Week 8: Valentine's Means I Eat All The Chocolate

Wow, the weeks and time that I am living here has been going by so quickly. Soon it will be that I have lived here for two months. Last Friday, I was going to blog, but I ended up doing homework and going to Pub Dog in Fed Hill with some of my friends. Jimin is one of my friends is starting a blog too. Here is the link, I will say that her blog makes my mouth water. I love looking at her blog and pretending to be there. Wow... writing that down makes me seem like a loser. We also ended up going to Pitango Gelato and getting gelato. It was tons of fun to see them and eat delicious food. Our friend Gina came back from California for her birthday weekend, so we hung out with her. It was awesome.

Graduate school is already kicking my butt, I feel like I am constantly behind and not really informed about what is going on. But I am slowly making friends, a group of girls added me to their WhatsApp chat about the class. They seem really nice and on top of their own assignments. They also seem really close, which makes me feel a little left out.

On top of the stress, I got sick this week. I have been staying at home. I didn't get to go to my field placement because I woke up yesterday not being able to talk. I have been practicing, "I'm Batman" randomly when I am by myself. I have also been trying out my Bane voice too, "Take back your city Gotham!" I look super crazy a lot.

As a roommate bonding activity, Young, Hyman, and I have been playing Heads Up, which is a game that has been made famous by Ellen. It is great. Awesome investment and great amount of entertainment for just a cellphone game. Here are our videos:

This is the Super Heroes category, which I was holding the phone. 

This is Act It Out category. Hyman was holding the phone. 

Yesterday night, Young and I were just hanging out since I spent the whole day at home by myself not talking. I just needed to converse with people! I also started to make chocolate covered strawberries because Valentine's week to me isn't complete without chocolate or strawberries. I wanted to make it for my housemates as well. 

It was super easy to make it since I use microwaveable chocolate and dipped the strawberries right in. It is super important to wash the strawberries and dry them really well or the chocolate will start to harden. Young mentioned to me about how she thought chocolate-covered strawberries were usually only half covered and didn't really like them. She thought it was funny how mine were a 1:1 ratio. Towards the end, the chocolate started to harden from cooling and running out. Young and I crushed about half of them before Hyman came home. We need to finish them tonight. 

If I had a Valentine, I would be making like a zillion of these babies. Actually, let's be honest, if I had more money, I would make a zillion for myself. 

With school and my field placement going on, I haven't been cooking as much or taking pictures of it. I have been missing it. I think I need to start finding a balance in my life. I need to start making time for blogging, e-buddies, volunteering, and my life.

How do people handle it so well?

Week 6: First Week of Graduate School

Sorry that I have to change the title of my posts because since school started I have barely had time to cook let alone blog about my life. My weeks are crammed with studying and various school related activities on top of my sorority stuff.

But, what I will say is that so far I really like school. I am in a cohort with 25 other ladies and they are all really nice. I am the only East Asian student in the cohort and there is another South Asian student. We do not have any dudes in our group, but that is okay. Most of the ladies are working with children or just working. There is a good mixture of undergraduates and graduate students.

First day of school was officially the 26th, but I don't have classes on Mondays and Wednesdays only Tuesday and Thursdays. Monday and Wednesday of this week was for orientation for the Early Childhood Education (ECE) program. I met some of the girls that will be doing the same schedule as well. They even suggested that we take a multiple intelligence test for homework.  I put in a link if you wanted to see what your strengths are and what you need to improve on. We also made a pie chart representing our areas of strengths and needing improvement.

I clearly need to work on my spacing because 5% looks getting than my 10%s. 

Starting school has been me want to get myself into gear, so I made like a weekly assignment doc. I hope that this will help me keep organized and on top of the various assignments that I will have to do. 

This doc took me about 2 days to complete since I was waiting for my syllabi from my professors. 

I already got my field placement which is apparently similar to a preschool that I went to when I was 4-5 years old. When I told my mom about it she mentioned that to me. I don't remember preschool other than that this girl kept calling me a liar and didn't want to be friends with me. 

What I learned about this week? I need to plan better with food. I would come home and have to made a whole meal and do homework. Or I would be running out of the door with little to no food because I didn't time my morning correctly. I decided since Fridays are my off days minus work, I will do laundry, clean, errands, and blog. It will be my catch up day, plus the weekends depending if I am traveling or going home to my parents' house or no. I am planning on leaving early afternoon on Sunday to come back here to Severn since there is snow and I need to cook food for the week. 

Day 21 & 22: Orientation & Making Friends

Thursday was an awesome day because of the fact that it was my Graduate School Orientation at UMBC. I was really excited to go and make friends. It started at 2PM, so I wanted to get there around 1:45-ish to make sure that I would make it in time so I can mingle and try to make friends. I really want to make friends at UMBC since everyone that I knew graduated. I know two people one is working full time and the other is in his own Ph.D program... so yeah. I am trying to make new friends especially with the people in the Education Program.

