a camera but apparently we couldn't be bothered to take pictures. When you're saving every penny, doing laundry is as much a hassle as it is expensive. When laundry day rolls around and you FINALLY have to do your laundry, our house usually looked like this:
 |
| And you thought we looked skinny now! |
We never quite got this bad: go here!
A more typical day in our house now looks more like this:
 |
| Granted, this is from Halloween, but still... |
So, let's turn back time to 2008 and make a few comparisons!
Jobs:
In 2008, Bry and I spent the summer working for HSU Housing and Dining. We only got paid once a month, so budgeting became an issue for us for the first time. We went on large shopping trips on pay day and by the end of the month we didn't even have enough money for bread to make sandwiches for our lunches at work. Half of our June and July paychecks went towards buying plane tickets at around $800 a piece. We were working full eight hour days, five days a week. We were often so exhausted that we would spend half of our lunch breaks napping instead of eating. (Cleaning all day is more exhausting than you might imagine!)
At present, we are both employed but in separate places (GASP!). I am, and have been since February 2011, working at Bed Bath and Beyond. Since I have FINALLY graduated, I have open availability at work. What this means is that some weeks, like this week, I get nearly all full days at work. I have no fixed schedule, so every week my hours and days I work vary. It keeps you on your toes. It also makes it nearly impossible for Bry and I to accomplish anything together during the week. I work a lot of nights so we hardly cross paths.
Food:
In 2008 we really did not have a lot of it. Our shopping trips consisted of filling a shopping cart on payday, and pushing it all 1.63 miles back to our apartment. We found the dollar section of CVS really helpful, and began grabbing instant coffee mix from there. This is where our coffee habit really took off since we got up at 6 AM after going to bed a midnight on a regular basis. (Ah, to be young again...) The lunches we provided ourselves for work consisted of rice cakes, peanut butter and honey sandwiches, some fruit, and a Caprisun. Dinner was some pasta variation most nights, with either frozen peas or corn to make sure we were a little healthy. (We would later learn that neither of these are a vegetable.) Our roommate was a vegetarian, so meat was usually not on the menu... but even when it could be found in our house it was in the form of canned tuna. Yum.
Here in 2013 I would love to tell you that we're better off, but I can't*. With four people living together the food supply runs thin pretty quick, and our shopping trips are few and far between. This may be because each of us has a steady supply of food available to us outside of the house. I work with food everyday, and can grab some whenever I want when I take a break. Alia visits me at work several times in one day, and will help herself to whatever is available or easy to grab. Rachel has a WalMart right by her workplace, and shops there to keep her locker fully stocked with snacks. David grabs cafeteria food for lunch most days since I am just too overwhelmed to make him a nice lunch like I used to.
*Our food choices and cooking skills have grown dramatically, but our budget and time limitations do not allow us to craft any masterpieces in the kitchen.
Apartment:
 |
| 2008: I think it was someone's birthday... |
 |
| New Year's Eve 2012 |
Clearly we've learned to party harder.
In 2008, we had just moved into our first apartment and were lacking in furniture. The green couch seen above was a hand-me-down from Mango, but our other couch was carried home from the side of the road by me and our roommate Gabe while my boyfriend at the time carried the cushions. The green couch was huge, but held together in one spot by staples, and the (formerly) white couch was sooo comfy in part because it was JUST THAT OLD and in part because it did not have any legs. It sat right on the floor and was full of spiders. These two pieces of furniture were a huge improvement from the pieces of foam we had layered on the floor previously to form some couch-like structure. Other than that, the only other piece of furniture we owned was the table (that had been in our family for years, and was still covered in teeth-marks from teething twins and crayon doodles) and chairs (held together by wood glue) that were also from Mango. Bry and I were sharing a room. Our furniture consisted of nothing. We were allowed to take home things worth under $50 left behind on campus as we cleaned dorms, and slowly over the summer gathered enough twin sized foam mattress toppers to each have a three inch thick bed of sorts in which we laid our sleeping bags over. Our "desktop" computer was set up right on the floor. We didn't have internet, however, so we never really used it. We filled our kitchen in much the same way. Any plates or kitchen utensils left behind in the dorms made it into our backpacks as we left work.
Nowadays we have real furniture! The very couch I am sitting on was purchased AT A FURNITURE STORE!!! It has a matching reclining chair. Our TV sits atop a rather heavy TV stand purchased at Target. Our apartment, though messy as all hell, is actually furnished with real people things. (Mostly because when we moved into this apartment a year ago this month,we went on a giant dump run and got rid of most of our old stuff which was quickly followed by a subsequent gargantuan shopping spree.) Also, there are four of us here,as opposed to three back in 2008. This means our individual rent is stupid cheap. It also means four people fighting for one bathroom...
Saving:
I already said we worked for HSU Housing and Dining Services in 2008 as student housekeepers, and you know we managed to save money by taking the stuff students left in the dorms after the move-out date. We found such exciting things as: pens, entirely unused notebooks, a textbook, plates, cups, books, movies, a microwave, decorations, Christmas lights, skinny jeans (of which I only recently disposed of), and so much more! Every single day was like a scavenger hunt. I believe we collected the loose changed we gathered then as well, though not much was to be had. Really, we saved money by splitting all our food, hardly washing our clothes, reading for entertainment instead of leaving the house (though we DID see The Dark Knight midnight showing, one of the only movies we saw all summer), and keeping our shopping limited since we got free stuff everyday anyway.
At present, we are saving money through several means. Firstly, we have set up our GoFundMe site. At the time of this blog being written, we've raised $685! We have also been rolling coins. We've got $73 from rolling coins, and we'll be cashing our current rolled coins on the first. This rolling coins plan turned out to be a pretty good idea. Another great way to save money is to convert it in your head. That $15 dress at Ross that is SO CHEAP is actually 90 yuan. That $15 dress will buy me 90 bottles of water. That $15 dress will buy me six shirts. That $15 dress will buy me 36 bubble teas. That $15 dress is one jiao I can hand out to 900 different beggars on the street. That $15 dress... is gonna stay on the rack.
 |
| And almost a week after Picnic Days, I still have hay in my purse. |
