Nomvember

(^See what I did there??)

Now, I know I haven't been blogging nearly as much lately. It's just so much effort when my everyday activities don't seem overly exciting. I'm not traipsing around beautiful South Africa or exploring Seoul these days. Instead, I'm back in the grind at Babson, focusing on classes and the job search.

But, in the spirit of Thanksgiving I figured I'd put up a blog post. First, for those of you who don't follow all of my social media platforms, you may have missed the many pictures I've posted over the past few days. As such here is the visual story of my Thanksgiving:

Ready to make my pecan pies! I made 1 special (with rum) and one normal
(without rum).  I'd just like to say the only pie that was completely gone Friday
morning was my special pie.

My buddy, Riley. He got a haircut just in time for Thanksgiving. Isn't he adorable?!

The table is set! Dinner for 16 all at 1 table. Go ahead, be impressed. But that's
 not even where I would eat dinner. I went down to visit the other side of my
family where there were about 20 other people. I'd just like to add, I finally got to
 sit at the adult table. 21 years old and these are the big things in my life.

Dessert is set! My pecan pies in the back, 2 pumpkin pies, 2  lemon sponge pies,
 and 2 apple pies on their way shortly after. Since I ate dinner with Dad's family
I was back with Mom's family for all of this dessert...Nom noms!

After dessert, Brady decided it was time for a tea party. As the only child in the
 family he pretty much runs the show.

And no, he did not find it necessary to wear his shirt (he's only 4)

Naturally I couldn't let him go a day without learning a lesson. Brady gives big
to the pig! #Babson. Fortunately there was only 1 broken item for the evening,
and he was really cute when he apologized so I couldn't get upset with him.

You'll notice there's a lack of pictures of actual eating. We were all busy eating. Sticky fingers can't touch cameras so just go with it. In a nutshell, the food was delicious, as always. Turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, squash, candied sweet potatoes (the BEST!), carrots, rolls, stuffing. SO MUCH FOOD. The good news is, because we have the same menu every year we know we can skip something and get it next year. NOM NOM NOM!!

But let's trace back a bit, because it's been a while since I posted. October was filled with midterms and job interviews. Nothing overly exciting there. Until...

HURRICANE SANDY aka FRANKENSTORM!!!!

Now, we didn't get hit nearly as bad as New Jersey or New York, but we still got a day off from school due to the hurricane. We have quite a few trees down, and a lot of people lost power for a while. This was tricky as it was right before Halloween and whole neighborhoods were still down (and naturally kids have to follow the rule of not visiting houses without lights on).

Notice the towel blocking the rain from coming in. We had
to replace that quite a few times.

Quite a few trees down. This one is behind Putney.

All the rain seemed to drain right into that one little nook.

A few days later the rain was subsiding, but the wind was still blowing the trees.

And finally we were left with just a few clouds!

(^ It's a video of the storm looking out from my suite)

With that I suppose I should say how thankful I am that everyone I know came out of the storm safe and sound. Other things I'm thankful for?

Being home. As much as I miss being abroad, it is good to be home with family and friends, and of course my Riley. I've really been making an effort to spend as much time as possible catching up with people who I went so long without seeing. Naturally there are people I don't see as often as I'd like, but it's been great.

But it's not all catching up. As per usual, I'm meeting new people. As I was gone for a year there are many people who I didn't get a chance to meet before but heard about from my friends' stories, if at all. Shout outs go to a few of them:

Hilary: Don't know how I'd missed out on this little nugget. She is also from Maine and when we were pulling together a suite Amy suggested we bring her in. So glad we did! It's helpful to have someone else around who understands what it's like to be from Maine ;) #ImAMainer

Wendy: For about one moment during the semester I had nothing to do so I decided to participate in Wednesday Night Trivia. We somehow ended up on the same team and absolutely dominated. We've been friends ever since, and I've dominated at trivia ever since (although not always on her team...)

Taran: the newest of the Players, Taran's a freshman at Babson. He's from Idaho, as you can clearly tell from talking to him (not just because of his very prominent accent, either). He's also quite hilarious. Always fun to hangout with Taran.

There are others, too, but I think this provides a sufficient recap of what I've been up to recently. I know if I give you all too much to read you'll simply give up. So with that,

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Now time to go listen to Christmas music almost nonstop for the next month, yay!

End of Summer Adventures

Really I have one more week of summer. I move back to campus in the morning, and my brother has graciously agreed to help me. I promised him food in return, and I'm going to help him move into college on Friday (UMaine). But for now, here's my end of summer report.

