Sarah's Birthday

Last Thursday was my roommate, Sarah's birthday.

We surprised her with a rose petals and a piñata.

rose petals and candles...

and some more

this is him...lil' buddy

more rose petals

us and lil' buddy

"rock me mama like a wagon wheel..."

lil' buddy and I

Sarah's cake

Cowboys and Indians battling it out on the cake after they escaped from the piñata

Sushi Night

So I didn't quite make it to Japan (see my earlier post here), but I did get an opportunity this week to make my very own sushi.

My friend Julie put on an international student hang-out, and we all made sushi. It was a huge success (way to go Jules! thanks for being such a great hostess) and the sushi actually tasted like it does in the restaurant. Now I can save a ton of money, and be able to eat sushi when I move back in with my parents for a month since there is no sushi restaurant in my hometown.

Here are some pictures from our fun:

bamboo mats and seaweed

some Asian snacks :)

crab meat and rice for inside the sushi

cutting avocado

me with my sushi

me and some friends

LiuLiu with Oliver

My Bucket List

When I went to Mexico, somehow we all got inspired to write out a bucket list. I don't know if it was fear of impending death on those Mexican streets (from the driving I mean not the drug gangs...) but somehow it started with a few people

...and spread to a few more people...

and then we all got together to read aloud the list we had come up with and were almost backed over by a van. Oh how ironic it would have been for us to all die during the time we were discussing all the things we wanted to do before we died. Luckily, however, we all made it out alive and now after sharing my list with them, I will share it with you. This list is not complete (I'm sure I will continue to add to it throughout my lifetime) but here is what I came up with while riding in a loud, crowded van on a bumpy highway in Mexico.

1. Be fluent in Chinese
2. Be fluent in Spanish
3. Own an international coffee shop/bakery (gotta dream big :) )
4. Backpack through Europe
5. Go hot air ballooning
6. Visit the Greek Isles
7. See penguins in South Africa
8. Crush grapes (I Love Lucy style) at a winery
9. Go on a cruise to Alaska
10. Visit Monticello (I know I'm a nerd but I'm a big Thomas Jefferson fan...seriously)
11. Do something for someone without expecting anything in return
12. Scuba dive off the Great Barrier Reef
13. Run a marathon (already done)
14. Read the whole Chronicle of Narnia series
15. Learn to make legit tamales (inspired by being in Mexico)
16. East scorpions on a stick at Wang Fu Jin
17. Go to a Dallas Cowboys game
18. Go skiing in the alps
19. Live overseas
20. Go to the original Starbucks
21. Roast coffee beans in Thailand and/or Cambodia
22. Learn ancient Greek
23. Learn to play the guitar
24. Learn to play the violin
25. Learn to play the cello
26. Adopt a child
27. Ride a camel
28. Ride the Orient Express (if you're an Agatha Christie fan you know what I'm talking about)
29. Learn curling (or in the words of Michael Scott...curdling)
30. Get a Master's degree
31. Learn to Tango
32. Visit the Harry Potter theme park (I know, I know...don't judge me)
33. Eat gelato in Italy
34. Go on a Lord of the Rings tour of New Zealand
35. Finish my bucket list (in other words, more to come another day)...

Where I Want to Travel: Japan

So, sorry for the delay in posts. School took over my life once again, and when there is a 12 page paper to be done, I can't do anything else.

Except maybe watch the office.

And maybe be on facebook every once in a while...

And bake a ton of cookies....

But other than that, it was all about my paper (and my other paper and test...gross I know). Luckily only being super busy twice in one semester is not that bad. I got really lucky with all the classes I picked.

But anyway...I'm back, and was inspired by Bing's homepage yesterday. If you use Bing.com you know they always have really cool pictures for there homepage, it this is what I came upon yesterday...

wedded rocks

Needless to say, driving to Galveston to watch the sunset will no longer cut it. All I want to do is hop on a plane and go to Japan. This is not the only sight to see, but this...

cherry blossoms

and this...

Mt. Fugi

and this...

sumo wrestlers

Ok, maybe not necessarily that but you could if you wanted to. And I apologize. It came up in the Japan search and I just couldn't help myself.

Also, you can eat authentic Japanese sushi...

(food, of course the real reason I want to go...)

So, yes, I want to go to Japan. Another place to add to my bucket list (which in writing that sentence I realized I should write a blog post about that! Check back soon...). Maybe since I'll be not so far away in the next coming months, I can take a detour and stop for some sushi and sightseeing in Japan :)

And again, sorry about being absent for so long. I promise it won't happen again...or at least not until finals roll around.

Johann

Earlier tonight, Johann and I had a moment.

I tried to capture it; however, it didn't last long...

...eventually we kind of got back to where we were, but it wasn't quite there.

This is as close as we got...

This Day in History

This is going to be my new Friday thing, so each Friday look forward to expanding your history knowledge. I promise to keep it interesting :)

So on March 25...

