Tofu and Chicken

so the 4th day of vacation was pretty much food filled. We got up pretty early (maybe around 10:30 :-P) and headed toward Tam's high school, Saint Lawrence. Her school is REALLY small...there's pretty much only one hallway, and that's split up into freshmen to senior classrooms. we saw her old teachers, and apparently my "future husband." so, Tam's friend told her before she left, to find him a japanese girl. when we got there, she introduced me to him, and yelled as he was leaving, "SHE'S JAPANESE!" it was so embarrassing....because he looked back with a bright face and yelled, "KONICHIWA!!" >.<>.< we ended up with double the amount of chicken we wanted. :-P but anyhow....so we went to U. Chicken after church, and bought TONS of chicken. they had their specials on Tuesday, so it was just our luck. U. Chicken is known for their different kinds of sauces. they have sauces ranging from mild, all the way to nuclear atomic or something. then they also have their 911 challenge. eat 10 chicken wings with the 911 sauce and...something, like you get a prize or your picture up on the wall. (they call it the911 challenge because the sauce is so hot, that people are sometimes sent to the emergency room due to burns. :-P) but, i got the mild sauce, which was really good :-). so, i should tell you that we were trying to decide how much chicken to buy....Tam and Son got 60 chicken wings. 60!!! that's crazy....Loc and I only got 15 each. i'm not sure how much Nam bought. but we got our chicken (which we didn't finish by the way...we ate leftovers for the next 2 days) and headed over to the movies. at the movies we saw "The Heartbreak Kid" and "Superbad." they were both pretty funny. after the movies we drove around a bit, and then (i think i mixed this up with the last blog) we went to see the San Jose city lights. :-)

And the 3rd day was pool day

(Picture: San Jose city lights)
Alright, so the next two days of my trip (3rd and 4th days) i have mixed up. so pardon, but i'm not sure how accurate this will be. :-P

so let's see, i think it was monday we didn't do anything. we woke up late, around 11:30 then ate breakfast (vietnamese food. some pork and quail eggs, and rice) then felt tired...so we went back to sleep. haha, i woke up a while after that, maybe around 3:30, but tam slept in till 5. >.< so it was a pretty uneventful day, but at night we went to play some pool. there was this place in san jose i think called "Edgies?" if anyone knows, it's kind of like Hawaiian Brian's back at home. so we went to go play pool with Loc, Tam, Son, Nam, and Potter. well, first we went to San Jose State University, but they closed early, so we had to move to Edgies. we played a billion games it seemed like, but it was fun :-D! i didn't do so bad either, Tam was on my team, and we pretty much kicked the guys' butts. hahaha. nah, but it was all in good fun. :-)

Hello San Francisco!

I spent the second day of break in San Francisco. Sylvia and I got up fairly early to eat our breakfast of dim sum :-). it was an awesome breakfast, because i have been deprived of asian food. After breakfast we walked around Chinatown a bit, and looked at all the shops. We picked up a snack of Hong Kong style milk tea (strong, but very good) and a spongecake-like bun. We went to this park in the middle of chinatown and "little italy" where we ate, and looked at paintings being sold there. across the street was a graffiti art wall that Sylvia's friend actually did. we hung out for a while, and then caught the bus to different areas like Richmond. we were walking around, and we saw all of these cable cars parked until it was time for them to start running. i went to go take a picture on the cable car, and it was funny because all of these other tourists saw me, and followed my example. :-P
so tam, loc, and son were supposed to come into san francisco to hang out, and then i was going to meet up with them later to head back to san jose...but there was a slight problem. when they were driving into the city, their car broke down. :-P something fell off, or got disconnected, so they had to call a tow truck...even worse luck...the tow truck took an hour to get to them. fixing the car was easy for them, because tam's brother works on cars, but....he didn't have his toolbox. sooooo, he had to call potter to bring it, which took another hour, because potter was in san jose. :-P...so by the time they finished fixing the car, it was already near 6:00, and we had to head back to san jose for church. we only went to the golden gate bridge, but it was already pretty dark so we didn't see too much..plus, it was FREEZING COLD! so we left after 8 minutes or so. lol.

