Fall Break!

This was the busiest "break" of my life (busier than when I was actually in school!) I barely slept. I didn't have time to blog! To make up for it, this is going to be a long post. :)

Saturday, Oct 4
I spent this night watching my first and last Homecoming game. I never cared for football, which is why I never attended any games before, but I'm required to take pictures for yearbook... and it is my senior year. I heard that our football team isn't that great, but I didn't think we were that bad. But we were. We lost horribly. The score was 0 - 30. It wasn't fun shooting pictures for hours straight. The camera I used was specially lent to us by the graphic arts teacher. It was supposed to be the best one, but it was defective. Every time I click to take a new picture, a message would appear saying, "Err 99." We didn't know what "Err 99" was so we couldn't fix it. When I did manage to snag some shots, they were all blurry. I remember my face getting sticky from the humid weather (it rained every so often). During half-time practice, I carried the senior class homecoming banner across the field. We ended up 2nd place, with the freshmen winning 1st. I wasn't upset, until I heard that the freshmen had "outside" help. Since they cheated, I don't consider them real winners.

Sunday, Oct 5
I spent the morning making an eeyore plushie for Wai Chu and the rest of the day at Joyce's place, making Wai Chu's two birthday cakes. The cake batter is green tea flavored, but the two cakes have different frosting. One cake had azuki beans incorporated into the whipped cream, and the other was green tea cream cheese frosting. I love the azuki bean one the most! *o*



Monday, Oct 6
The cakes were finished just before Wai Chu's birthday party:



It was a shabu shabu party held at her boyfriend's place.



There were two pots.

Regular:


And spicy:


We threw in tofu, lettuce, cabbage, dried bamboo, meatballs, taro balls, cuttlefish balls, cuttlefish dumpling, noodles, and beef. :)

Tuesday, Oct 7
I finished eeyore this morning! :) It was very challenging to finish the plushie~ I almost thought I couldn't do it. I was very happy with Wai Chu's reaction when I gave it to her. ^o^ She's crazy about eeyore and has about twenty of them on her bed. This one will be special, though, since I embroidered her name on his body:



I was about to cry because I did the embroidering freehand and I thought it was ugly, but it was the best I could do without fancy tracing paper and other equipment needed for proper embroidery. We went shopping that afternoon (first time in ages!) I spent a lot of money. -_- I splurged and bought myself a Paul Frank t-shirt at Nordstrom. It didn't feature the monkey, but it was really cute!

We also stopped by Shirokiya afterward and both bought the new Calpico Aloe Vera drink. It's now my new favorite. *o* I love the way aloe vera tastes~! I remember having aloe vera yogurt during my trip to Japan earlier this year, and it was heaven! We ate at the noodle shop, "mikazuki" and both ordered miso udon:



I've eaten shoyu ramen and kitsune udon at "mikazuki" before, but I wanted to try something new. Of course, I ordered udon because I've been craving udon ever since I saw the movie, "Udon," which was all about udon. Udon is my favorite noodle. <333 The soup turned out to be a bit spicy and not what I expected. I finished the whole thing though (yay!) because I'm Chinese and can never ever waste food.

We spent the rest of the day raiding Barnes & Noble's craft and art section before going home. There are so many new books that I wanted to buy! *o* I checked the library catalog when I got home, but the library doesn't have them (at least not yet!)

Wednesday, Oct 8
I worked the entire day at the library since I took the previous two days off. But it was far from boring! There were more owl sightings and this time, inside the library itself!



Here it is, cleaning itself while I filmed him or her. :) Some people really couldn't believe that there was an owl in the library. They accused the librarian of lying when she showed them a photograph, claiming that it was a painting.

