Christmas Break 2013

Belated Merry Christmas everyone! I hope all of you had a blast being with family and friends while celebrating the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. 

Me, I had a great, restful Christmas. Some of my favorite things I did over the break:
- Google Hangout with my family, including my sister who is on a mission in AUSTRALIA(!) on Christmas Eve night. I LOVE MY FAMILY!!! And I love technology that lets us video chat with each other, even though we are thousands of miles apart. 
- Spend Christmas Eve night with the missionaries in my ward having dinner and playing games. Special thanks to the missionary couple in my ward who hosted it :)
- Attend a Venezuelan Christmas dinner hosted by my church friend's mother, and eat SUPER delicious food. It's food I dream about- it's that good.
- Sleep in and laze around my apartment
- Watch Catching Fire and read the Hunger Games Trilogy (another post) and dream about Finnick Odair! 

And this year, I drove up to Michigan and spent a few days with family friends before Christmas Day, and got to hang out with these three little cuties:

These three children are like nephews and nieces I don't have and they are A TON of fun to be with! For example, that little girl is slightly older than two years old, and is learning to talk and converse with people, resulting in conversations like this:

Me: Hey little missy, who's adorable?

Little Missy: Me!

Me: Who's Little Missy?

Little Missy: Me!

Me: Who's adorable?

Little Missy: Me!

Me: Who's pretty?

Little Missy: Mommy!

Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha darn right! And then when I asked her to pose for my camera, she did this...

...and held this pose until I took her picture. SOOOOOOO ADORABLE!!! 

The middle child, Little Mister O, is equally adorable and EXTREMELY SMART. He's only four and just started learning how to read, but he can already read scriptures (and I mean the adult version, not the simplified kids version), tell time, and does math that I know I could not do when I was his age, such as 47 - 7 = ? and 36 + 8 = ? A 4 year old who does math like a first grader (or better) *fainz* 

The oldest, Little Mister J, is a TERRIFIC big brother who is very well-rounded. Not only does he excel in school, he's a very good piano player, and enjoys all kinds of sports- baseball, soccer, football, basketball, etc. I played checkers with him and we tied- can you believe it?! So embarrassing for me! And he has A BIG HEART. It comes across so obviously in the way he interacts with his siblings, like the way he allows his younger brother to score on him in soccer, or the way he gently plays with his little sister. 

And just to show them off a little bit more, the two older brothers can:

- Name the fifty states of America

- Name the capitals of the fifty states of America (seriously. I can't)

- Name the states that border Texas (there's four of them). 

- Beat me in soccer and baseball. We played these two sports in their basement, and even the four year old scored more goals and batted more balls than I. *Miss Keesh epic fail* 

- Most importantly, they are VERY well-behaved. I was so impressed!

Doing the best I can with my camera phone. I think the older two tried to make bunny ears.

It was very lovely visiting their family, and a nice break from Columbus.

While in Michigan I also visited the Henry Ford Museum, and I highly recommend it to everyone, especially those who love American history. I'm a museum junkie, and I know a good museum when I visit one. There's lots of cool American history artifacts, such as the Rosa Parks bus, the limousine that John F. Kennedy was assassinated in, the chair that Abraham Lincoln was shot in, and of course, the Ford T Model. Plus it was interactive, clean, and very kid-friendly. 

Too bad the Christmas season is over, which means my holiday is creeping to a close. *sigh* I could really use another month of break. 

How was your Christmas break? Would love to hear about it! 

Off for break! *RAWR*

So guess what?!

I'm DONE with my semester! Unlike last year where I had to write a paper over the break. It was a terrible first year. This year I managed to get all my papers and grading done last Saturday afternoon, which meant I'm officially on break till Boxing Day (Dec 26), and able to take 3 hour long naps. 

*\(^o^)/* *\(^o^)/* *\(^o^)/*

Anyway, I know most of my colleagues hate grading because it's time consuming. I agree. But I think I rather grade 50 papers than write one paper.  Yes, that's me. I'm crazy. But hey, remember I'm not in my program for the research but for the teaching part of it.  

Plus sometimes, on the rare occasion, you come across an answer that makes you laugh and cry at the same time, and turns on my sarcasm like no other. (Please note that these were take-home exams, so it wasn't like they didn't have time to review their answers before submitting them in.)

Like:
"After the invasion of the Mongols, the Chinese grew an affinity for all things Chinese."- really? As opposed to an affinity for all things American before that of course. Nothing like a foreign invasion to make you finally appreciate your own culture, even if you developed it. 