I got there around 1:45PM, I thought it started at 1:30... so I thought I was late, but I checked in and got my name tag, I got papers and a drawstring bag from the GSA. I waited for the campus tour, but no one wanted to talk to me. I also realized that my last name was not write on the name tag. It was "Truing" so I went to the check in and asked whether this was a permanent thing. They apologized and said that they copied it from what I wrote my registration sign up. So it was me. I wrote my own last name wrong. After 25 years of having the same name, I still can not manage to write my last name correctly. Life Lesson: Always proofread everything you type, especially your name.

The orientation was great, I needed up meeting a few people and wanting to be more involved with UMBC's GSA. I met a few people in the Education Program, which was great. I even gave someone I met there a ride home. It wasn't until we got to my car that I thought, "I don't know this person very well. They could murder me." So I brought my cell phone to the front just in case. I think have a stranger danger problem, the problem is that I don't have stranger danger. I believe in people and the good within them. Luckily, the person I took him was a nice guy nothing bad happened and he even friend requested me. I panicked a little over nothing. Am I the only one that does this though? I want to help people in need as much as I can. I have been trying to be as nice as possible and I feel like sometimes that is crazy hard.

Friday was a very fun and chill day. I started to get ready to go home for the weekend. I was able to work at Brickz for Kids that day too. We were teaching Robotics which was super cool. The kids made a claw and programmed the claw to open and close. It was really interesting. I was talking to one of the instructors (who is 17 years old) who told me that I need to get a hobby and stop working so much. I told him in order to get a hobby I needed money. He suggested instrument, cooking and streaming TV. I laughed at the last two since I need to cook to survive as I stream everything. I guess when you are 17, you don't understand the struggles of life and there is the cushion of your parents and of home. Oh yeah, he even asked me if I was going to go clubbing. I SUPER laughed at that one. Hilarious. I wish I was back to being 17, I miss it.

After work, I made plans to eat Bon Chon with a sorority sister from Dallas who was in town for a residency interview. She didn't have a car and was in Downtown Baltimore so I offered to pick her up before we got dinner. Young met us there and we ate a large combo of soy garlic and some spicy with two orders of fries and kimchi. It was delicious. I got a coke since I knew it was going to be a long night of driving. After we went to Shilla's Bakery to get some dessert, but we were all too full to eat it. So we just sat and chatted. It was nice.

Today, MLK day, I went grocery shopping with my cousin Vicky to get a reign on my spending. I am happy to day I only spent $30 on a weeks worth of food. I was really proud of myself. I think she did really help me and the fact that I am not spending that much time at the house this week since I will be going to Georgia over the weekend.

Say Goodbye to Princess Life

I wanted to chronicle my life living away from my parents and on my own. This is the first time I am living outside of my parents and not in a form room. To me, this is one o the biggest steps that I have ever taken. I rely heavily on my parents and brother for everything because I am needy and a princess at home. Most people become independent when they are 18 or right after they graduate college. I am 25 and I moved to be closer to school. So here is a little about me, and how I am going to start being more an adult and less of a princess.

After I graduated from college, I moved back home to start working full time. I was an overnight mental health specialist at a behavior facility for young adults between the ages of 9 to 17 years old. I worked Tuesday to Saturday from 11 PM to 7:30 AM. I hated this job. The hours were awful, I never saw the sun, and I never had any weekends. This job also did not have holidays off for overnight staff so I rang in the new year there. That was a low point. Another was getting bed bug bites from a unit I was watching one night, the fire and pain I felt was unbearable. I started looking for jobs, any job to get out of there. I could not stand being there anymore nor could I stand the depression I was feeling. This was from missing out on holidays, vacations, and hang outs with friends and family. 

I got two more full time jobs after this awful job, they were great for me: 15 minutes from my house, day hours, and within my range of experience. My coworkers for the most part have been great to work with and fun. They were all around my age. I started to realize that I wanted to work with a younger population and went to work for a preschool within my company. This ignited a desire to be a teacher to enrich the lives of young children. I wanted to work as a public school teacher, I started to research how I can go about that without going back to undergraduate school for another 4 years. I found a couple of graduate programs which allow you to gain a teaching license within 2 years. I started to apply to these programs. 

I got into the MAT: ECE Program at UMBC to start in Spring 2015. I am really excited about this program and making new friends. To be closer to school, I moved to Severn into a friend's house. They are working full time in jobs close to the house. This will be my chronicle of living with them. The house owner is Hyman, he is about 28. He reminds me of Frank Grimes from the Simpsons. Same eyebrows and everything. He has retired from the Army, loves being independent, and trolls almost everyone. He does seems to enjoy our housemate time together and does not like missing out on jokes. My other housemate is Young, she is one of my sorority sisters. She love anime, comics (Marvel mostly, Spiderman, especially), and fashion. She does cook in the house so the kitchen will start being her domain and mine soon. 

I wanted for you all, the readers, to learn a little more about me and how I am becoming independent.