My favorite animals are lions, elephants, and owls. I've seen the first two at the zoo, and an owl at a field trip when I was seven years old. It was sleeping then, so I didn't get a good look. Other than that, I didn't know there were owls flying around in Hawaii. o_o;



This one is a Hawaiian short-eared owl called a pueo. At first, it hung around the area between the state capitol and Iolani Palace. The first time I saw it was when it was up in a tree by the library. There were green parakeets squawking furiously at it, but the owl ignored them. According to a co-worker, it had stayed in that position since 12pm (it was still there when I came out at 5pm!) And did I mention that it is the cutest thing ever? Even though I saw it poop (at least not on me)? It is very tiny and a little puffy. Several librarians expressed their concerns that it might be sick, but I hope that's not true. >< One claimed they saw a rodent in its mouth one day. We all wanted the owl to eat the rats for us (they come out at night and wrecked havoc in the workrooms) but my co-worker pointed out that it may not be good if the owl captured a rat that had been poisoned.

The owl flew on the ground once and I was very close to petting it. I couldn't do it because I was too shy and afraid to scare it away. We participated in a little staring game before it flew away. I added a shot of the owl in the 'fauna' gallery. ;D

Thursday, Oct 9
I had a doctor's appointment at 10:30 am. I finally get to wear contact lenses again! The rest of the day was spent in yearbook class, sorting and deleting the pictures we took during the homecoming game. I had around 200 shots, and none of them were good. BUT ONE GREAT THING DID HAPPEN! I SPOTTED YOO CHUN PARK (Micky of popular Korean boyband, Dong Bang Shin Ki) in his high school yearbook! I knew he went to Chantilly High School in Virginia (I remembered because my other website goes by the same name). When I saw a yearbook from Chantilly High School lying on the bottom shelf, I silently prayed that he would be in it. I looked him up in the index and sure enough, he was on page 309! XD He was a ninth grader then and his hair was still ugly. XP

Friday, Oct 10
I worked half day. The owl was still at the library! :) I met up with Jenni after work and she took me to Nijiya Market and Yogurtland!



I had no idea what to get, so I ended up getting green tea and taro yogurt, with a little pineapple yogurt on top. The toppings were awesome! *o* What other place would let you combine azuki beans with granola? It tastes weird together, but whatever. I love them both! I also had some cookie dough balls and cocoa puffs (I chose these randomly because I didn't know what they were until I tasted them) and mochi balls. My favorite toppings are the azuki beans (heavenly!) The pineapple-flavored yogurt tastes stronger than the green tea and taro. I tried a bit of Jenni's mango yogurt and concluded that the fruit-flavored yogurt tasted better. Next time, I'd like to get cheesecake yogurt mixed with another flavor (I haven't decided what yet). There's even peanut butter yogurt! I'd like to try that as well, simply out of curiosity. ;D Of course, no matter what I get, I'll put azuki beans on top because they're the best.

After Yogurtland, I stopped by Roosevelt for this year's last football game. I was forced to use the same camera so the pictures didn't come out any better. The varsity game was better (20 - 36) but we still lost!



Our football team may suck, but our band sure doesn't! :) I didn't know they did what S Orchestra does in Nodame Cantabile! I got very excited seeing it~ hehe.


Saturday, Oct 11
I came home after 11 that night so I had to drag myself out of bed early at 7 to get ready for a movie at 9. My sister gave me tickets to see a Chinese film called, "The Prince of Himalayas." It was a part of the Louis Vuitton Hawaii International Film Festival held here every fall. I love watching foreign films! They're very different from the American movies I'm used to seeing and they widen my perspective of the world. "The Prince if Himalayas" is supposed to be a Tibetan adaption of Shakespeare's Hamlet. I'm not familiar with Hamlet, but I'm assuming it's a tragedy because everyone dies in the end. The Tibetan language is very interesting~ it sounds like a combination of Mandarin and Korean. The hero of the movie is played by Purba Rgyal, a new Tibetan actor. This is his very first movie. HE LOOKS VERY MUCH LIKE KIMURA TAKUYA!


Sunday & Monday, Oct 12 & 13
Calculus homework.