The Advent Season

1. Christmas Eve and Christmas day - Good News Church & Dave's home, Dec 24th and 25th.
   
2. Onething Conference - Kansas City, Dec 28th to Jan 1st.
4. Continue gym sessions - Throughout the break

Hopefully I pick up some of the textbooks earlier so that I can start reading them before the Spring semester starts. Books are another headache for me. I always thought it was expensive for RM50 a book, now I am paying USD 75 for a book. Speechless. That's why I am selling my used ones.

Ok, PPS, here I come. Have a peaceful weekend everyone!

Dec. Atwood After Dark

Atwood After Dark last Friday was real fun. Tried many new activities with new friends!

We first played badminton in the Field House before we went over to Atwood for the activities. Once we reached there, we had some snacks. The funny part was that the "snacks" given to us were supposedly meant to make a gingerbread house. instead, my friends and I ate all the biscuits and chocolate chips, before we realized it. =D

Then, we went around to find more activities. We accidentally went into the ballroom and they were making fleece pillow there. Yea. So we made fleece pillows for ourselves. It was the first time I had successfully made a pillow for myself. They taught us using the tie method, so no thread and needle was needed. It was quite an experience, plus a few static-electric shock when the fleece collide with the plastic table.

There, masterpiece.

Coming out from the pillow-making factory, we invaded to The Underground. As usual, we had free bowling games. After which we went back upstairs and played pillow crush, basically using gigantic bolster to knock down your opponent. I won 3-0. =P

We also found more adventurous games like the picture below, racing in a ball. We also match in some childish climbing game, but it wasn't as easy as thought.

Before 11:30, we played 2 rounds of billiard and finally went home by 12 midnight. It was so fun especially in the mist of this stress for examinations. The next AAD will be in February, looking forward to it!

One more week to Finals! Go, go, go!

Last Month of the Year

This year's SCSU Christmas tree deco/ornament

Drawing across my calender, I realized that it is December already. Pretty soon it will be Christmas and the grand New Year celebration. And there goes 2009.

Just had one of my subjects' final test today and leaves the remaining of my semester with 3 more tests and 1 presentation. That's it. Grades will be available online by January the 4th and Spring classes will begin by the 11th.

The weather is turning quite chilly recently, I guess the snow is on its way.

Sigh, may be I was over worrying about today's test and makes me feel kinda empty now when it is over. But, this kind of feeling is hard to describe. I felt tired, yet, I am glad that I've accomplished something.

Okay, gonna make this post as happy as we are coming to the very last month of 2009! Let's see what I've got for myself this Thanksgiving.

iPod Shuffle 4th Gen (4GB)

My First Thanksgiving

Wow, that was an experience!

I don't know where to start from because there were just too many things happened within the past 3 days! OK, I shall begin from Thursday.

Sue came to pick us at 1130am and we went straight to her house. We did not expect her extended / related families to be there too! There were so many people there. Her husband Randy, her 2 sons David and John, grandma, her nephews and nieces, and her brothers and sisters. It reminded me of a family reunion, those that the Chinese will do on CNY eve. We had great lunch, too bad the photos are taken from my phone and it can't be transferred to this computer. After the meal, we played a board game called "Sequence" and then ping pong. We stayed till evening before Sue sends us back to Sherburne.

Then, I took a rest to get myself ready for the Black Friday sales. It was so hard to just wait for time to pass. I self-declared for a movie night. So I watched tons of video on PPS and Youtube. When the clock strikes 2, I headed down and there we took off to the Minnepolis city with my Vietnamese friends.

We reached our first stop, JC Penny at 330am. After half an hour, the crowds started to come and door was opened. I only managed to grab a pair of jeans.

This is just 1/5 of the que in front of Wal-Mart.

Next stop was SuperTarget, an hour later. And then follow by Wal-Mart. After that, we headed down to the Mall of America. We had lunch there and continued shopping till 2pm. All in all, it was the longest shopping hours I ever had - 12 hours.

Once we reached St. Cloud, I was already super tired. I only have an hour or so to prepare myself before Lois and Dick Hokanson came to pick us to our next destination, Little Falls.

We reached Little Falls by evening and we had a delicious dinner prepared by Lois. In the 2 days, Jasmine and I helped the Hokanson's to decorate their house for the Christmas Season.

Phase 1 - Grouping the deco into related categories.

My set of cookies. My first Masterpiece in my whole life.

Results from a work of a whole afternoon.

We too baked cookies. On Sunday, we attended Grace Covenant Church. It was also there I met the birthday boy, a mixed Russian-American, little Mark, who previously helped me with my Child Psychology project. I gave him a CD from Malaysia and he loved it so much.

Mark, Me and Mariah.

Go, Malaysia!

We returned to St. Cloud by 3pm. After an hour of rest, I decided to head to the gym, since I have not done so for about 3 days. Also, played badminton with some friends from Malaysia and Thailand after dinner in my beloved school cafeteria, Garvey Commons.

Candle light dinner.

There goes my very first Thanksgiving holidays in U.S.

If you were to ask me what I remember from all these events, I would say:
1. Sue's sister's dog is called Dexter.
2. Sue's layered jello was the best.
3. People are crazier than we are at Black Friday sales. Wal-Mart has the longest que.
4. The Hokanson's own a 6-acre land. Their house made me feel very comfortable, not like those you've seen on American TV shows. Lovely.

More pictures available at my Facebook page.

P/S: I know this is one of the longest post I ever had since I came to the States, thanks for reading till the end!

Cheers!

Feeling Good

Feeling good today because my group had done a good job in a presentation for Child Psychology. A few more to go and there ends the semester. Of course, final examinations are in 3 weeks' time, beginning on Monday December 14 till 18, Friday. Gonna give a final push for it.

Recently, I have been weight conscious and hitting the gym everyday. I know it is not a really smart thing to do such compulsive exercise, but with all the training and drilling from the Boys' Brigade, I know can do it. I can really see some result from it. However, it is too minimal to announce, wait till I have better results.

Also, towards the end of the semester, I am picking up a new language for myself. I am learning French, in reading, writing, listening and speaking. I am grateful that a member from the Francophone is willing to tutor me for free. I realized the importance of being multilingual. I never really appreciate my known languages till I came to the States. People are so amazed by our ability to understand so many languages, in which we treat it like a norm back home.

Thanksgiving is coming, it is on this Thursday and Friday, and school have a 4-day break for us, including the weekends. Jasmine and I will be visiting Sue's (a former colleague of Ms. Jaime in SCSJ) home on Thursday and Lois' home for the weekends. On Thursday midnight, the crazy people, in other words - we, will be heading to St. Cloud area's mall for Black Friday sales as well as the Mall of America (known as the biggest mall in U.S. and may be the world).

Looking forward to everything that has been installed!

Cheers fellow readers!