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!

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!

ISA Spring Formal

Grace and I...getting ready for the party.


Grace, Me, Ching He and Yoon. Ching He is from China and I find her gorgeous. Yoon is from Korea! We go to the same church.


Getting out from the limo at the Marriott downtown Des Moines. The hotel is okay only...it can't beat the hotels in KL.


We took this before dinner. Everyone was cam-whoring!


Grace, Nicole, Me, Daphne and Ann. Ann and Daphne are other Malaysians at Drake.


Josiah, Me and Nicole. Josiah is from our InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He looks a little leprechaun-ish don't you think?


Indian girl....


And a Chinese one!


This was the best picture of the night and the funny thing was that it was taken in the ladies bathroom!


On the way back home from the party. We danced a lot...and were tired when we got back.

Salsa Y El Bailar Sucio

Literally translates into "Salsa and Dirty Dancing". *whistles* I attended Salsa night at Drake with a couple of friends and oh my goodness, was it fun! I learnt how to dance salsa and merengue; it was not easy! It takes a lot of practice and a natural talent of getting the beat to the music. You can't afford to dance out of beat when you Latin dance or else you'll end up looking like some waggling donkey on the dance floor. It was organized by La Fuerza Latina and Grace was my dance partner for the night. I had sore legs from knee downwards after that but it was fun watching some people dance. They were good! Especially the hispanics and blacks.

Another friend who came with us ended up partnering two older guys and when I say older...I mean 30++. One of them taught her some moves and dirty danced with her for a bit. I was sitting at the tables on the side and for a moment, I was speechless watching them. Lol! I was horrified but then again, nothing came out of it so it was a good thing. I was keeping a close eye on them. All of us had a good laugh talking about it afterwards. I actually still want to dance...but not latin dance, just good ol' club dancing.

Skating and Shopping

Finally things seem to be coming together. I was saying the previous weekend that I had nothing much to do which made me feel homesick. However, this weekend, I was so busy so much so that I didn't have time to do all the things that I wanted to.

On Friday night, I went ice-skating for the very first time. The rink apparently had a special rate of $5 for Drake students instead of the usual $7.50 so I decided to go as I've not skated before. A bunch of us went but when we got to the rink, the line to the counter was so long! There were tons of Drake students there including many of my American and Malaysian friends. Anyways, it took us about 30 mins to get our skates and by the time we got ours, they ran out of skates for the rest of the people waiting in line.

The rink consists of 2 ice-skating rinks and I think they are both bigger than the one at Sunway Pyramid. Anyways, I had this warped fanstasy that once I got onto the ice, I would just take off and skate like I've done it forever. The boots were a little unkind to my bony ankles...they were like two planks strapped to your foot on each side. You have to lace them up pretty tight to prevent your ankle from breaking if you ever fell down on the ice. Out of the 4 of us, only one of my friends, Nicole had skated before. I gingerly got onto the ice.

It was so slippery. But I decided to shuffle slowly by the wall with Nicole next to me. I've roller-bladed before and it is very similar to ice-skating except for the fact that ice-skating is much more slippery. I made progress along the wall and then I lost balance and was falling to the ground. Nicole grabbed my hand and my weight pulled her to the ground. I fell on my butt and she fell on top of me. All this happened in less than 1 minute when I got onto the ice. So much for my fantasy of being able to glide on the ice.

But thanks to Nicole and Amber and my previous experience with roller-blades, I got the hang of it faster than my other 2 friends. Eventually, before we left, I could skate the entire rink without needing to stop or falling down. I fell a total of 3 times, the 2nd time was karma...I was helping Nicholas to skate and he made me fall down, like how I made Nicole fall. The 3rd was entirely my fault. I stopped using the wrong technique and ended up kneeling against the wall. By the end of the session, all of us were glad that we got onto the ice and would definitely go back again.

That was on Friday night. I decided to go shopping on Saturday. It happened to be a cold and windy day so it was torture waiting for the bus when the windchill was -10 degrees or so. But we managed to get to the mall. I managed to snag some good buys.

I got these two watches by Tilt from Pacsun. The original price was $29.50, I paid $5 each.


My next stop was Aeropostale. I needed T-Shirts as I didn't manage to bring many from back home. I got 2 shirts for a mere $4.50 each instead of paying $14.99 per shirt.


My friend Ann wanted to get some hair accessories. We decided to go to this accessory shop. There was a bargain rack in the middle. Bags and clutches were going for $3 each. I saw this nice metallic mesh-like bag. It was the only one left and I thought someone might have dumped it there. But I decided to take it anyway. I looked at the tag, $26. I can always say that I don't want it if it was really $26. Then I got myself a nice black clutch ($14), the last one left. I took them to the counter and when the sales assistant rang the bill up, it was $3 all right...both of them. It was so cheap!!!


After Aeropostale, I went to Bath & Body Works. It's a really nice chain of bath and beauty products and they have shops all over. I spent some time looking around the store because I needed to get some lotion. I ended up buying the lotion and some shower gel and lipbalm as well. Wanna guess how much they were? $3.70 for all of it. They were 90% off!


The thing about shopping in America when things are on sale is that, when they are on sale, they really slash the prices. The best part is that the items are usually in good condition and are nice. I can't possibly get that metallic bag at that quality back in Malaysia for RM 15 even. Aeropostale t-shirts at FOS cost no less than RM 23.90 usually and the bath products that I bought were Made in France and I'm sure they're as good as Crabtree and Evelyn or L'Occitane products. I'm just waiting for the spring/summer sales...