OhHELLOOOO!

My fellow wanderers,

Greetings

Sorry I have not checked in for the longest time :(

I really have been super busy!

I hope you have been doing well! If you aren’t, I'm sorry you hit a rough patch but have faith in yourself that you'll pull yourself through!! YOU are the solution! 

Once I graduate, I’ll tell you what program I am in :) 

As for why: I wanted to challenge myself. All I have been doing these last few years was working then going home, occasional hang outs with friends, tennis and video games and then covid happened and now we are back to some form of normalcy. I felt like my life has been a little stagnant and I wanted something to spice it up. And boy has it been spicy. There have been days where I felt like I had a lot on my plate (self-induced) even though this program is self-paced. But i also have a fear that if i procrastinate too long that I’ll just never get to it. With school, it is better to be on track or ahead before falling too far behind. We are six months into the program. The program is a year and a half but if you want to graduate sooner, you just have to get your hrs done faster. 

Juggling studying and attending class with full time and part time work and household chores have been an interesting experience. I tried to go to the gym more because I didn't want to play tennis this year as if I'm suffocating this year but I couldn't get there physically and/or mentally. I kept reminding myself this is a marathon and not a sprint. Also, I told myself if I wasn't studying, then I was wasting time doing things I'm not supposed to be doing. I really felt like I was behind on my studies. I felt like I was reading to read and not to know or retain any info. I need to pace myself so that I don't burn out too quickly and end up draggin through the week. For a few months, I didn't have my weekends together. I split my weekends up to accommodate school. I’m sure it didn’t help that I wasn't eating or sleeping much. But now the book work is done. I have until I graduate to reread and rewatch course material. Whew. What a load off my shoulders. 

My mom took her annual trip to Taiwan and I tagged along. My goal for this trip was rest and recover; eat and sleep. Then a few days later I took her on our first trip to South Korea. I have been grinding at work and school since Nov/Dec; picked up one to two doubles every week, split weekends for school. I was ambitious still and brought a textbook with me across the ocean. Couldn't read-kept zoning out whenever I took the book out haha. I only took a week for this trip. 

Oh! In February, I moved into a new room in a house. Bigger space but sadly, the same amount of roommates (4 others). One roommate has doggies and another has kitties; a nice perk. Def was not studying before, during or after the move. Even now I have like two boxes of miscellaneous stuff sitting next to my wall that I have been PROCRASTINATING putting away; prolonging my disgust whenever I look at my room. I have a corner of my room with kitchen things that I don't really like having but it's better in my room than getting lost. These roommates are much livelier than my previous ones. So far one of my roommates is on the naughty list. One time he and his party were blasting dance music at 3am for nearly two hrs. Another time, nearly caught him doing the nasty with a chick. His room is pretty much in the kitchen. They even left a friend outside the house with a bottle of Smirnoff. I continued my business, got my snack from the fridge, went upstairs and blasted music and played some League. I heard them watching tv downstairs and they eventually remembered they left their friend outside and let him back in the house. 

Anyways, the weather was cold in both places. I was told if I came a week earlier, I would have had some summer weather in Taiwan. A lot colder in SK - every time we would leave the hotel, I just have this -_- face. I recommend SK! We stayed in Seoul for our 4 days. A lot of tourist groups. So sad weather was not warm enough for too many bingsoo :( Def got it once though. I got a strawberry one. So delish! I kept getting turned around when looking at the map. Mom was not helpful. She couldn't read the map nor have any desires to visit any landmarks or have any particular foods. I was very surprised at the amount of English used there! Everyone (okok except one chick) spoke fluent English back to me whenever I asked them something. Def didn't eat enough on this trip haha. Easy to walk around. Public transportation was easy. Weirdly, the sim card I bought for the phone only gave me bus options and never the train. Didn't have the desire to shop even though I wanted to. It went from resting to go go go again plus it was cold and I wanted to be indoors as much as possible. When I returned to the states, all I did after work was go home, watched some tv and slept. But by the next week, my headspace improved and I was ready to be in work mode. Caught up with school reading, videos and downloading class notes. I thought it was interesting to see Jamba juice and Shakeshack there. For once, I had persimmon in dessert!! It was milk soft serve with persimmon jam. Many stores with Lotte and Hyundai names. We stayed at Nam Dea Mun Market. We saw: Bongeunsa temple and another. In hindsight, we should have just bought tickets to the palace grounds. League of legends cafe. The library, Aquarium + Coex Mall.

