Kindness

Wow, January is almost finished... This month passed SO fast! I was a bit worried about something about my life before I left Denver, but I think I'm doing very good :) I got south park's awesome calendar (Thank you Erin!!) and I keep writing down kinda diary on it everyday. I realized each day looks different and seems like I have a really good life. Actually this week was a bit sad because I again had skin problem and went to the doctor... I've been there already 3 times since I came here.. Well, that's not what I wanna talk about. Now I feel "kindness" very deeply from people around me, people who love me. Without them, my life wasn't enjoyable and I wasn't happy everyday. I think it's very important to communicate with people any time. If I don't have school or if I don't have any friends or whatever, it's really easy to go into my shell, especially because I'm in another country. But, I'm having so much fun with THIS life now and I really think having a lot of experiences by myself is gonna be good for me in the future. Now I'm 21 and recently I often think like I'm getting old, not a bad meaning. Just I'm getting to be able to think about many stuff deeply. It's hard to explain, but I feel like I'm getting strong to be "myself". Hmmmmm, does it make sense, everyone? I think ...no... haha
I just wanted to express my feeling into words, so this post is not so interesting for everyone. I'm sorry about that! It's already 2 a.m. so I'll try to get some sleep.
Have a great night everyone!

Chocolate Fondue Day

Wow, recently I write my blog a lot! It's good though because it means something happens in my life :D I', really happy to have my blog now. I'm thinking someday, in 10 years or 20 years or 30 years, I'll read my blog and I can go back to my old life. I'll be able to remember my first adventure life in abroad and I'll think I have a really good time.

I went out for dinner with my friends (the usual member) at Japanese restaurant! Today was the first day of Chinese and Korean New Years, so we ordered beers and celebrated. But, it was at Japanese restaurant so we said "cheers!" in Japanese, "kanpaaaaaai". The food was SO good! When I ate, hmmmm, King club roll, I was almost cried because it was really delicious.. haha Everyone of course knows I love rice so last piece was MINE!!! haha If you live in Vancouver, try "happa izakaya" on Robson St! It opens from 5 p.m. You'll love it if you really love or wanna eat real Japanese food!!!
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　drunk aoi !?!?
After that, we went to chocolate fondue store my friend, Hugh, loves! I've always wanted to try it so I was so happy to go there! We ordered all you can eat style fondue...hehe We can dip bananas, pineapples, grapes, apples, marshmallows, pretzel, haribo, orange into the dark chocolate!!! it was FUN :D I took a video as I did always! Take a look, but don't dribble!!!


I drank Darjeeling tea, not beer!!! I thought it was straight tea, but it was kinda sweet.... iyaaaaa(nooooooo)!!!! While we were eating, we talked a lot!!! .....but I don't remember what we talked about..hehe Only thing that I remember is ...... I wasn't good at eating chocolate fondue. Look at thr right picture... It was my dish. haha I couldn't wait until chocolate kinda got stiff to the fruits....so chocolates dropped all the way to my mouth..haha Everyone was like "Aoiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!" hahaha It was......kinda fun :D

☆Aoi and Hugh☆

★KyungMi and Lily★

This week finished with dumpling and kimbap☆

This week passed so fast! On Monday I had a hard time at Astronomy class because it was about math.... My friend helped me a lot. We couldn't see stars again because of FOG!!! On Tuesday night at 9, my friends and I found out that we had assignment we had to hand in on Wednesday.... I went to bed around 2 a.m.... On Wednesday I had a Astronomy's first test, I think I did good job! Luckily my class was canceled on Thursday, so I didn't have any classes on that day! I just hung out with my friends and didn't do any homework....just relaxing time☆ But I called my friends in Japan at 4 a.m. and talked a lot!!! Now I miss them sooo much...

Today, on Friday, my friends and I made lunch(well.....it was dinner time already) together at friend's house again! Menu was......"Chinese dumpling" and "Korean maki sushi, kimbap"!!! As usual we got all ingredients at T&T (Chinese super market) and H-Mart (Korean super market) and went to Hugh's house in downtown!!! We all didn't eat anything since we woke up, so we were so hungry when we arrived at Hugh's house at 2. As soon as we got to Hugh's house, we started to cook!!! We put Chinese cabbage, pork and shrimp in dumpling!!! My Chinese friend, Lily, called her dad yesterday to do double check about the recipe of his dad's dumpling. She even took a note for it..hehe

I love Kimbap!!! One reason is of course I can eat rice! But, I love its taste, especially sesami oil taste rice!!! We made a couple of tastes....original, kimchi, bulgogi, tsunamayo!!! It was a lot of FUN to roll up all ingredients with seaweed :D I thought I loved pulgogi's the best, but my favorite was tsunamayo!!! My hometown is Nagoya in Japan and people in Nagoya really LOVE mayonnaise. I always chose tsunamayo rice ball when I went to the convenience store... haha

