2007!

It's been so long since I've written in my blog, I have no idea where to begin. My only explanation is that I had final projects and then was off on a whirlwind winter vacation, leaving me no time to do much of anything.

My final projects and presentations went OK, except that one of them was an absolutely horrid experience caused by a delinquent group member and strife among the five people left. We ended up with some good work, but we had to present first, during which we discovered that the professor had given us the wrong guidelines for the presentation. Ours did not live up to the newly discovered criteria, which failure did nothing for my stress levels during the last weeks of class. Relief came only partially after we received our grades; fortunately for us, the professor didn't hold her mistake against us.

After my presentations were over, I spent a weekend in Columbus. There was a $99 fare that I simply could not pass up. Tricia and I hung out, Luis and I hung out, and I did some Christmas shopping. Thibaut was in town as well, so we lunched and did some more shopping. It was a wonderful break, even though it sounds like all I did was go shopping.

I came back to New York and worked in the office during finals week. I had caught a cold once my schoolwork was finished, so it wasn't much fun to be in the office those last few days. Relief was in sight, however, as Christmas weekend drew closer and closer.

My classmates from Taiwan came over for Christmas. I invited them over Christmas Eve, and we played majiang until the wee hours of the morning. Christmas Day we got up as late as possible and played more games and cooked and ate a big dinner. It was nice not to have spent Christmas by myself, though later I felt like I really needed some alone time. I had planned to relax and wind down from the stressful semester in a sort of retreat-like manner, but it appears that my social life was just too full and action-packed... ah, it's so hard being popular!

After Christmas, I took the Chinatown bus to Baltimore in order to meet up with my college friends the Julias. We stayed at Julia Oliver's mom's house and chatted and made fun of each other and tried to go out salsa dancing downtown. The following day we shopped in the mall for hours, and Julia Sapir went home to Virginia. Julia Oliver and I spent the evening at home, passing up another salsa attempt because something was wrong with my knee (must've slept funny on it). We discussed her plans to hold an elaborate New Year's party, which culminated in my decision to fly out to Charlotte, NC in order to attend. I had found, after all, another cheap ticket!

I returned to New York via Greyhound the next day, then spent the following day cleaning and shopping like a madwoman. The shopping was in preparation for Julia's party, which had a 007 theme because of the year 2007. I had to find a Bond-girl outfit, and I knew just the Bond girl to emulate: Michelle Yeoh's character, of course. Not being able to find a suitable leather body suit, I settled for a purple and black cheongsam.

Julia the ultimate Bond girl

My role model!

Sunday I arrived in Charlotte and napped, because the flight was so early that I had hardly gotten any sleep at all. We partied at Julia's house for a while and then headed out on the town. We celebrated the New Year at a bar called Cosmos and partied a little more at Julia's house.














Mission: consume as many cosmos as Bond-girly possible.

The next day, yesterday, I slept in some more, and that evening Julia and I watched that horrible Antonio Banderas dancing movie. I flew out today and arrived home this evening.

Rest and relaxation at last! Except I have to go to work in the morning. Still, classes don't begin until January 17th, so I only have to be at school till 5:30 or 6 every evening. Yippee!

If the New Year's party is any indication of how the year will go, it should be fabulous and successful, the best ever yet!