Welcome 2012.

Sorry that my New Year's post is so late. All my posts are so late. :(

NEW YEAR'S PICS

I spent New Year's in Austin with Lauren, Callie, and Jordon, so I took my New Year's pics the next morning at 9:51-9:52am as you can see above. Look at me being classy with my Galaxy Nexus.


2011 RESOLUTIONS

2011 was the year not of actual resolutions, but of goal points to achieve. Here they were:

5 Books to Read This Year

1. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
2. On The Road by Jack Kerouac
3. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
4. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
5. The Moon and Sixpence by William Somerset Maugham

Go me.

I enjoyed them all (except for On The Road...). Hell, I enjoyed reading so much that I read so many other books for leisure this year, as you may see via my Goodreads account.

Places I Want to Visit This Year

1. Berlin, Germany
2. Amsterdam, Netherlands
3. Lake Constance
4. Florence, Italy
5. Rome, Italy
6. Athens, Greece
7. Paris, France
8. Barcelona, Spain
9. Madrid, Spain
10. Morocco
11. London, England
12. Dublin, Ireland

I guess I didn't really refer back to this list when I started planning trips in Europe. Even though I might have only achieved a 5/12 here, I don't feel too unaccomplished. To make up for the places I didn't go to, I instead visited Vienna, Milan, Verona, and Genova. I still wish I could've gone to Belgium, Lake Constance, Rome, and Morocco. Maybe those will just have to wait til my honeymoonHAHAHAJKMAYBE.

I also managed to blog once a week in Korea, a goal I'm surprised I maintained, but I'm glad I did. While I'm not going to ~*~decree~*~ it this year, I would like to keep it up.

2011 OVERVIEW

Definitely a huge year for me, spent mainly outside of America. I traveled across Europe for the first half of the year, then spent my summer in China bonding with my family (yay drinking with the cuz), and finally partied it up in South Korea with some of the greatest people I've ever met for the rest of the year. 

I almost feel like I took a year off to travel (To be honest, sometimes it's been easier to tell people just that.), and it's been really great to just kind of escape from the reality of real responsibilities and uncertain futures to just enjoy life in the moment with all different types of people.

January - PRAGUE. Vienna.

February - Started my first internship at Nancy Bishop. London to surprise Connie for her birthday but also realized that I truly enjoy Patrick (a little too much for a little bit), Connie, and Han's company. Turned 20 OHMYGAHHH. Barcelona.

March - Han, Patrick, Lillian come to visit. Spring Break in Dublin, London, and PARIS ♥.

April - Pardubice. Berlin. Trivia Night @ Sir Toby's. Easter Break in Milan, Verona, and Genova.

May - Home for a bit. <3 Starting my television catch-up late-night marathons for the summer. Perfectly scheduled nights with Jeopardy.

June - Enjoyed my last sustained period of time in Texas. China.

July - Touring 西安 and 成都 with the family group of about 20. Bonded with 吴昊哥哥 over drinking and KTV. Went to work in 福州 while staying at 满姨's.

August - Quit so just chilled in 福州 with a schedule of language study, reading Great Expectations, and playing Pokemon Black, hehe. Living with 满姨。First step into Korea. The fight and lost hopes.

September - 上海 and 常州 with Connie for 추석. The first night out with Cameron and Sookhee that led to the best rest of the semester ever. :) Hmmm, big leap in a condition that I can't bounce back from. Going out every single fucking night aw yeah alcoholics.

October - Sick for a week from the MT at the end of last month ㅠㅠ. Starting to read a lot from the Yonsei library.

November - Had to start stepping up my studies after the difficulty of midterms as a result of not going to class... Tantrums. HOT JAMES. Cutting someone out of our life.

December - Cam incidents... Last Saturday night -> 십차. Leaving Korea. Home sweet home finally ♥. New York for apartment hunting (hate brokers). NYE in ATX.

Other points of importance:

• Summer made me somehow want to try writing, in spite of the fact that I hate writing assignments.
• My semester in Korea was definitely my most fun and my favorite semester I've ever had in my college career. And I really don't think any semester after it will be able to top it.
• Main thing that contributed to my great semester in Korea was meeting Cameron. I haven't connected with someone so well ever since high school, meaning it's been 3 years since I've made a true new friend. I miss our 4-hour-long dinners at Taco Bell, our quoting every show we watch together and no one ever getting us, our intense trolling forever, our theme song, our late-night GS runs, our being the same person always. I'm so bad at keeping in touch with people if I'm not gonna see them, so I really hope that I can maintain our friendship even apart.
• This whole year has been great but has seriously made me realize that while the world is vast, diverse, and thrilling, I can live nowhere but America. I'm grateful I got to visit all the different places, but I've also learned about myself culturally during this year- that I'm Chinese-American, and the melting pot of America is the only place that I can assimilate well.

2012 RESOLUTIONS

This year will be dedicated to the career search. I'm still crossing my fingers for a spring internship, and applications for summer internships will have to be tackled before I know it. Then I better be working in the summer for sure, and then I'll be a college senior. I'll have to start figuring out my post-grad career prospects and really enter the real world for real this time.

The thing is, with every big milestone in my life, I keep noting it as "finally entering the real world," but I don't seem to realize that I've always been in the real world. Life is the real world.

1. Be confident, work so hard, and make great connections at my internship(s). I tend to be shy when it comes to working with people I regard as authorities, so every time I've had a job, I've been such a nonexistent force. Not even a force. I can't be like this when it comes to my future. I need to be myself (ok not too much myself), I need to be somewhat chummy with everyone, and I need to be liked enough to be hired for a real job.
2. Wake up for Chinese at least 3 days a week. I have classes at 8:00am four days a week, and while I can't guarantee that I'll be able to make it to every class, I think it's about time that I actually wake up in the AM. This is my active resolution to target my actual goal of improving my Chinese once and for all. I want to be able to write an email to my cousin in Chinese at a rate higher than 1 word/min.
3. Eat at least 2 servings of fruit a day. I eat so unhealthily because I just tend to choose what I want to eat instead of what I should eat (sigh college), so baby steps. I actually love fruit, so I shouldn't have an excuse not to eat it. I should eat fruit whenever I watch TV out of boredom because boredom eating is mindless, and I can at least be healthy about it.
4. Work out in the fitness center for 1 hour at least once a week. I never work out. Baby steps.
5. Do at least 15 sit-ups a day. My belly has expanded so much this past year because I just haven't cared.
6. Dedicate one hour a week to writing. I find myself with a lot of free time in spite of everything, but when I could be doing something productive like reading or writing, I waste time instead by clicking all over Facebook or browsing iwastesomuchtime.com. I need some sort of creative outlet, and I've really wanted to try writing, so if I just niche out an hour each week, it would be ideal.

Bahhh, boring normal resolutions, but this year I have to really start cracking down on improving my way of life. I don't really want to grow up, per se, but I feel like I can feel a lot better about myself while still being young.