The reason I love CIES.

I received this email the other day from my trainer, Kareem, who sent it out to everyone in the unit (F&O). It is in regards to our supervisor's birthday.

SUBJECT: In the 1970s a baby Noguchi was born...

On a stormy night in the Nagano suburbs, Taeko was born to Mr. and Mrs. Taeko. Fast forward through the 80’s and 90’s and now Taeko has everything she’s ever wanted including an incredibly good looking group of co-workers in F&O (and Athena). To celebrate we are doing a potluck in the Havel Room on Wednesday May 5th at 12:15. The gathering will last until someone passes out, the elastic snaps on my sweats, or we run out of food…we can take wagers on what happens first.

You all are the best, never change.

Stress = bad.

Hello, loyal readers.

Sorry that I haven't updated in like...two weeks...yikes. Things got really hard up here, and I was having a very tough time dealing with it all. It's too personal to go into here, but I started having physical symptoms of the massive amounts of stress I've been dealing with, and also having little breakdowns somewhat similar to panic attacks. Stress attacks? I don't know. But I got in touch with my doctor and she called in some sedative medication for me. Thankfully I haven't had to take any, but I feel relieved that it's there if I need it.

Things are still moving along. My laptop is awesome. I took an impromptu visit home a couple weeks ago. It turned out to be not as restful as I had hoped, as I had a bunch of stuff to do (spring clothes shopping, doctor visits, haircuts, etc). It was nice to be back home, though. I noticed some differences between there and DC: Southern life is a lot slower-paced than here, people are nice everywhere, the food is a lot better, etc. DC is kinda like a crossroads between North and South to me. You can run across Southerners, but there are yankees here, too. The majority of people are yankees, I think, or Southerners who are trying to fit in with the faster pace of life and therefore can't afford to be as nice as back home.

Anyway. I got philosophical there. Sorry.

I made a schedule of the stuff I have to finish and when I'm going to work on it. I think that has helped my mental stability greatly, along with having an emergency plan in case things do start to go wrong again. Sigh. There's just so much to be done...

I felt so tired yesterday that I canceled my volunteer shift. Despite sleeping about ten hours, I still took a nap of a couple hours. Alice did too, but she got home at about 3am and woke up at about 10am, I think. She was entitled. Anyway, we went down to see the Cherry Blossom Fireworks show doodad thinger last night. We sat on the opposite side of the Tidal Basin and watched them. Very pretty, but pictures didn't come out very well. It was dusk by the time we got there. We took some pictures anyway, and since Alice's camera had a flash, her picture-taking time lasted longer than mine. I plan to steal some pictures from her whenever she posts them.

I slept a lot today, as well. But according to my sleep graph, I was up and down all night, so that explains it. Going to just take it easy today, I think. Tomorrow, I may make a trip to Union Station, where the HQ of the Cherry Blossom Festival is. Last night we couldn't find any vendors anywhere (food or merchandise) and I want to buy some stuff. Let me know if you want something!

Gonna sign off now. I desperately need to do some laundry. Bleh.

Wow, long time no see...

I haven't updated in a while, pretty much because nothing big has been going on. We were snowed in for a whole week, with no metro or bus service, and there was a cabin fever epidemic. Thankfully, there were a couple of places in the town square open, and our RAs put on a Valentine's Day card-making party last Thursday for us to make cards for the residents of a nursing home. They also had free cookies and candy and drinks. Yay!

Our vacuum cleaner doesn't suck. Which sucks. (I love that joke.) We told our RA, Ann, about it and she's put in an order for a new one. Yay, we get a new vacuum cleaner!

We went to the Sichuan Pavilion across the street one night. It is really authentic Chinese food. Since we had Alice and Michelle with us, we ordered in Mandarin and everything. They had these pork buns that were the most flavorful thing I've ever put in my mouth. Definitely my favorite Chinese food, followed by the frozen mini-buns we got at Maxim, the Chinese supermarket (not as juicy).

Friday, the government was actually open, but the metro was not serving our area, so we couldn't go into work. I had to take a personal day. :( I guess that's okay, because I get five and I was wondering what I would do with them. They're expecting more snow tonight, but just a little, so tomorrow should be a work day. I hope so. I had just learned to navigate that office and now I'm going to be lost all over again. But the first time we got the big snow, they only predicted 2-4 inches. I don't really trust meteorologists anyway. I think they work for the bread and milk companies.