Ah! My high school fencing coach invited the alums for fencing and hanging out. My school has a bowling team now!!! SO JEALOUS!! The next day I caught up with some friends from our college bjj group. We got ramen, boba and cookies. Good to see some familiar faces to say sup to; catch up on their whereabouts and such. Now that we are adults, we talk about future weekend getaways. 

ALSO! Had some anxiety waiting for my mom to come back to the states. ALSO my mom forgot to pay the phone bill before she left for her trip. So we were all operating with no service on our phones for a few days. I had to call an uber when I landed in NJ. I forgot I had no service so I had to stalk my ride. I waited diligently by the light because that's where it said it would park. It passed me and drove a few spots down. I didn't want to stay inside the airport too long because one i didn't have good service by the doors and two i didn't want them to take off saying i was too slow to get to the ride. I was worried my mom wouldn't make it home because she is not the most tech savvy. She was like three hrs past her expected arrival time. Around 1am, I was ready to send my brother out with no service on his phone to go out and drive around to see if he can find mom. Haha. 

AND! First two weekends in December was used for traveling. I convinced my mom to take some time off to do Christmas things. I reminded her that she doesn't go out on all of her weekends and that Christmas only comes once a year. I took her to London, our first Europe trip, for an extended 4 day weekend. Mom landed first in London a few hours before me. I was really hoping she remembered to turn on her wifi so i can reach her on messenger. Weather cold of course but I was prepared. For SK, I was more so hoping it wasn't going to be as cold as i thought it was going to be haha. The weekend in London was packed to the point where train stations were being shut down. I didn't buy a sim card here so I had to rely on the train map that I took a picture of. Took a lot of screenshots of directions before leaving the house we stayed at. We paid for a room in someone's house, around the corner from the Kew Gardens. Yes it is winter so it was sad nothing was in bloom but the conservatories there were still cool to see. I wanted to do a lot but also didn't want to kill ourselves trying to do everything; especially since i know i don't have a weekend to recover when i get back to the states and even mom works two jobs. “Quality over quantity.” Better to do a few things well. This trip I didn't stop to eat as much as I did in SK. Easy to walk and public transportation was easy. All the major landmarks were in one area. I wanna go back to London when spring comes and walk towards the palace. I can imagine that being really pretty. Had afternoon tea! Had a soft scone for once. Had shepard’s pie and fish and chips. We saw: took a ferry to see the landmarks like London bridge, the eye, Buckingham palace and the cathedral and maybe some other places i don't remember the names of. Went to the Christmas market at Leicester square. Tried to go one more but all the trains were shutting down. Churchill's Arms was cool. Wanted to see the Wimbledon tennis grounds but it was an hr one way-away from everything else we were going to see. 

Also another first: went to a Red Rocks concert for the first time and listened to edm artist Boogie T. I can do without the traffic (as usual) haha but the music was good. I’m starting to listen to this genre more this year. Just don't blast it at 3am like my roommate did …. 

ANOTHER first! Went to NBA game: Nuggets vs Spurs. Defense sucked. Home team didn't believe in getting the rebound on the defense. The opposing team just strolls in and shoots with no mark. Super super weird to watch the game. Felt like I was watching TV on my phone. We are in such a big arena all just watching a tiny court down below. SO MUCH better walking in and out then Red Rocks haha. 

okok LAST one. I bought my first car. I got a little bug; a hatchback. No more SUV for me.

Lessons learned/are learning:

• School: doing me patiently and kindly. Everyone learns at a different pace. Everyone's availability is different in terms of attending classes

• Maybe don't travel during the winter since I can't see any pretty colors and flowers haha

• Demand for more desserts when traveling

• Buy international plan the month of travel for the phone

• Mom needs an international plan/sim card so she can participate in the searching of things. I know she won't learn much but it'll give her something to do so she won't wander aimlessly around me and it'll make me feel better when i defer to her for some decisions

• Working on the guts to tell roommates to respect the space

• Good experience living with these roommates; hard when they do dumb shit but ..meh..it’s easy when you live with other roommates as if they don't exist (because they never leave their rooms or never home) but you get better when you're tested