Or:

[Referring to the invention of the Korean alphabet, Hangul] "Literary action boomed in the 17th and 18th centuries, with poets writing short poems (sijo), long poems (saseol sijo), and even longer poems (gasa)."
First, "literary action boomed." Hmm... 
Second, "short poems, long poems, and even longer poems." *head palm* Shakespeare would have been so proud.
To give that student credit, it sounds like there are significant differences in the three types of poetry in Hangul...maybe. S/he just didn't phrase it well. 

But overall my students didn't too badly. I mean, at least they didn't write something completely inaccurate like what one of my colleague's student wrote:
It was not good to be a Christian during the time of the Crusades. (*sound of head banging against the wall*)

These poor college students. I think it's because they are in college that we have high expectations of them. If they were kids, then their answers would be viewed in a whole different light. Like the kids in THIS WEBSITE. Can't stop laughing!

Anyway, I'm off to sleep. HOORAY!!! 

(Link in case you can't click it http://www.viralnova.com/kid-notes/)

Going Crazy from Finals

Remember the 25-page draft from my previous post that got torn into shreds? Well, I turned my 3rd (and sort-of final) draft in yesterday, Wednesday, 12/11/2013 at 11:59pm (on the dot!). Take that stupid 8000-level paper! I'll dig it up again some time in April for my Masters defense, but for now, I'm soooo excited that I'm don't have to touch it again for the next few months. Oh yeah!

Now all I have left is a teaching portfolio that I don't plan on spending more than a couple hours on, and grading (which I'll leave for another post), and I will be done with this semester.

But that meant that my entire yesterday was spent doing nothing but writing, writing, writing, writing... did I mention writing? By 6pm I starting getting a little cross-eyed from staring at the computer screen. By the time I hit the "send" button, my brain was completely fried. I was so ready to hit the sack and not set my alarm.

And then I realized that I needed to get up early in the morning to send my colleague to the airport, and I mean early, as in 4:40AM. Dang it! (Not to the part about sending him to the airport but about getting up early)

Anyway, I managed to drag myself out of bed, and when I reached his apartment, I texted him that I was outside. I scrolled through his previous texts to see if I had missed anything, and read, "...my plane is at 6am on Friday morning...(pick him up) 4:40 ish?" And I thought: 4:40am pick him up- check. Friday morning pick him up- check.

Wait a minute.

WAIT A FREAKING MINUTE.

It wasn't Friday morning. It was Thursday morning.

And so ladies and gentlemen, I got up at the unholy hour of 4:15am, changed, grabbed a bite to eat, sat in my car for 5 minutes waiting for it to warm up, drove all the way to his house (thank goodness it was only 10 minutes away), texted him, and then I realized that I HAD GOTTEN THE DAY WRONG. Somehow my brain thought that today was Friday. 

 I wanted to bang my head against the steering wheel, but settled for a *facepalm* instead.

And this is why I'm sitting back in my apartment at 5:54am typing this post because my body can't go back to sleep (it'll probably crash around 8am, maybe?). The next time someone asks me why I dislike grad school so much, I'll direct them to this post.

Seriously, I'm going crazy.

So here's to all of you out there who are either done with finals or taking finals- here's to wishing you a better experience than I had, and hoping that your brains are not as fried as mine.

Changing the blog title this weekend to

DAZED IN BUCKEYE LAND.

Still kind of numb (although the feeling of disappointment and heartbreak threatens to invade from the fringes)

Why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why??????????????

HOW IN THE WORLD DID WE LOSE TO MICHIGAN STATE???
Noooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Going to curl up and cry in a corner for, well... okay, I won't, but I AM extremely disappointed.

I may not be a huge sports watcher, or the even biggest fan of the Buckeyes, and I still don't understand the game of football much, but I LOVE SCHOOL SPIRIT. Gimme some school rivalry-ing! St. Nicks v. Cedar Girls; BYU v. the-apostate-school; OSU vs. the-blue-school-that-shall-not-be-named. Yes, I have my mean moments, and school spirit is when my meanness manifests itself in it's most nasty form.

And tonight's game may not have been against *erhem* you-know-who-that-shall-remain-unnamed, but MSU is sort-of it's "little brother" so... *sigh* Not the end of the world of course, but it's still SAD!!!

Hello everyone- SURPRISE! No, this blog is not dead yet

How long has it been since I last updated my blog? 5 months? *gulp* Nope, I haven't abandoned it. Just haven't had the inspiration or the time to update it.