We did go to this restaurant called Bobby's Crab Cakes. It was...strange. We went there Saturday night, we made reservations for six (even though only five of us went). Their food prices are pretty high, so we were expecting a sort of upscale restaurant. Nope. It was one step up from a bar. We waited forever for our food, too, and it's not like they had tons of orders. There were maybe six tables in the entire place. It was just a strange experience. The food, when it finally came, was delicious, but...because of everything else, I don't know that I'd want to go back.

Oh! I also signed up for some volunteer shifts at the Cherry Blossom Festival. I think I'm working three weekends, so far. Should be fun! If you're in the area, come see me!

Today, I need to finish revising my Individual Development Plan, and write my second reflection, both of which are due tomorrow. Alice and I are planning to cook dumplings for lunch, and then all three of my roomies have a makeup class tonight, so I'll have the apartment to myself again. Will probably go to Five Guys for dinner...

Snowed-in Craziness.

I haven't updated in forever because we've been hit by Snowmageddon. Yesterday was the first and only day in the past five days that metro has been running, and it was at half speed and for only a few hours. But for those few hours, I went out and got more supplies because this snow is never going to end.

Since we haven't been able to eat out, we've been cooking a lot of Chinese food. Tonight we're cooking dumplings, which we've cooked before, and pork buns, which we have not cooked before. Should be interesting!

Anyway, I wanted to update this little snippet of fun that happened just a few minutes ago.

Me: So what's your favorite English word?
Alice: "Cookie."
Michelle: "Ice cream!"
Me: No, not your favorite food, your favorite word!
Alice and Michelle: "JENNIE!"

They're so silly.

Snow day!

As my previous post showed, it snowed all day. And I mean, all day--there wasn't once that I looked out the window and didn't see snowflakes covering the place. So I think we got more than 2-4 inches. But because of the weather, we didn't really go out today. No Tai Shan party. :( I was kinda scared to go out because it just kept snowing harder and harder and I didn't want to get stuck in Adams-Morgan if the metros stopped or something.

I laid on the couch and took a nap. It was nice.

Annie went out to do errands. And Michelle had to meet some people this morning for the model UN stuff? Or something? Alice took a nap, too.

Pretty lazy day, really.

When Annie got back from errands, I woke up. She said she wanted to go out to eat at like 6 or 6:30. We got ready and went out to La Tasca, a Spanish restaurant that serves different kinds of tapas (appetizers). I thought it was going to be the Mexican kind of tapas, the things that are kinda like hot pockets but actual food. Anyway, it did end up being just a bunch of appetizers and you order 2-3. Our waitress left much to be desired in terms of personality (I made it my goal to make her smile, but succeeded only barely and for a microsecond) but the food was pretty good. They had these battered and fried skewered shrimp that came with a garlic mayonnaise sauce that was delish. And for dessert, I got these things called churros with chocolate fondue. Churros are like...twisted fried dough covered in sugar and cinnamon. You dip them in the fondue. They were yummy. It was a very interesting experience. I'd never been to a Spanish restaurant before.

Across from La Tasca was Five Guys and when I told Alice about it, she said she really wants to go. So we might go there tomorrow for lunch. We need to brave the snow to get a few things down the Rockville Pike, too. Ugh, and our Individual Development Plan crap is due tomorrow, too. :( TWC keeps you seriously holy god busy.

Anyway, we got back and Michelle was here. Yay! She'd been missing all day and it felt weird without her. We've all gotten really close. We wound down a little and then me and Annie sat down to watch True Blood season 1. Well, Annie doesn't know where the remote to her DVD player is. So we were fine watching the first episode. But couldn't get to the second, because there aren't arrows and stuff on the actual player. We tried to hook our computers up to the TV, but that didn't work either. So we have to go get a universal remote tomorrow. I totally got her into the show, though. Yay! :D

Alright, I'm tired and need to go to bed. Tomorrow's going to have to be productive. Unfortunately. :(

SNOW!

Another good day...badda bing!

I slept the most solidly last night that I have so far. I went to bed at about 10:30pm and woke up at 7am. Back at home, I wouldn't consider that enough sleep. But I wanted to get up this morning, so I did.

I was the first one up for a while. Michelle got up around 8am and took a shower, didn't come out of her room until about 9 or so? But Annie, who didn't go to bed until 2am, didn't get up until around 10:30. So I had some time to myself to catch up on things. I got a few emails from people back home, which nearly made me cry. I miss home, but it makes me happy to hear from people. So if you're back in B'ham, feel free to send me messages!