☆Dumpling and Kimbap★

It was SOOOOOO delicious!!!!!!, but we made it too much so we all brought kimbap to home! haha It's gonna be my lunch for tomorrow! yaaaaay :) I really realized how much I love rice. haha I can't live without it :D Seriously though!!!! Here is a video while we were making "kimbap"!!!! Enjoy~~♪♪♪




This Friday was also nice!!! I'm already thinking about next week's meal. Do you have any ideas everyone? It should be Japanese food though. Oh, Hugh said "We should make our group name!!" So......our name is "D4"!!!! Do you know "F4"? or if you are Japanese, you can understand as "花より男子". D stands for our college, Douglas. haha How simple!!!
A qualification for people who want to join us....

1: You should cook your home country's meal
2: You don't mind paying money for ingredients
3: You don't mind washing dishes
4: You shold be able to play badminton
5: You are crazy
6: English level is...up to ESL 100 level at Douglas haha :D

Hmmmm, I don't know how to end this blog today...haha I'm already sleepy so I think I go to sleep☆ Have a good night everyone! If you can see clear sky, you can enjoy beautiful winter constellations in the night sky!!!

These are.....my FRIENDS!!!!!

Today was Friday, which we don't have class, but we went to school at 9 a.m. to play badminton! It's been our hobby that we can do in our break time. We just realized that we needed to do some exercise and what we thought about was playing in the gym at school. It's free and we can play whatever we want.....if there is no class there. haha Sometimes it makes us feel confused because the staffs at gym don't know when the classes are there.. Oh, well... :D Of course we came to the gym at 9 in the morning so there were no one there and we could just play a lot! I love badminton!!! I just learned how to play at P.E class in high school and I just love it :) Tennis...hmmmm, if I hit the ball, it's always home run and I have to go get the ball at outside of the fence, so I don't like it.. haha When we play badminton, we just go crazy....screaming, running, fighting... haha It's SO much fun :D Most of the time we play badminton before our class and we always feel like .....we don't wanna go to the class.... haha

After we played badminton, we went to my friend's(Hugh) house to make lunch!!! Today's menu was .... okonomiyaki (japanese kinda pan cake with lots of vegetables), oden(one of hot pots) and toppoki (korean rice cake with hot sauce). At first, we were doing ok, but we started to play.... I took that video... hehe



But...we did really good job because everything we made was sooooo delicious!!!!! You can see our food in the picture, oden(left), okonomkyaki(middle) and toppoki(right). We were so satisfied our food and we ate a LOT!!!! We exercised in the morning, so we were hungry :D We really thought today that our food which are Japanese and Korean) is really REALLY healthy. haha I really miss Japanese food, but okonomiyaki that we made today was just awesome!!! I'll try to make it for my host family someday :) When we ate, we said "itadakimaaaaaasu!!!" (Japanese always say it before eating) with our great smile :D :D :D


After we ate all of our food, we were so full and started to talk a LOT!!! I really think that we became much closer than last semester and I really feel comfortable to be with them! I'm really happy to have such a nice friends because we always help each other and they make my life enjoyable :D Staying at home is boring!!! I can't wait to have lots of memories with them! Most of the time, we are, hmmmm, crazy! haha I'll show you my friends!!! Lily, KyungMi and Hugh.... are you guys ready? hehehe



Oh, we bought "ramune"!!!! Recently we couldn't find it at T&T or anywhere so we were so happy to get it!!! It was Hugh's first time and he was very curious about it and I was laughing at his last word....."Japanese created this.....brilliant!" hahaha Thanks, Hugh!!! If you never tried it before, you gotta try it because it's good and it's also fun to drink :)

We were so tired and sleepy because we woke up early in this morning and played a lot and made food.......SO, we took a short nap, about an hour! haha We all (4 people) slept together on the Hugh's bed... I don't know why but it was really good nap!!! haha When we woke up, we were like "wow....I could sleep very well"!!!!
Today was such a great GREAT day!!! We had fun today so we have to do homework tomorrow....and .....maybe day after tomorrow too.. haha We can do it cuz we are great chinguuuuuu!!!!! hahaha

SNOW AGAIN!!!!!!

it's not gonna stop!!!

seems like Andy has to work on snow again....haha

Wow....I can't believe it's snowing again.... It's just....RARE to have this much of snow in Vancouver. In this morning, the rain changed to sleet so we thought it was not gonna stay on the street. But, now.. it's snowing so hard, and roads and roofs are getting covered with snow. I'm thinking that if it's gonna continue to snow untill tomorrow night, school might be canceled on Monday again... hehe