back in san jose, we went to tam's church and did church things? hah..i was mostly confused because you know i'm not a church person or goer. AND, they sung in vietnamese. :-P but it was pretty interesting anyway. after church was even more fun. we went to In and Out (where i got their burger and animal style fries. i must say it was pretty interesting...), and went bowling. alright...so i should mention that the day before we left Omaha, my group of friends and i went bowling. the bowling alleys in omaha are actually pretty bad. everyone smokes in there, and the atmosphere is a little creepy. so it was a refresher to go to the california bowling alleys where everything seemed a lot safer if you might say. :-P hah, but i haven't gone bowling in probably the last 5 years or more, so i pretty much suck. Potter was trying to help me, but...oh well. :-P i remember before the best i had bowled was a 26. yes, just a plain 26. but my best was 62 this time, so i got much better! haha. still gotta work on it though.

First Day of Vacation!

(picture: chicken katsu plate lunch from "Hawaiian BBQ Drive-in")
alright, so i'm having a little bit of trouble uploading all of my images onto this blog (there's quite a bit) so i'll split them up by days. if i can remember what i did. :-P

first of all, maybe i should introduce the people that i traveled with. On my first flight i flew with Tam (who's house i stayed at), Loc, and Albert. Albert is from San Francisco (he departed after landing in SJ). So when we arrived at the airport, Tam's brother, Son, and her friends, Potter (his real name is Viet, but he looks like Harry Potter so everyone just calls him Potter) and his sister Vi came to pick us up. we visited Tam's sister's house, and her niece and spent a bit of time there. then we went to go eat some Hawaiian BBQ! i have been craving chicken katsu since i left the islands, so i was really happy to get some in California. it actually tasted pretty good too! :-D
so after lunch i was supposed to meet sylvia for a bbq at her friends house, but it was pretty late and i couldn't make it there...however, after she finished with her bbq, sylvia, jackie and her husband came to pick me up from tam's house :-). i spent the night at her house in San Francisco and the next day there too..but i'll get into that later.
that night sylvia took me to eat Thai food at this restaurant "King of Thai." i had their beef noodles, that tasted like chow fun, but even better. it was awesome! :-D so we went back to sylvia's house, but we caught the cable car. the cable car stops maybe about a block from Syl's house, so it's really convenient. she doesn't have a car, but since she lives in chinatown, everything is so easy to get around to, either by bus, cable car, train, or foot. it seems like a nice way to live.

midterms are over

and so midterms are over. today i had my last two midterms...philosophy and world literature. the philosophy test wasn't too bad, 50 questions all multiple choice. i studied pretty hard for that one. but the english test...horrible. everyone had a hard time..because it covered so much material, in such a short amount of time. but we'll see how that goes.

today, i'm pretty much relaxing. right now i'm sitting outside on a bench under a tree. it's really relaxing here, and i think that's what i need, just some time alone to gather all my thoughts that have scattered while midterms were going on. i just need some time alone because i realized this week i've become very irritable, and have a tendency to snap at people. depression has been another small factor into this week, but now after i've gotten a couple hours of sun, fresh air, and quiet...i'm feeling much better. as i was sitting on my bench, my friend Nathan came over, so we were just talking and hanging out. he told me that tonight is a "scream-fest." this has been going on all week...at 10:10 p.m. everynight this midterm week, people gather in front of Kiewit Hall, and you scream at the top of your lungs, letting out all your stress and worries. i missed it last night, but i'm definitely going to tonight's one. this might be the last one until finals week. so i'm definitely in on this one..need to let out some stress. can't wait till 10:10 tonight! :-)

so just a couple more days until i'm in San Jose! hopefully things will be better there.