I pretty much spent all weekend at Babson Catching up with friends. I had dinner with Linda 3 nights in a row (which is rare for me). Thursday we went to Bubbling Brook with my family, a favorite childhood tradition: ice cream for dinner ^.^ Then we went back to campus and hung out with our dear Sarina who was preparing for the first day of peer mentoring the freshman class (welcome to Babson, 2016!!).

Friday we managed to get a rare piece of Sarina's time yet again for dinner. Chinese food, feels good to be back on the college diet ;) It was really good to catch up with my girls...

Then Saturday I met up with Linda after babysitting to the wonderful surprise of Sarah! I hadn't seen her since December (which is even longer than the rest of my close friends...I went over half of 2012 without seeing my girl). She tried popping out at me to scare me, but instead I had a moment of happily shocked speechlessness. We all went back through all of our stories from the past 8 months, and then I once again went home.

Now, my sister works retail so she gave me a 50% off coupon to Banana Republic. Naturally, I had to use it. I trekked out to the Natick Collection Sunday morning for a successful shopping trip (ironically my sister also went to BR that day and bought the same shirt as me)

After that I called up Mary to hang out for a while. It turned into a wonderful afternoon turned sleepover. We hung out with a few other friends also already back on campus, got some groceries & dinner, then returned to campus. As we were on our way to park we found Ms. Ranee Cheung outside of Reynolds. I promptly turned the car around and we has her join in our plans for the evening. Then the peer mentors walked by in their semi-formal attire (hadn't seen some of them
since February either, so there was a quick reunion).

Ranee and I made a quick trip home so I could get a multi-tasking night out/sleepover/internship bag. Then we went back to campus for Knight Party. It was amusingly not good. We managed to lose Ranee somewhere along the way, but other than that all stayed together (granted we were a much smaller group than usual).

To wrap up my summer, I had my final full day at my internship. Then I came home and started packing. I took an (extended) break to get a going back to college dinner with mom and Brian (Japanese so I could show off my chopstick skills). Then we came home so I could finish packing.

Well, we had the door open to get some fresh air circulating in the house and all of a sudden Brian starts yelling from the other side of the house. Somehow a cat had slunk past me all the way to him. This was very distressing to me. I don't particularly like cats...or most animals other than dogs usually. They kinda freak me out a bit. But the cat wad hanging around and I kept having to scoot out of its way. Then Brian scoops the cat up and heads next door (where the cat belongs). Despite multiple attempts to alert the owners we were unsuccessful. Regardless, I made Brian leave the cat outside.

It has been quite the whirlwind end if the summer, but now I just have to sleep a few hours and move back to Babson!

Oh, and the cat:

USA: Homecoming

Greetings from Boston everyone!

       While I still have some stories to get up here from Asia, I thought I'd take a moment to say: I'm home! It's been just about a year since I left for South Africa, and it has been a truly amazing year. I've made many new friends, had many great adventures, and tried many new foods.
       Thank you to everyone who made this year amazing. I happened to arrange my homecoming so that it would align with my 21st birthday, so I'll be celebrating in style tonight. I'm keeping it classy (what does that mean, you ask? That means I will not only remember it tomorrow, but will also feel good when I wake up in the morning...other than then jet lag :P ). I have an adventure filled day ahead with many of friends and family.
       It'll be hard to top the year I just had, but I'm going to certainly try.

Thank you all in advance for the birthday wishes~

<3

Hong Kong: Not so Sleepy Sunday-Filled with Dim sum and Markets

Hong Kong: Central Pier and Temple Street

Sunday morning I found myself up early (relative standards) to go to the Central Pier with Saphia. She volunteers in an organization called Junior Chamber (or something to that effect, it's kind of like Rotary). They had a children's art exhibition. I helped set up a little bit, then wandered around the International Financial Center for a while until Saphia was done. The IFC has a giant mall in the bottom, and so I promptly wound my way as deep as possible. There is a two front Apple store, some restaurants, gardens, balconies, and lots of high end stores. The view from the balcony was beautiful.

After that Saphia and I returned home to get her dad so we could go to a dim sum lunch. So much food. All food. And it just kept coming! We were met by dad's mom and sister, and Mama Cheung of course. I tried two new foods: chicken feet and cow stomach. I particularly liked the cow stomach, so much so that it was one of the few dishes I had extra of (I'll do a proper food blog later with pictures).

That night we all met for dinner again for the same type of continuous rounds of food. We were joined by yet another aunt and uncle. Then mom, dad, Saphia and I went to Temple Street, the night market to have a look around. I've seen more impressive markets, but it was still good. There were also fortune tellers, but we didn't go to one.

We went back to the house and so concludes another adventure filled day in Hong Kong.

Here are a few select pictures from the day~~

Entrance of Temple Street

Two story Apple Store at IFC

Dim Sum! (This is just the beginning, many more courses came after)

View out to HK