Laziness over the summer because I want to squeeze in every single second I have lounging around in my apartment procrastinating school work and doing NOTHING
+
School is up again and oh my word PLEASE HELP ME I'M GOING OUT OF MY MIND!!!
= 
Blog? What blog? No time.

But guess what?! I'm backkkkkk!!! Not because I have time now, but because I just got back my first draft of a 25-page paper I wrote relating to my original research, and my teacher just completely shredded it to pieces. As in, paper shreds so tiny, you can't even see them. Like snow. Or maybe not even snow since you can see snow.

I'm supposed to be working on draft 2 this week, but since I'm about to cry at my office desk, I'm procrastinating re-writing it and so ta dah! I'm backkkkk!!!

And no, I'm not asking for your comfort, like, "Awww, that sucks, don't worry, you'll do better next time." No, no, no. I understand every person in academia has to experience being torn apart to ity-bity pieces at least once in their career. You know, the whole "you learn from your failures" platitudes and that sort-of stuff. So don't need to comfort me (although you can still leave a comment below doing that- much appreciated!). I'll pick myself up tomorrow or sometime this week.

But for today, I just can't handle the emotional disappointment and sadness.

So, what in the world have I been doing these past 5 months? Sooooo many things, but here are just a few highlights.

Went to Cedar Point for my birthday with 3 other friends who graciously agreed to spend quite a lot of money to accompany me and make my birthday special- thank you guys! You know who you are. Anyway, ah Cedar Point, how I love thee! Btw, Cedar Point is the roller coaster capital of the world. It rained quite a bit, so that delayed the 1.5 hour lines even longer, but we still managed to sit some terrific rides. I didn't take many pictures, except this one:

Hot funnel cake +  ice cream + hot fudge + whipped cream = PURE HEAVEN. The 4 of us devoured it.

Drove to Kentucky for my ex-roommate's bridal shower and wedding. Loved it! Thanks Miss Shay for letting me be a part of it. You looked beautiful.

Me and the beautiful bride

Louisville, Kentucky Temple
Exactly like Columbus! 

Babysat once a week for two kids. I miss them, though I can't imagine doing it right now either. We got to go to COSI, the zoo, the pool, a movie (Despicable Me 2- soooo cite!), etc... thank you to their Mom for allowing me to take them :)

Started Fall semester: 3 classes + 1 TA class

CLASSES: 

- Gender, Race and Empire

- A writing seminar class (paper is the one that gone torn to pieces)

- Pedagogy and Grant writing

TA: Pre-modern East Asia, which I love TA-ing for. LOVE IT! I can't wait to teach my own class, except that I have to go through all the other work to get there, which includes research and writing papers, which is so not my favorite thing. Urgh!

Guess who visited me in Columbus, even if just for a few hours as a stopover from their travels? Two of my favorite families in the whole world!!! The first family stopped over on their way back to Michigan; the latter on their way to Chicago to meet family to move to OREGON. Orgeon! So far away.... *sob!*

Finally, I actually dressed up this Halloween. @@ Yeah, so not me. But there was a dance after the ward Halloween party... Anyway, any guess what I dressed up as?

Simple, fun and cuuuuuuute! 

And of course, so many other equally awesome (and not so awesome) stuff happened as well, but I'm too lazy to enumerate them. Hope you guys are surviving and doing better than I am.

Now, what else can I do... 

Sort-Of Apartment Makeover!

Since coming back from Utah, I've realized that I've grown comfortable here in Ohio. My apartment, my roommate (Miss Cee), my friends- I missed them all and it feels really good to be back. I still struggle with school, but I can definitely handle everything else about Ohio.

Of course, this doesn't mean that I couldn't bring back some "Utah" with me. For example, we have a new addition to my living room wall:

Can you believe that I still remember where this came from? It was a gift from my freshman ward back when DT was still standing (yes I'm that old...) because they found out that I wasn't going home for Christmas and was spending it with some family friends instead. So they (the ward members) packed a huge box of goodies/ games/ Christmas decorations/ sparkling grape juice, along with this blanket, and dropped it off with my family friends, so that I could have a wonderful Christmas surprise. Only in Utah :) #freshmanwardscanbeawesomeandnotakwardsometimes (do you like how I faux-hash tagged it? I'm so cool I know)

Anyway, not to be done outdone, Miss Cee took out a University of Kansas (she did her Masters there and worked in Kansas for a couple of years) pennant and hung it on the wall. So now, our living room walls that were once bare are *ahem* bare no more:

Sadly, both Miss Cee and I haven't developed a Buckeye spirit just quite yet so we don't have OSU paraphernalia to adorn our walls. Maybe soon... Anyway, I think it's hilarious that two Asian females have such strong American college school spirit!

