Chinese New Year

I feel an overwhelming sense of happiness and contentment today. Yesterday was such a grand day and even if today's starting out kind of slow because I have to get a little work done today feels like a fine day to be alive.

Yesterday was the Chinese New Years Eve! My friend Wei invited me to come help with making jiaozi and celebrate with the other Chinese graduate students. I was so flattered to be invited. I actually showed up at the multi-purpose room a half an hour before he did so it was slightly awkward initially. They were very friendly and forthcoming though, I felt very welcome to enjoy the experience. 

New Years is a huge holiday in China. Wei told me that in Chinese mythology at the end of the year an evil energy (or a demon, I can't remember) resides in the world and on New Year fireworks are launched in the air and loud drums are banged on to scare away that bad energy and begin with a fresh start. Wei also told me about the city of Beijing where you can see the Forbidden city, the Ming dynasty's tomb and eat traditional Chinese food at the restaurants. I've decided that if I were to go to China, I'd want to tour Beijing. I have no interest in Shanghai because it's just a huge city and I feel that would be overwhelming. 

I mean I know being in China in general would be a paranormal experience for me. It would take a lot of courage for me to go into another country, but I definitely intend to do so someday. 

Wei also showed me some very sweet videos and pictures of his family back home. He has a wife and a three year old daughter, she's so cute! 

Last night was also fun because I went to a party at Bruce's house. Met quite a few chill people, drank some hard apple cidar, had a wonderful time. I did get pretty drunk though surprisingly enough didn't get sick today. I suck at Kings Cup. Honestly I suck at all drinking games. 

lol, lovely. Yeah it was a great day overall-- even got some studying in and played my guitar for two hours, and I feel great

peace. 

Should be easy to sleep tonight

Ha ha, this is a picture Reina took yesterday and posted today. 

The last couple days have been exhausting for me so this picture already feels like it was taken a week ago. I finally got that horrible critique paper done-- which I had to pretty much entirely re-do from scratch because my first attempt at it was an absolute fail. Good thing we did peer reviews otherwise I would have been in for a rude awakening. Granted I don't think my paper that I wrote is outstanding by any means but it at least follows the assignment guidelines. 

Today I also had an econ quiz which was a little stressful because I haven't been keeping up with my econ studying as well as the first part of the quarter. I'm happy to say that I did barely pull a B on that quiz (I got 4 wrong, so 81%). Tomorrow I've got a finite quiz that I'm pretty prepared for and spent a solid hour studying for tonight. 

I haven't been playing guitar as much as I'd like too... Now that I know the precise day of the recital however and will be starting a new week tomorrow I'm feeling good about using guitar pro this week. That's basically what Jacob told me at our lesson tonight. He's like, "You've got the right piece now, it matches the one on guitar pro, break it up into little chunks and keep working on it." This week I didn't get nearly as much time to practice as I would have liked too but that's how it goes when it gets to this point in the quarter.  It starts getting more difficult. After tomorrow I'm pretty sure there'll be four more weeks of class. 

At least I'm done with accounting, ha ha. Any time I complain about this quarter I think of how much MORE stressful last quarter was. Last quarter that accounting homework would take me at least an hour and a half a day. I'm thinking statistics is going to be just as hard. Maybe I'll pick up the text early and start looking it over during spring break.. whatever it takes to make this class easier on myself. I also of course have to make sure I register early to get a decent professor. 

I had to do some reading for english tonight, too, but after spending hours on that paper my brain feels completely fried. I'm back to drinking coffee again, by the way. Wasn't doing that for a couple weeks but I'm back to drinking it again. I've been kind of getting back to feeling "Normal" again regardless of the fact that I'm here. For a long time I didn't feel like myself because I was so pessimistic about this place but things have been improving. 

Getting the hell out of my apartment has helped a lot. I don't have a job, though, and I'm kind of nervous to check my balance because I've been eating away my student loan money. Surc food is so f'ing expensive but I've really liked hanging out with Bruce and Trent this week and have met a lot of new people just by hanging around there. Just having two people that I feel comfortable around has made a world of difference for me. I was trying to make friends with girls when I first got here but I've gradually given up. I just feel more comfortable around guys generally; or at least they're easier to hang out with. 

My roommate and I still don't talk, really. I'm sure it's predominantly my fault. I haven't been as friendly as I could have but I still have difficulty talking to her for some reason. My friend Abe has come over a couple nights and he usually talks to her but I can't get into the brief conversations. 

Jessy and I have stopped talking. We don't walk to finite together because I've been walking to Abe instead. Honestly he's more entertaining to talk too, Jessy and I don't really click and since we saw eachother at that party it's been kind of awkward. She's started sitting next to this guy she knows in our finite class. This guy always wears really trendy looking clothes, blegh. Not my thing. I don't know why, I can't take a person seriously if they seem to take way too much time coordinating their outfits. Maybe because it's something that doesn't concern me what so ever. 