It was a very gray day, so the Mall trip was nixed. It's been rainy and nasty outside, and pretty cold, even though weather.com says it's 53 outside. That is a lie. Your breath does not fog up that way when it's 53. Anyway, one of Michelle's college friends flew in this morning, after finally getting his visa and everything. He knows how to say "good morning" in Japanese! Anyway, he came over and didn't have any bedding, so we went on a trip to Target. We tried to tell him how to get around and everything, but I think he was a little overwhelmed. Anyway, we got some food stuffs, too, and some other little random things that we were needing. I also got some of those turn-cans-into-bottles things? That you pop onto aluminum cans to turn them into bottles? I think they're called Bottle Toppers. My parents made fun of me for wanting them, and even Wentao was surprised that I was buying them, but Michelle was impressed like me! I think it's an awesome idea!

We also rode the bus by ourselves! The drivers weren't as nice as the one yesterday, though. Why are bus drivers so mean?

Anyway, we came back home and found out that Wentao, Michelle's friend, had bought a Verizon cell phone, but a T-Mobile card with minutes. Since he can't use those two together, we were telling him that he should return the phone. Apparently this isn't as prevalent in China as it is here? Or maybe it was because he'd already opened it. Anyway, we were trying to tell him that in America, we return things if we can't use them. The thinking is, if we paid money and we can't use it, we deserve our money back. So what he decided to do (what we told him to do, really) is return the phone for a T-mobile one. There is a Verizon store downstairs, though, and he went down there to ask about any pay-as-you-go programs that they have. The guy apparently told him that if Target didn't take back the phone, they would downstairs. I was impressed.

Annie and Sarah are big Vikings fans, so they went to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the game, and took Michelle with them so she could see what a sports bar is like. I took a nap while they were gone. They came back at halftime, which I'm glad for because I didn't need to sleep any more, and apparently they had scared Michelle with all the yelling and everything. Whoops. She's fine, it's just really different from China. Wentao also came over at one point to give us an update on the phone situation and Annie and Sarah yelled at the TV at one point, which scared him, too. He asked me why I was so calm and I said that I just didn't care like they did. He said, "Oh, okay. Yeah, it's good to be calm." XD Cute. I asked Michelle later if the Chinese just aren't enthusiastic like Americans and she said it depends on who follows sports, but sports aren't like this in China. There aren't any like...nationwide popular sports or anything. If you play it, you're a fan, but other than that, you're not really. Though she did tell me that instead of university vs. university teams, they have department teams within the university. I thought that was interesting.

I didn't eat much today, which might be why I'm so tired. But we have more orientation in the morning, from 9-12:30, then a couple of optional workshops in the afternoon, which I don't think any of us are going to. Classes don't start until Tuesday, so I won't have my first class until next Monday. Therefore, I only have to do the orientation tomorrow morning. I need to go to CVS to pick up a few things, though, and we didn't make it to the Chinese market. We may do that. I also hooked up the DVD player, so movies are a go now. I bought "True Blood," which ran me $50 at Target, but neither Annie nor Michelle have seen it and I love the show anyway. It's a good investment, right?

Okay, time for bed. Goodnight. ♥

Pork dumplings, Rockville tour, Sushi Damo

Hello, all! Significantly better day than yesterday, I'm happy to report. :)

This morning I woke up at 8:30 and couldn't go back to sleep, so I just got out of bed. That was when I came in here and started my previous entry. We were supposed to have a pancake breakfast, free, complete with blueberry and chocolate chip, starting at 9:30. Annie told me that she wanted to sleep in until 10:30 and I told her that we'd bring her some pancakes. Michelle and I went downstairs a little after that time and found that the clubroom was locked. There was a sign on the door saying that one of the people from Fenestra was supposed to come open the door for us, but they were delayed, so the time was pushed back to 10am.

About 10 after, Michelle and I started to head back down. We ran into some other Chinese students in the hall who just came up from downstairs and said that it still wasn't open. So we just decided to wait until Annie was up and we could all go down together.

I got Annie up a little after 10:30, though she said she'd been awake for a while, she was just lazing in bed. She got up and got ready and we actually lost track of time just sitting in the living room and talking. It was about 11:30 by the time we went downstairs to check again. This time, there was no sign or anything, so we figured we missed it. Darn!

Annie insisted that she could make us some pancakes, but we didn't have any baking soda or salt, so we decided to try these frozen pork dumplings that her father had bought at a Chinese market not far from here. It took the water FOREVER to boil, but they ended up being REALLY good. They came in a bag of 30 for $3, and we had some leftover, so we're going to be eating those a lot, I expect. During the cooking and the meal, we discussed food and decided to cook on the weekends. Annie and Michelle will try to teach me how to make Chinese food and I'll try to teach them some Southern recipes.