Speaking of "new" stuff, my blessing/ news of the month is I HAVE A "NEW" FREE BED!!!

Miss B called me up sometime last week and asked if I wanted her bed since she was moving (sob! Don't leave us!) and leaving it here, and of course, I said yes. So... ta dah! My beautiful "new" (soft) bed which I love love love:

To accommodate my huge bed-that-takes-up-half-my-room, I had to rearrange the furniture in my room. Doesn't seem like much but man! It felt like I was moving all over again. However, I'm rather pleased with the "makeover" results- it's always nice to change things up once in a while :) 

Plus it's been fun to have a huge bed, because now I can sprawl out on it to watch movies and sleep study. 

I'm telling you, the benefits to being a Mormon are

a) free bed! Okay, not really, BUT you have a network of friends who willingly donate their stuff to you when they move (happened at BYU too- loved it!) 

and

b) a network of friends who get up early on Saturday morning to help you move. In this case, Miss Cee and one of my HTs (one of our "Batmen"- see THIS POST for details), whom I shall call Mr. Q, graciously offered to help me that early morning. I mean, look at it- that mattress weighs a ton! After a lot of maneuvering and lifting, we managed to got it down the stairs of Miss B's home, tied securely to Mr. Q's truck for it to survive the trip home, then up the stairs to my apartment, and finally squeezed into my bedroom. Thank goodness I had already taken out my old mattress and put it in the living room.

So here's a as-huge-as-my-bed shout out of thanks to Miss B, Miss Cee and Mr. Q!!!

And what of my old mattress? 

Of course it got passed on to another Mormon friend, which, btw, has a funny story attached to it.

After helping me move, as Mr. Q turned to leave, he spotted my old mattress in the living room and asked if I wanted him to just take my old mattress out for me. I declined because the person "inheriting" my mattress was coming to collect it that afternoon. 

Well, afternoon comes, and that person came over with a huge plastic sheet large enough to cover the mattress. I asked him why he was covering it, and he said because he was only moving sometime in July, he wouldn't need it till then. Meanwhile, he was going to store it in Mr. Q's basement for the time being. 

*slap forehead* Miss Cee and laughed so hard. If only he had told me earlier, we could have saved him a trip! Plus he wouldn't have had to tied it to the roof of his car (although don't worry, because Mr. Q lives like, 2 minutes away from me). 

#mormonsandmattresses (do I get extra cool points?)

English- Gotta Love This Funny Langauge

Case in point:

I started my drive back to Columbus today with lots of mixed feelings- sad to leave Utah but happy to be going back "home" (yup, it's official- Columbus has become my home away from home). Anyway, our (as in my sister and I- thank goodness she came with me this time!) first overnight stop was at Denver, CO where a Singaporean friend and his wife lived, and they planned to take us to eat 红烧牛肉面. Because the restaurant had limited seating, we planned to get there by 5:30 pm. I decided to give us plenty of driving time, and calculated to reach there an hour early if we didn't take any breaks.

I keyed in the address into my GPS, and according to the Time of Arrival, we would get there at 4:30 pm. So we started the drive, and since I got onto the highway, I changed the "Time of Arrival" to "Distance to Destination" to countdown how many miles more we had left to drive.

But after driving about 16 miles, the GPS instructed me to take US-6 for 400+ miles, and I grew uneasy because I knew my route had to be US-6 for about 60+ miles, then on to I-70. I was like, "How come my GPS is telling me stay on US-6 all the way? What about I-70?" Alarmed, I asked my sister to check the GPS for Time of Arrival.

Her response: Time to arrive is 7:35.

WHAT??? Reach there at 7:35 pm? What the heck- did I take a wrong exit or something? How did I suddenly add 3 hours to my trip?!

So we drove back all the way to Provo, and then I calculated my GPS again. It showed me the same route, and when I zoomed out to see the entire route, I realized that we had been traveling on the right route after all.

That was when I realized that my GPS said the time TO arrival was 7:35- as in 7 hours and 35 minutes to our destination. Sadly, our time AT arrival was now 5:30 pm.

The good thing was that even after wasting one hour's worth of gas, we still reached the restaurant with plenty of time to spare, and had really delicious food. It all worked out in the end.

And I almost got into an accident today, and am so grateful to God for watching out for me.