A Flower.

Yesterday, I said goodbye to my roommate Daisy. Daisy was only my roommate for a semester, but she quickly became my favorite part of my freshman year. 

A lot of people go to college, and absolutely eat it up. They thrive. I was not that person.

A lot of people go to college, and immediately connect with their roommates. They make friends for life. That was not me this year.

A lot of this year, I struggled. Feeling lost, feeling lonely, feeling uninspired and sometimes purposeless.  Insignificant. It doesn't help that I said goodbye to my best friend. Twice.

However, I'm now at a point where I can love this year for what it was. Not an up, but a down. But a glorious down, you know? In the words of a very wise friend, different seasons for different lessons.

At semester, my room-roommate moved out (because she couldn't stand our other roommates, and she wanted to live closer to a boy she was dating). She wanted me to move with her, but I just felt like I shouldn't - even though I wasn't very happy where I was. After she moved out, Daisy moved in. 

Daisy is from Taichung, Taiwan. When I heard she would be my roommate, I was a little nervous, but excited to meet her. My roommates came back from Christmas break earlier than I did and warned me that she didn't speak. However, when I came back from Christmas break, all loaded down with bags, she jumped right up and shook my hand. She helped me unload my car, and I knew we would be friends.

Getting to know Daisy has been such a high point in my year away at school. When we first met, she wasn't confident in her English at all. However, by the end of the semester, we had gone from broken, short conversations, to laughing our heads off at how neither of us can parallel park to save our lives, or jumping up and down because she had gotten accepted into graduate school. 

Helping Daisy a couple times a week with her ESL homework gave me such peace in thinking about China... like maybe I do have things to offer people and I can help them learn a skill that will better their opportunities. I loved leaving little surprises around for Daisy, because she is the most gracious person I know - just so appreciative of every extra muffin, little card, favor, everything. Such an absolutely lovely person. She loved learning about the culture and the language here. I didn't even realize we had a culture! It's flipping Utah, for crap's sake. She also shared with me her culture, teaching me different words, telling me about all her many travels - 9 countries at 23, people! - and even showing me how to make native foods. She was also the first person I ever taught to pray.

Daisy made me smile, every single time I talked to her. She gave me a purpose, and a usefulness outside myself that I so desperately needed in college. She was always so kind and loving to me, and she showed me the beauty of the world every time we talked. She always left me eager to travel to whatever place she had described. She gave me an appreciation for different cultures, and gave me confidence that I could see and help the world, as big as it is. She also shared her many wonderful talents, her intelligence and her musical abilities. She demonstrated a cultural work ethic I had never experienced, always trying to improve her homework, and saying things like, "My little brother loved baseball - he watched all the time until he started with university." The power of a people so dedicated to bettering themselves and expanding their knowledge is incredible to me.

Daisy is funny, too. She gets so excited about life! She is quite possibly the cutest person alive. She says delicious like, "dericious" and laughs before she answers whenever I ask her how her day was. She tells me stories of trying skiing here and taking three hours. First I think, that's a short ski day! Until I learn, she meant three hours just going down the bunny-hill. She sat down in the snow! Oh, we were laughing so hard that day. We always pantomime funny things, and when I teach her about our language or America, she always makes me laugh when she says, "Oh, that's so strange!" Because when you think about it, not having grown up here, a lot of things really are.

Being friends with Daisy made me feel loved. It made me excited to come home everyday. It made me realize that no matter how lonely, how difficult, no matter how much of a struggle this year has sometimes been, I wasn't in the wrong place. This year, I needed to be here, in this apartment, being her friend.

We went out to lunch to say goodbye, as she's off to California and then China this summer before going to Missouri for graduate school. Always sharing wonderful things with me, she took me to try Hot Pot, a common Taiwanese dish. It was so good! And we had so much fun. I will miss her dearly, and my whole life I will be grateful to her and the beautiful soul that she is. She has touched my life for good, and I know that wherever we are, we will always be friends.

Something I have always thought about her, is that she is perfectly named. Daisy isn't her real name, but it is the name she chose since her Taiwanese name is difficult for Americans to pronounce. But to be named for a flower is so perfectly fitting. Every day she was in my life, she made it more beautiful simply by being there. And every day, she seemed to blossom into something more and more complex and beautiful - something I truly treasured learning about and watching develop and grow.

Thank you, Daisy. :) You made my freshman year wonderful.