Shenanigans!

So after my roomie left for the weekend, I slowly lost my voice. It was really bad yesterday because I could hardly speak. It is much better today and although I sounded like, I quote Calvin, "The snake from Harry Potter"...I still managed to have fun over the weekend. I cooked BKT again and as usual, we had to cook extra rice as everyone stuffed themselves. If I don't get a job over here, I can always open a restaurant serving authentic Klang BKT. Despite the fact that a lot of people make jokes about Klang and how ulu it is etc., I am indeed proud to be from Klang.

I was supposed to go to work today but my boss sent me home because she thought I needed to take a rest from the way my voice sounded. I managed to finish writing my paper which is due tomorrow but then again, I have still lots to do after that. I hope I get everything done on time because I was really busy over the weekend and didn't have time to finish my work.

I went to attend my friend's baptism and he goes to this small church downtown that hold their services in a club/bar. I thought that was kind of cool because although the people who attended the church was not your everyday clean cut conventional Christian, they were still passionate about living for God and spreading the gospel. That was an experience itself...going to the bar to attend church.

I just had a visit from someone who wasn't on my list of favorite people. He actually invited me to watch him sing on Saturday when he came by sometime last week, so today he asked me how it went...assuming I went. I told him I didn't know because I didn't go as I was cooking BKT instead. BKT trumps everything else!

Solo

It has been a really busy week for me. I had 3 tests to sit for on Thursday and the thing with multiple tests in a single day is the fact that your performance generally goes downhill. It happened to me. First one was okay, second one was a little crappy and the last was awful.

Anyway, I am looking towards a more relaxed weekend. Even better because my roomie is away for some conference so I have the entire room to myself. Hmm, I wonder what mischief I'll get up to...Haha! It'll be nice to go to sleep with the lights off when I want and without earplugs.

Going to make BKT for a bunch of friends this Saturday evening and then, party on Saturday night. Woot! Can't wait!

A Reminder

The only time I get to sleep in is on Saturday mornings. I work Monday and Friday and then there's church on Sunday. Last semester, InterVarsity organized several service projects all of which are on Saturday mornings and although I signed up for them, I failed to drag myself out of bed before 8.30am.

I figured that if I didn't sign up this time around, I might actually end up going which was exactly what happened. It was worth dragging myself out of bed and getting bundled up into the cold. We spent the entire morning at Bethel Mission, a homeless shelter for men somewhere in downtown Des Moines.

We wiped down all the mattresses in the dorm, vacuumed the air vents, washed the walls and swept the floor. It was good and productive work for all of us and after that, we had lunch with the homeless people in the cafeteria. I'm glad I went because I think I needed a little reminder of how blessed I am.

It's so easy to forget all of the good things in our lives because we get so caught up in ourselves. We wonder why things are not going our way when in fact, they are but just not the way we want them to be and in a sense, that actually might be the best thing for us. Imagine having everything that we could ever want. Now where is the fun in that?

Meetings

I think I'm already starting to feel like a lawyer, but a lazy one. I think of the biggest challenges that I'm going to face this semester academically would be my senior capstone class policy analysis of the Farm Bill. Since it's an independent study class, we have to do a lot of research and reading on our own. At times, I give up because the amount of research information that we have to shift through is insane, just to fish out bits of information.

Today, we had our first official meeting with people who were potential sources of information and these people happened to be Agricultural Lawyers from the Drake Law School. It was kind of intimidating at first because...heck, these people were actually real life lawyers who knew a lot more than we did. :S Then later today, I have another meeting with a representative from the Iowa NRCS.

Maybe I should pursue a career in Environmental Law...hmm...no, I don't think so. Too much information for my little brain to process. I think I'll leave the politics and legal stuff to people who actually enjoy doing it.

Shake That Thang!

Since I came to the US to study, I learnt more about myself...about what type of person I am actually. All this while, I always thought of myself as an introvert but in fact...secretly, I am an extrovert! My extroverted self likes to do a lot of things and one of them high on the list is dancing. I love to dance! Especially if I have a good dancing partner who can dance well.

I had been having a really crappy week ever since I fell down on the first and second (yeap!) day of Chinese New Year. Everything seemed to go downhill from there onwards. I wasn't on good terms with my roomie, my friend's ex-girlfriend went emo on him again and a certain someone was getting on my nerves.

Not being in the mood to study, I decided to take some time off for myself. My friend Sam and my classmate Veronica who are part of La Fuerza Latina (LFL) were organizing Salsa Night again. They have it every semester and I missed the last one but I went for the one last spring. I almost did not go because I thought I didn't have a partner/friend to go with. I went with my friend Sean King in the end.

He was my partner for the night and we basically danced the whole night. I learnt the Salsa, Merengue and Bachata. They had a little competition at the end and we decided to take part in it to support our LFL friends. I was having a ton of fun despite the fact that my feet were killing me and I was so tired from dancing. They awarded the prizes and I wasn't optimistic on winning anything because I felt that there were others who were better than us.

Didn't matter what I thought. Maybe I was just distracted a little because my least favorite person came as well and spent the whole time dancing with other girls, and all around me. He didn't even say "Hi!" to me. I think he's a good dancer but I guess maybe his partners weren't as good as him. I had fun nonetheless and spent the whole night ignoring him. Anyways, my partner and I won 1st place!!! It was awesome! I think we make a good team and there's another event coming up on March 7th so I think I'm going to go again. Woot!