(picture: the bench i'm sitting at)

It's Aloha Friday! or...Corn Friday?

so today was pretty uneventful. it's friday afternoon, and i'm just sitting around my room. i just finished with my Chemistry Lab class about 20 minutes ago. lab is usually fun, or dull...i'm not sure, depends on what we're doing. today it was a good medium. so the weekend is here! :-D i'm so happy, because i can relax just a bit before midterm week comes. i still need to study, but i have a little bit more time. i should really catch up on my sleep, even though i've been getting on the average 7 hours every night. i still feel tired. health wise...hmm....it's been about a week since i haven't been feeling all too great either. it's probably the stress from all my papers. so we'll see how it goes next week, and the week after that. i can't wait for fall break though! i'll be leaving for california in 2 weeks, and i'm pretty excited! they're supposed to have great asian food. i can't wait. :-D! but i'm leaving on October 13th, and coming back on October 20th. hopefully when i come back, i'll get to go to a concert....Bob Dylan! my friends and i were talking about it, so we'll see. they've been holding a lot of concerts here in Omaha actually. i haven't been to one yet...but hopefully i'll go to a few. and for those of you who know this band....Jimmy Eat World is coming to the campus, and playing in our Fitness Center for "Fallapalooza!" i'm not exactly sure what Fallapalooza is just yet, but i'm definitely gonna go see Jimmy Eat World!!!! so exciting being here. yet...not. hehe, i really miss hawaii, but i'm not homesick. :-)

so if i haven't already mentioned...tomorrow is the Hawaii Club's coat run! this is where the hawaii club takes all of the freshmen to Burlington Coat Factory, and we buy all of our warm clothes for the winter. we're also going to Oakview Mall, and Walmart to buy groceries and such. so i'm pretty happy about that. as much food as i have in my room now, i still need some groceries. but i'll let you guys know how the coat run goes...see ya!

(picture: the lake we went to the other week for the bible study.)

New Asia

so, i have some things to update you all on. let's start with yesterday. yesterday was pretty uneventful until night. we went to a new dining place, Davis Diner. i'm pretty much sick and tired of cafeteria food, and i heard Davis Diner (which is another eating place in the upperclassman residence hall) was pretty good. they have burgers and milkshakes there. we went there to eat, and it was actually pretty good. i had a "Diner Burger" and a strawberry milkshake. not too bad :-D. after dinner i visited an asian food market. it was called "New Asia" or something like that. i went with my friend Loc, and we bought some food there. as soon as i walked in *wham!* that chinese market smell. haha..it was weird. almost like being in chinatown. but they had all of these japanese candies, and the senbei they have at home :-). i was getting all excited because i found some asian products that i could read. lol. but i bought some candies, and roasted canned unagi which is actually very good on rice. so i'm excited about that :-D!

today....let's see. today was my short day, but it seemed like the longest day of the week. i had philosophy and english. 2 of the most boring classes. but the thing was, i wasn't feeling too well today. i was in philosophy and i felt really sick. soo...as bad as it sounds, i forced myself to sleep in that class. it was between sleeping or throwing up. i chose sleep. but today i finally handed in the last of my papers, including that killer 8 paged one for world literature....so i'm free of that! :-D although next week is midterms, as i mentioned before, but we'll worry about that a bit later. i hope tomorrow i don't feel sick. well...other than that, today i pretty much slept a lot. i tried to sleep off the sickness, which did help a bit, but i'm still a little queezy. let's hope tomorrow is a better day. so i shall leave you at that for now...and i'll update later!


by the way...if anyone knows a different name for the fruit "tamarind," could you let me know? it's been bothering me all day. i know there's another name for it, either in japanese, chinese, or local language. :-P thanks!

Midterm season

and so midterm season begins...

today i had my first midterm for theology. not too bad, because my professor gave us all of the questions in advance, so we knew exactly what to study. still difficult though, because there were 3 long essays, and 2 short answer questions. all in 50 minutes. not enough time at all. but, i did finish...just at the last portion i crammed a little bit. but i think it went well enough. so after my theology class i went back to my room to rest a bit, then went to chem. although in chem, i wasn't feeling so well....so after that i slept for a couple hours until my meeting with my english professor. after that..i pretty much slept the rest of the time, just trying to sleep this queezyness off. but i guess that's all i needed, because i feel much better now.

so, i should get some rest soon, because tomorrow is when i start my massive 8 page paper for english. fun. later