• 421 – Venice, Italy is born at twelve o'clock noon, according to legend.
• 1199 – Richard I is wounded by a crossbow bolt while fighting France, leading to his death on April 6.
• 1306 – Robert the Bruce becomes King of Scotland.
• 1409 – The Council of Pisa opens.
• 1584 – Sir Walter Raleigh is granted a patent to colonize Virginia.
• 1634 – The first settlers arrive in Maryland.
• 1655 – Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christiaan Huygens.
• 1802 – The Treaty of Amiens is signed as a "Definitive Treaty of Peace" between France and the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
• 1807 – The Slave Trade Act becomes law, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire.
• 1807 – The Swansea and Mumbles Railway, then known as the Oystermouth Railway, becomes the first passenger carrying railway in the world.
• 1811 – Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford for publishing the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism.
• 1821 – (Julian Calendar) Greece revolts against the Ottoman Empire, beginning the Greek War of Independence.
• 1865 – American Civil War: In Virginia, Confederate forces temporarily capture Fort Stedman from the Union.
• 1894 – Coxey's Army, the first significant American protest march, departs Massillon, Ohio for Washington D.C.
• 1903 – Racing Club de Avellaneda, one of the big five of Argentina, is founded.
• 1908 – Clube Atletico Mineiro is founded in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
• 1911 – In New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146 garment workers.
• 1917 – The Georgian Orthodox Church restores its autocephaly abolished by Imperial Russia in 1811.
• 1918 – The Belarusian People's Republic is established.
• 1924 – On the anniversary of Greek Independence, Alexandros Papanastasiou proclaims the Second Hellenic Republic.
• 1931 – The Scottsboro Boys are arrested in Alabama and charged with rape.
• 1939 – Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli becomes Pope Pius XII.
• 1941 – The Kingdom of Yugoslavia joins the Axis powers with the signing of the Tripartite Pact.
• 1947 – An explosion in a coal mine in Centralia, Illinois kills 111.
• 1948 – The first successful tornado forecast predicts that a tornado will strike Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma.
• 1949 – The extensive deportation campaign known as March deportation is conducted in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to force collectivisation by way of terror. The Soviet authorities deport more than 92,000 people from the Baltics to remote areas of the Soviet Union.
• 1957 – United States Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" on the grounds of obscenity.
• 1957 – The European Economic Community is established (West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg).
• 1958 – Canada's Avro Arrow makes its first flight.
• 1965 – Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr. successfully complete their 4-day 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.
• 1969 – During their honeymoon, John Lennon and Yoko Ono hold their first Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel (until March 31).
• 1971 – Bangladesh Liberation War: Beginning of Operation Searchlight by the Pakistan Army against East Pakistani civilians.
• 1975 – Faisal of Saudi Arabia is shot and killed by a mentally ill nephew.
• 1979 – The first fully functional space shuttle orbiter, Columbia, is delivered to the John F. Kennedy Space Center to be prepared for its first launch.
• 1988 – The Candle demonstration in Bratislava is the first mass demonstration of the 1980s against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.
• 1992 – Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returns to Earth after a 10-month stay aboard the Mir space station.
• 1995 – WikiWikiWeb, the world's first wiki, and part of the Portland Pattern Repository, is made public by Ward Cunningham.
• 1996 – An 81-day-long standoff between the anti-government group Montana Freemen and law enforcement near Jordan, Montana, begins.
• 1996 – The European Union's Veterinarian Committee bans the export of British beef and its by-products as a result of mad cow disease (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy).
• 2006 – Capitol Hill massacre: A gunman kills six people before taking his own life at a party in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.
• 2006 – Protesters demanding a new election in Belarus, following the rigged Belarusian presidential election, 2006, clash with riot police. Opposition leader Aleksander Kozulin is among several protesters arrested.

Special thanks go Wikipedia.org for all the info.

"The best thing about Wikipedia is that anybody can write anything they want, so you know you're getting the best information." - Michael Scott

Mexico fact and quotes

There is a more serious post to come later, but here is the lighter side of our trip :)

• Mexican vanilla is far superior to any other vanilla (and way cheaper as well) :)

• Roosters really crow at sunrise. And not just then either. Really they crow all day.
• "I don't know what that is on my plate, but it just jumped." - Logan Koontz
• Everything is very brightly colored. Say goodbye to dully colored houses when you cross the border and welcome the hot pinks and sky blues (with a very brightly colored orange sprinkled here and there).
• "Hasta Manaña" - Efrain, one of the kids at our VBS on the last day. I explained to him that we would be returning to the US the next day, so there would be no VBS, but still as he walked into his house he still called out "hasta manaña" to us.

this is me with Efrain and his cousin Thelma

• It can rain in the desert. It can also go from 80 degrees to 40 degrees in a matter of hours because of the rain.
• There is no such thing as OSHA.

very safe

• "We almost didn't make it!" - me, at the bucket list summit (how ironic)
• As soon as you cross the border, you can tell you are not in Kansas anymore...or Texas in our case (especially since Kansas does not share a border with Mexico).
• Just because you speak with a Mexican accent doesn't mean you speak Spanish...
• There are no driving rules. On our last day there I was driving down an un-striped highway and yes, I just drove in the middle of the rode. Also going 120kph in an 80kph zone is perfectly acceptable.
• Duck, Duck, Goose, or Pato, Pato, Ganzo is very popular across the border.

• You can run out of water. Girls were taking showers and the water just stopped. Also if you get a hot shower you are very lucky.
• You can't flush toilet paper (same as China)
• "Aunque no marche..." - Everyone, but especially Katie
• There is only 1 gas station - the Oxxo - and they have great coffee and Manzana (said in my Mexican accent!)
• Everyone, and I mean everyone, can cook good rice, beans, tacos and tamales. It is probably a requirement of being Mexican.
• They have advertisements (just like the US) to live without drugs (vive sin drogas!).