Also, something that struck me as a little bizarre--they don't use dishwashers. Apparently this is an Asian thing? I don't know, but I find dirty dishes disgusting and have always hated washing dishes, so I'm all about some dishwashers. So I taught them how to load it this morning and once we get enough dishes in it, I'll teach them how to use the detergent and turn it on.

After lunch, we had a few minutes to chat some more before we went on the Rockville bus tour. Instead of an official tour, it was really just the students from Fenestra who wanted to go see where the things are in our area. We just took a bus line and ran to the end of it, then ran back. Amazingly, the bus driver was awesome and didn't charge us any fare. A couple of interesting people sat next to me. One woman, when she got on the bus, instructed a couple of the students up front to get up for an elderly woman who was getting on. I was immediately impressed. "A Southerner!" I thought. The woman herself was standing. A female student gave up her seat. The woman then smiled at the boys who were still sitting and said that now they should give up their seats to her. I was even more impressed. I am a complete believer in chivalry. The student said that she was okay and wanted to stand, so they didn't end up getting up.

But a little bit longer down the ride, Michelle turned to me and asked if she should let the outspoken woman sit down because she had two bags that looked heavy and I told her that yeah, it was probably a good idea and would win her a lot of points. The woman sat next to me and we talked a lot. I found out that she's trying to get her Bachelor's in Business Management for the fifth time right now. Before, she kept having to drop out because people in her family kept getting sick and she had to take care of them. She told me that at one time, she had six jobs simultaneously. It was just very inspiring to talk to her, and she wished us all luck on completing the program.

A few stops later, an elderly Chinese woman got on and sat next to me. Well...she was American, but both of her parents were Chinese. She was very insistent that she was not Chinese. She struck me as being a very conservative Republican, saying that she went to Bush's second inauguration and she cared nothing about going to Obama's and that she was tired of DC and wanted to get out. She did tell us about some cool events happening, though. On January 30, they're having a farewell party for the panda cub Tai Shan at the National Zoo from 11am-3pm. Peking Acrobats are also coming to the Strathmore sometime in February. I'll have to look up the exact date again. However, the woman was also kind of...not mentally sound, I guess? She mumbled to herself when she wasn't talking to me and she repeated herself over and over and over. I mean, after telling me about fifteen times in a row about the zoo party, she wrote it down on a strip of paper and gave it to me. I folded it to put it on my purse and she took it back from me and folded it another way. It was just strange. I am glad to know that there are people willing to chat here. I'm a Southerner, I'm comfortable chatting with strangers.

After the tour, we came by the library to check out the DVDs and different selections of books they had available. They actually have a long shelf of Chinese books that thrilled Michelle. I looked for Japanese. I found Vietnamese, Korean, Russian...no Japanese. It was disappointing, but I also didn't look very thoroughly. Annie was getting a headache because it was so stuffy, so we decided to head back to the room. Before we left, though, we found a little niche in the wall that had a bunch of flyers and pamphlets about stuff going on. I pointed out to Michelle that she should take the pamphlet on human rights back to China. They had a map of the town square that's really nice, too.

Came back to the room and kind of chilled for a couple of hours before going to dinner. A friend of Annie's and her roommate came with us. Connie goes to Washington University with Annie, and Sarah is in the International Affairs program with me. Sarah's also traveled really extensively and speaks several languages. She's a poli-sci major, but not one of the annoying ones. She's obviously very serious about her work here.

We decided to go to a sushi place that also had Japanese food, Sushi Damo. The sushi was inexpensive, but if you got the Japanese entrees, it was kind of pricey. Since I don't eat sushi, I got some chicken katsu (torikatsu?) that was delicious. It was really, authentically Japanese. Our waiter was also authentically Japanese and very hot. When I was explaining to everyone what the different things were, he came over and asked if I wanted to apply for a server position. ♥ He was very cute.

After dinner, we just came back to the room and hung out. Michelle's still a bit jet-lagged, so she's very sleepy and going to bed now. I'm getting tired myself. Tomorrow Annie and Michelle want to go down and explore the Mall. I'll see how I feel tomorrow to see if I want to go with them. I've seen the Mall a lot of times, it's a lot of walking, and it's also crowded, so. May not happen. I could just enjoy the time to myself. But we'll see, because I really do enjoy my roomies and love spending time with them.

Alright, I think I'm going to go do some pleasure reading now. Hoping that tomorrow is as awesome a day as today!