Stories

I love living here.

The past few weeks have been full of exciting things. I was moved from basic Mandarin to advanced Mandarin (ahhh) and so now I have a Chinese speaking partner.

On the Fourth of July my entire cohort and I climbed to the top of a hill on campus and watched the Disneyland fireworks from afar. Gorgeous. The colors popped out across the horizon and we wached planes land into the Santa Ana airport while the independence celebration lit up the sky.

I’ve eaten my full of Pinkberry yogurt — a So Cal delicacy. A few friends and I have begun running the “Turtle Rock Trail,” and we have met a lot of friends out on the trails (bobcats). There’s only one little thing that could dampen the adventurous and happy mood around this Irvine campus…

I lost my job.

This weekend my Washington, D.C. adventure continued with Mt. Vernon, the former home of America’s first president, George Washington. The sprawling 8,000 acre estate is now only a small portion of its original size but continues to boast the elegance and beauty that George and Martha Washington were known for.

My biggest event of the summer is now over. While I am still attempting to recover from all my running around before and during the conference, I can happily say that it turned out to be a huge success!

NASA has space for you! That is the tagline for NASA’s astronaut recruitment page at nasa.gov. No kidding.

The entire page is just a gem of finely crafted phrasing. From the best I can tell, its gist is that you too can be an astronaut. However, applicants be warned: “The open positions require extensive travel on Earth and in space. Possible destinations may include, but are not limited to, Texas, Florida, California, Russia, Kazakhstan, the International Space Station and the moon.”

I don’t consider myself a big tennis fan. Rarely do I even tune in for a match, but I do watch the big finals when they come around, and I’m not afraid to say that on Sunday, I saw the best tennis match ever played, and a match I would rank among the top five sporting events I’ve ever seen.

For me to say this might not give this match as much justice as it deserves. I’m only 22, and so, I haven’t seen some of the greatest games that my elders have viewed. But watching Federer vs. Nadal, I was awed to the point where I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.

When I arrived in D.C., I made a list of everywhere I wanted to go before the summer was over. I knew that there would be places that other people had no desire to see, but luckily most of my friends and I shared the same interests in both history and exploring our temporary home. This consensus continued until we approached the topic of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

One of the first things I thought about when I found out I would be in Washington D.C. for the summer was Independence Day. What better place could there be to celebrate our nation’s 232nd birthday? The day was above and beyond anything I could have anticipated.

Although my D.C. friends and I continued our tour of the city this weekend, we were all exhausted from the past week at work. It seems like everyone I hang out with gets busy about the same time, so this weekend we all agreed to try and keep it as relaxing as possible.

Butterflies fill my stomach as our airplane starts landing in Kathmandu, Nepal — not because of the rather choppy landing, but more so because it was finally time to see most of my relatives again. Memories with family and old friends from our first two…

Ni hao (hello) from sunny southern California. I have been at grad school for almost two weeks and yet it feels like years have gone by. Concordia University sits on a hill amongst the suburbs in Orange County, Calif., and I almost don’t want to leave this place for China! It is just so beautiful here; the sunsets rival Florida sunrises.

I spend my days in eight hours of Chinese class. There is so much to learn that it seems overwhelming at times. For instance, the Chinese word “ma” when said two different ways could either mean “mother” or “horse.” Imagine messing that one up in a conversation!