Olin - 1, Amanda - 0

So since I got here, I managed to get through the winter relatively fine. I have had friends who fell down and broke a leg, chipped a tooth and sprained an ankle. The one and only time I fell down was in front of my dorm, Jewett the first week I arrived here and even then, I was alone so no one saw.

I've had almost mishaps but none resulted in me actually falling down. I'd usually end up doing some weird dance on the ice to stable myself. Today was an exception.

I was in a hurry to get to lab and it was already a long day for me. So I was kind of half asleep and tired at the same time. It was rush hour...when students were going for their classes. I was walking down the stairs in Olin Hall and the next thing I knew, my foot slipped underneath me and I fell down 3 steps and landed hard on my right butt cheek.

My friend was like "OMG, are you okay Amanda?" Still feeling half dazed and sore, I was like, "Yeah, I'll be fine", stood up and proceeded to walk to class. Halfway down the corridor, I hear "Hey, you looked like you went down hard there. Are you okay?". I turn around and see these 2 cute guys walking behind me and I wanted to crawl (or limp) into a hole and die of embarrassment! With a nonchalant smile, I replied.."Haha, yeah..I'll be fine but I don't think I will be able to sit down for a while."

I put my bag down in class and went to the bathroom to cringe. It was the first day of Chinese New Year too. Bah!

Do You Bleed Blue?

The only 2 sports that I have ever taken a smidgen of interest in while growing up would be hockey and badminton. Both of which are very Asian sports that I used to play in high school for a little while. I guess I'm not a very big fan of sports unless it's football and Thierry Henry is playing. Haha! Other than that, I don't watch much.

When you come to America, it is impossible to get away from sports. The Superbowl, NBA, Baseball League etc. It's everywhere, staring at you in your face. Sports are part of American culture and so far, since I got here, I've only been to one basketball game on campus and even then, I couldn't wait for it to be over because they kept calling time outs every 2 minutes which was really frustrating.

I don't know how much you guys know about Drake but it's a pretty small college. With a student population of about 5000, and being situated in the Midwest and all...it's not unusual that most students would prefer to study elsewhere. Despite our status (we are a private college) and size, we are pretty well known in the Midwest for quality education and our graduate program.

However, recently...we or should I say I, have another reason to be proud to come from Drake rather than some huge state-funded college in the Westcoast. America is a vast country, and is known for the large number and variety of educational institutions here. The Drake Men's basketball team has been on a 20 game winning streak, putting them at #15 in the rankings for the NCAA and a fellow sophomore, Josh Young has been named best player for the past 4 weeks.

For a private, small-ish midwestern college, we're doing pretty good I must say. I can only hope that they'll do better in the coming games. It would be awesome if we got to the Top 10. Now that's something people won't forget for a while. Yeap, you heard it...I'm from Drake and I bleed blue. Go Bulldogs!

Moving On

I have never been a fan of those applications on Facebook but my absolute favorite application would have to be the Fortune Cookie application. There's something appealing about clicking the button and getting a completely random fortune. So when I log into Facebook, I like to get a new fortune daily and if I like it, I'll leave it at that for a while. The craziest thing is that sometimes, the "fortunes" that I get are totally straight on, or something that I need to hear. Today I clicked once and the phrase, "Why haven't you moved on yet?" popped up.

I paused for a while, stared at the computer screen and asked myself the exact same question. It has been too long and if I'm honest with myself, I am still not completely over it yet. I know I should but I am not okay with it largely due to the fact that my ego was bruised big time. I still berate myself for being so stupid about the whole matter because I know better than that. Since I got back, I was trying to deal with it by acting like things were okay when they were not. I even felt that he was trying to show me up by acting that everything was fine...that he was fine; pretending that nothing happened.

I did the exact same thing but on the inside, I was fuming. Because of that, I am no better than he is. Worse in fact. I realized today that there is no point in holding on to the hurt and regret. Mistakes are made but life goes on. Feeling resentful and angry will and has been interfering with my relationships with other people. I am sick of hearing myself complaining about him. So when I saw him today at Hubbell, I think he was pretending not to see me but I made it really clear that I was saying "Hi" to him and he couldn't avoid it. I ended up sitting with my friends 2 tables away from him while he sat alone. I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for him.

Coz all the while, I thought I was the only one hurting but then again, I see him hurting as well...probably not in the same way like I am; but he is. I can only do so much, by being genuinely nice to him when I see him in public because I don't think I'm quite ready on my own accord to go and look for him to see how things are going with him. I doubt that we'll ever be good friends because I don't think I will be able to completely trust him again but its better than being completely hostile strangers to each other.

Spring Cleaning!

I spent part of my weekend finally cleaning up my space and the room itself. It's so easy to sit back and let things pile up. My mail was piling up and my drawer was full of junk that needed to be thrown out. Books and notes from the previous semester needed to be organized and sorted through. My folders were in a mess and the room was essentially a giant dust bunny and a breeding ground for hairballs.

Haha, don't look so horrified! It's not as bad as it sounds but we hadn't vacuumed our room in a while. So far no one complained except for Grace...haha. I miss my fish and my Wandering Jew. I should get them from my friend's place soon. The room is ready to accept its former inhabitants once again.

So it felt good to clean everything up just as the semester starts. Not just the dirt and dust. :)