Student chef plans for Costa Rica
Utah Statesman: Where are you from?
Hollen: Carlsbad, New Mexico
US: What mad you want to come to USU?
Hollen: I did the National Student Exchange to get more experience and I was sent here for a year and I liked it so much that I stayed.
US: What did you like most about USU?
Hollen: I’m big on outdoors, and it’s beautiful up here.
US: What do you like to do here that you can’t do in Carlsbad?
Hollen: We have mountains here, so I like skiing and hiking. I could hike all day long and it doesn’t matter, as long as I’m just out and about and no one else is around, I’m good to go.
US: Do you go hiking by yourself a lot?
Hollen: Never by myself, I always go with two or three friends.
US: What three words would your parents use to describe you?
Hollen: Unique, outgoing and happy.
US: Are you happy while you work at the bookstore?
Hollen: Yes, I actually am.
US: What do you usually do when you’re working at the bookstore?
Hollen: I am usually on the other side, with the textbooks.
US: How long have you worked there?
Hollen: Two years.
US: If you had five hours of free time when you didn’t have to work and money wasn’t an option, what would you do?
Hollen: Only five hours?
US: Only five hours.
Hollen: I would want to go somewhere and visit someone. I would go to Arizona and visit my sister. I would hop on a plane, visit her for a few minutes and maybe go to dinner.
US: Is your sister older or younger than you?
Hollen: She’s 10 months older, and I have a twin brother too.
US: Does he go to USU? Hollen: No, he goes to a private school in New Mexico.
US: Are there just the three kids in your family?
Hollen: No, there are four. I have an older brother, my older sister and then my twin brother.
US: Do you like being a twin?
Hollen: Yeah, it’s fun. We have our moments when we want to ring each others’ necks, because you’re with someone 24/7.
US: Has there ever been a time when you wish you weren’t a twin?
Hollen: Not really, after high school I did an exchange program and went to Holland for a year and I went to school with him. His name is Mark and people didn’t realize there were two of us, so people kept calling me Mark but I just played along.
US: So you went to high school in Holland?
Hollen: Yeah, it was just like an extra year of high school.
US: If you had the choice between a million dollars or a flying carpet, which one would you choose?
Hollen: I would choose the carpet, then I could show it off and charge people an admission and make my million.
US: What did you have for breakfast this morning?
Hollen: I actually didn’t eat breakfast this morning. Oh wait, I had a cookie.
US: What kind of cookie?
Hollen: I don’t know. My roommate buys them at Smith’s, I have no idea what they are, but they are amazing.
US: Do you often eat your roommates’ food?
Hollen: Yeah, we don’t care. US: Oh, that’s nice.
Hollen: We buy communal food.
US: And that works for you?
Hollen: Yeah, there are only three of us and it works out well. I’ll buy for a meal and another one will plan for another night. We take care of each other.
US: How did you learn to cook?
Hollen: I teach myself. I just come home and start throwing food and spices into a pan and surprisingly, it turns out pretty good.
US: What is your specialty?
Hollen: I normally don’t cook things more than two times. The thing I like about working on this side of the bookstore is I can watch the TV and turn on the Food Network at 5 p.m. when it’s dead and I can get ideas.
US: If you could invite anyone over for dinner, who would you invite and what would you make them?
Hollen: I would want to talk to Ellen Degeneres.
US: Why what you make Ellen for dinner?
Hollen: I would make this dish my roommate makes – it’s macaroni and cheese, but he uses the real stuff and we have this hot sauce we put in with hotdogs. It’s very simple but it’s very good.
US: So you’d make Ellen macaroni and hot dogs, and what would you talk to her about?
Hollen: Yeah, I don’t think she’d need an extravagant meal, she seems like a really simply woman to me. She’s just like a role model to me.
US: If you had an unlimited supply of monkeys, what would you do with them?
Hollen: Me and my roommate were actually talking about this because we are headed to Costa Rica next month for 10 days and we were talking about how cool it would be to bring back monkeys for our friends instead of a T-shirt.
US: Why are you going to Costa Rica?
Hollen: I don’t really know, we just thought we’d save our money and head down.
-etippetts@cc.usu.edu