Summer is here, finally.

I kept thinking that once finals week is over, I would have plenty of time to update my blog regularly, but I have been caught up in doing things with people, or just being lazy and sleeping that I haven't got a chance yet. Since I took today off work for no reason, I feel like I may as well do something productive. There are actually so many things that I have done the past few days that I don't write them down now, I will just forget about them in general.

By my 3rd final exam, I had no energy nor brain power to study anymore. At least I know that I definitely studied harder for finals this year compared to last year. Spending the entire week at the Med Center Library from 10am until midnight could have driven me a bit crazy, if it wasn't for Jess. She is such a good person to study with and a great source of motivation. Everytime I looked at her, she would still be studying, never got distracted and that just made me push myself harder. After a week of hard work, Jess and I rewarded ourselves with a huge lunch as Meliora, and a night spent baking, playing Dance Central and watching movies. I made green tea cheese cake swirl brownies and chocolate peanut butter mini bundt cake. I haven't tried making new things, besides cheesecakes, for a while so it was rewarding to see that they both came out pretty decent. Not a big fan of the wheat cake taste, but oh well.

Our epic notes

On Friday, my class decided that since it would be the last time all five of us would be together, we should celebrate HK's birthday a week early, just so that we could all be here. I stopped by Cold Stone to pick up an ice cream cake that became incredibly popular during the night. It was such a good cake, hehe. My housemates also happened to throw a party at our house last night. As a result, it turned out to be a super evenful night with lots of fun. We had to hide in Wai Ling's room to get some time for ourselves. Poor Trissha who wanted to join us, but didn't finish packing until 3am. She still stopped by though, and it made me kind of sad that she won't be here next semester. It would feel so different without her. However, she's spending the summer in Rochester with me, so we will do plenty of fun things before I don't get to see her for 6 months. So Youn and I did our usual thing, cooking at 4am and then playing games until 8am. And here I thought I would get more sleep after exams were over.

We spent Saturday night organizing and repacking all Sigma stuff in an attempt to clear up our house a bit. There is so much stuff from everyone in the house right now, we have to walk over things to get in. Going over old things and learning about our history were actually lots of fun. I found lots of things that I could find some uses for, and there are tons of projects I want to start for Sigma. It's time for me to start making a list of summer projects that I want to finish. The rest of the weekend, I just spent watching movies, TONS of movies. For me, just having the time to relax and doing nothing feel amazing already. Oh, I did go to CSA barbeque and that was really fun too. Although I never really had anything to eat, but since the last time I joined everyone at a barbeque was the fall semester of my sophomore year, aka, 2 years ago, it brought back lots of memories. The girls and I spent most of the time playing with the cameras and bubbles and taking pictures, you know, the usual girls' stuff, haha.

Playing with Brian's camera :)

I finally had a chance to treat my big to something nice. So on Monday night, we all dolled up at went to a steak house for dinner. I haven't had steak for the longest time ever, so I actually was nervous to see how my stomach could handle it. The restaurant was extremely nice and was, to be honest, a bit out of my price range. Even though I have been to tons of nice restaurants while I'm in Vietnam, but being in one in the US is another story. All four of us had a good time though. I actually really like to dress up and go out to eat, just because it makes me more aware that spending time with people who are important to you should alway be special. It also gives me the "Sex and the City" feeling, I wish that one of those days I could be like those girls and get to dress up and eat out all the time. For all these reasons, I actually don't mind treating my friends to nice things, even if that means I have to work a little bit harder the next few weeks.

Diablo III was released on the same night. Thus, right after dinner, I joined Will and Brian to make a midnight trip to the store to get our copies of D3, or more like, me getting them their copies. I have been thinking about getting them graduation gifts for ages and couldn't think of anything that they would like. So being able to get them D3 and seeing them so excited about it made my night. Brian and Will have been here for me every since my freshman year. They were there for me through the dramas, through the good times, the bad times, and I can always count on them for honest opinions and advice. They are like the big brothers to me. And I feel like for everything they have done, and paid for me, this is nothing. It still made me happy that they were really happy about D3 though.

Will and Brian treated me and Soyoun to delicious sushi dinner the next day before they went off to Senior Ball. I did kind of wish I have gone to the ball, but when I thought about it, I didn't miss much. Plus, there's still next year.

Ed invited us over to his place for a sleep over and also to treat us to home-made breakfast the next day. We went grocery shopping for some snacks before going home to watch movies. Us girls thought of a brilliant idea to give Ed some facial treatment and also a manicure. Hehe, it is always fun to watch guys suffering through all the stuff that girls do. Although, I still think he secrectly liked it. I miracuously finished making the 10 layered cream cheese jello dessert, which I'm pretty sure no one had finished yet, lol. For some reason we ended up staying up until 430am that night doing all the girls talk. Interesting conversations came up when you have a guy to talk about things with you, haha. I woke up early to go to work and came back to a delicious breakfast with omelets and waffles. I swear I have been eating twice the amount of everyone these days >_____< It was too cold for us to go to the beach, as we originally planned so we went to the Lilac Festival, treated ourselves to some free cheese samples and stuffed ourselves popcorn before we called it a day. For some reason I was so tired I couldn't even stay up to play D3 and ended up taking a nap until 9pm, lol.

On Friday, the weather was gorgeous so Wai Ling and I went to Mike Li's place for some outdoor activities. We couldn't go fishing (cuz we procrastinated on random things so much) but we did get to do some kayaking, camp fire, fireworks and other fun things. We ended an eventful day with a huge party, during most of which I hid in Mike's room watching Tony playing D3. Mike still picked on me for being antisocial that night, lol!

I was randomly invited by Melvin and Soyoun to go to Niagra Falls with them, so I did. We set out for Niagra on Saturday morning. I have never really hung out with any of these guys, besides Soyoun of course, but it was an extremely fun day. We went on the boat under the fall, went out for Korean food, did some hiking, did tons of silly things and enjoyed our day. By the end of the trip, everyone was so tired and hungry it was hilarious. When everyone went home to crash, I had my second event of the day. I need to keep in mind not to double book next time. Mike Li was being such a nice person and took me to watch Avengers, cuz I have been complaining that everyone else watched it. It was such a great movie, but I guess the hype kind of ruined it for me. I had such high expectations I was slightly disappointed. Love the Hulk though, that guy was hilarious.

Finally, Sunday was graduation. It was a bittersweet experience for me. I am going to need to write a separate post for graduation and all the feelings that it brought to me. I'm glad that all the seniors have successfully made it through their college life and are ready to start their real life now. I am still a little bit sad though. It will be really different without them around next year. Luckily, Mike invited me to hang out with him so I didn't have much time to be emo. It was such a hot day out so we spent time washing his car, which was extremely relaxing, surprisingly and then just hung out at his place.

Going to miss these guys so so so so much.

It was such an evenful week for me, now that I think about it and try to write everything down, I can't believe I did that many things during such a short period of time. Summer is now officially started and I have so many things I want to accomplish. One of the things I hate most about summer is that I always have nothing to do and feel so useless bumming around all the time. That will be changed this summer. I have  long list of art projects and academic goals to completed. That will also be posted later. I think this post is long enough it could even bore myself. Time to stop rambling on. I am looking forward to the summer even though I am so scared of being a senior it is not even funny.

Oh well, summer 2012, let's make the most out of you.

[az]