My host sisters, Anna and Gabriella, are very excited about snow!!! Anna got a baby doll and she's been pretending her mom and taking good care of her! She asked me like "Aoi, can you feed her milk? She's hungry. Be gentle cuz she is a baby!" hahaha I'll never get tired of playing with her :D One-year-old girl, Gabriella, can walk now! When I came back here from the US, she came to me by herself and gave me a kiss! SOOOO CUTE!!!!!! I'm really glad both of them feel comfortable with me :D

Anna knows I have chocolate! I went to T&T (Chinese super market) and got Japanese chocolate called "Apollo". It's called "Apollo" simply because this chocolate put on the market on the day Apollo arrived on the moon. This triangle shape represents Apollo spacecfaft! Well, I don't know why I'm talking about Apollo, but I love it! Almost all Japanese people know it love it for a looong time :D Anna loves it too!!! I don't know why but she keeps saying it is a candy.. haha Picture on the right is this chocolate if you don't know it!

Oh, my school starts and it is ok. Academic courses are gonna be hard for us, international students, but we'll be ok...hopefully! haha I have one ESL course and my close friends and I are taking same class. We all talk about each academic course we take and it always becomes complaining..hehe I'm taking Astronomy and my friends are taking... Biology, Chemistry, Philosophy...etc. We all need an extra work comparing to Canadian students, but.....that's what we wanna study.....so.......GANBAROOO!!!!!

!!!!!! A HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!!!!

Leaving with JEEP!!!

Getting closer! Mountains are beautiful!

Let's play☆

Skiing? no. Sledding? no. ......Frisbee? YES!!!!!!

Feels SO good☆★

Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu!!! ("A Happy New Year" in Japanese) Yaaaay, ☆2009☆. What is your resolution for this year? I remember my resolution for last year was ..... cooking. Well......seems like it's gonna be my resolution for this year again. haha Can you cook (well)? No, I can't. Can you eat meal someone makes for you? Yes, I can... with great SMILE!!!!!
My boyfriend and I went to the Mountain Trip on January 1st and 2nd. Thank you so much Suzy and Jim!!!!! We left home really early morning and drove a car about 3 hours to get there with coldplay songs and coffee from starbucks! I love mountains! It's a lot different from its in summer though! It was just beautiful and I never got tired of seeing it on our way to the mountain. Blue sky with white snow....CUTE♪ We went sledding and omg, it was a lot of fun! One time we couldn't handle the direction and hit the huge amount of snow rock!!!! Our bodies were in the air for a few seconds and hit the ground so hard. We screamed like "Watch ouuuuut!!!" to other people who we thought we were gonna crash.... haha I just couldn't stop laughing how funny it was!!!!!! We tried ice skating too, and played ice hockey like Happy Gilmore and AVS(ice hockey team in Colorado)!!! hehe We brought frisbee so we played in the snow!.....but it was too windy to play it sadly.
This trip was my memorable trip and I'll never forget about it.
Happy New Year Everyone! Hope this year is also gonna be full of your SMILE☆★

More Sopapillas Please!!!!!!

Casa Bonita!!!

We got a nice seat!

Come on... Come on, Dive!

We can't eat any more...

Great atmospher!!!

♪♪~Casa Boniiita! Casa Boniiita!!! Food and Fun in a festive atmospher. Casa Boniiiita!!!~♪♪
I finally went to Casa Bonita in Denver!!! who-hoooo :D Have you ever watched "south park"? Season 7, episode 11.... you gotta watch it! hehe http://www.southparkstudios.com/
Casa Bonita is a Mexican-themed restraunt and it's a lot like Disneyland☆ Food was so so, but I enjoyed its atmospher a LOT!!! We got a nice seat that we could see everywhere from!!! We saw Cliff Divers at the best position! I wanted to shout like Cartman (one of the chracters in south park), but.... you know.. haha There are chips and sopapillas which we can eat all we want. Sopapilla is a type of quick bread and we put honey inside. It was SO good!!!! It was my favorite in all of food I ate. If we want more chips or sopapillas, we have to put red flag up. In south park, Cartman does it and says "More sopapillas please~!!!" so I tried it!!! yaaaaay :D It was just FUNNY!!!!! I'm sorry if you don't know south park and what I'm talking about..but, it was fun :) We found the "Black Barts Cave" too. :) I knew it was for kids, but......I screamed one time when monster suddenly talked.. haha It made me scared. There is the game center too so we went there after we felt full. We just played and played untill we got hot! haha When we finished playing game, we realized both of us wore just T-shirts! hehe It was a lot of fun!!!
I really wanted to go there because of south park! "More Sopapillas Please~~~!!!!"