I like the way I dress though, honestly. I feel like when I'm ready and have more time I'll incorporate more into my look but for now it's so comfortable just being simple. 

peace.  

Pokemon Colosseum and partyyyy, big updates.

Hey, damn I haven't been on in a good while. Last week things got a little hectic. I thought I was going to have some major issues with insomnia but it turned out I just had a very bad stomach bug that was making it hard to sleep. I'm happy to say the wind has calmed way down, too, so no more annoying wind noise at all hours.

It's 4:25 pm, probably going to start making dinner when I finish writing this. Things have gotten better since I've last written to you. When my stomach problems improved I had an easier Pathways session on Thursday. The one that I'd gone to on Tuesday I was shaking nearly the entire time because of my upset stomach and I'm sure I appeared on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I sort of was, considering I had barely eaten anything in days nor had I slept in 48 hours. I'd talked to my mom on the phone and she told me to drink one of the smoothies from the surc to at least get something in my system then try to sleep. I had a pretty hard night of tossing and turning but I was actually INCREDIBLY thankful when I just got a few hours of sleep. I was so nervous on the third night of not sleeping that there was something actually wrong. So yes, Thursday ended up being a really good day.

This is Trent. On Thursday I decided to eat in the surc and after grabbing my food asked to sit with him. He was of course fine with it, and we started joking around and he actually made me laugh for the first time here in quite awhile. Like I haven't met many people with a sense of humor I can really get but he's pretty hilarious. His friend Bruce also walked up and we all talked for about a half hour or so. I was really happy to have met some new friends and we decided we'd start having lunch together more often. We actually had lunch together today and some other people sat down with us. Trent knows a lot of people because he's been going to school here for a few years. He's a history major and he's from South carolina.

Then Friday was VERY interesting... 

At lunch I sat with Daniel H. and met a few of his friends too. I ended up playing pokemon Colosseum with Daniel and his friend Tavis. Not gonna lie, my inner child was so excited I couldn't believe we were playing this. We had to walk all over the place to pick up the N64 and the game but I plan on hanging out with Tavis again. He was really fun to play retro video games with. I hope we can do that again. 

Also not that this is anything to brag about but I won alllll my battles. Woops! 

That night a guy from my economics class named Abe invited both me and Jessy (the girl I sit next to) to a party that was happening at his friends house. I'd given Abe by number so that he could get ahold of me about it. Originally I thought I was going to go with Jessy and her friend but I'm now happy I didn't because coordinating plans with them could have been really difficult. They didn't show up until 11:30. By then it was packed and I was pretty drunk on hard cidar. I byob, I can't stand beer or shots. 

Alright, not the most flattering picture of me, I'm aware.

This was a picture posted by this girl Emily that I met at the party, along with this other chill girl named Elizabeth. Me and Emily danced a LOT, ironically enough because I had told Abe earlier that I didn't dance at all. We were like the only ones dancing and other girls would jump in and out but we didn't really care. There were a bunch of people funneling in and it was getting so packed. 

Brendan actually showed up there at around 11 or so. I kind of closed mouth smiled and he smiled back. It only felt a little awkward having him there. It actually felt more awkward when Jessy showed up and I felt like her friend was giving me "looks." I was like, alrighty then that just sucked my fun a bit. Abe drove me home, which probably wasn't the greatest idea in the world... I think next time I'll just walk, my parents would absolutely kill me if they knew, even if my place is right down the road.

And then I went home this weekend! Had a really nice night with Katelynn on Saturday and even stopped at Samantha's that evening. Samantha and I had a pretty good chat, and I left to Katelynn's around 6:30 to go pick her up. She spent the night at my place and actually stuck around the next day until 12:30 when Al picked her up which is pretty unusual for us. She usually goes home first thing in the morning because when she's at other people's house any little noise wakes her up.

Unfortunately for her this time my Dad had the  TV on all night long (wasn't watching it of course) and it was blaring show tunes. She didn't get any sleep Saturday night but we still had a nice time hanging out, doing what we do. 

Sunday... SUPER BOWL Sunday. Like I really care about the superbowl. It's just like the Grammys or any other big television event that I don't watch, it's just noisy and I always end up walking out of the room if I try to watch it because I get bored easily. I was working on this atrocious "critique" paper that took my mom and I hours of hard work and determination. It was such a nightmare to write. Luckily I've got to peer review from one of the more intelligent students in my class and he chose the same article as me. Hopefully I can get enough inspiration from that to fine tune, extend and edit my essay. Also, note to self, the bibliography part is copied from the back of the coursepack.. That's what he told me today.. I have to add my MLA bibliography to my final draft which I think is due on Friday. 

I've got an economics quiz this Thursday that I'm going to start studying for tonight. I think I'm going to put together one of those weekly assignment sheets. I've been feeling pretty calm all day and don't feel intimidated by doing it, which is why I haven't done my goal sheets in a couple weeks. The social interaction has helped me a lot.

peace.