Road Trip Day 3 - Chicago

After the fact, I know. The thing about not staying in Holiday Inn Express like we usually do on road trips, time and wi-fi is hard to come by to blog.

Day 3 was spent exploring the city of Chicago. Coincidentally, we knew a lot of people who either lived in the area or happened to be able to conveniently pass through the area, so we got to meet up with a lot of people throughout the course of the day. We began the day at Intellegentsia Coffee downtown near Millennium Park. There, I had the best pour over coffee of my life, I know this because I was able to drink it black.

We first met up with Carli, someone we went to JWU with that is originally from the Chicago area and was home for the summer. Carli walked around the city with us where we took the cliche photo in front of the bean in Millennium Park and walked along the Magnificent Mile with us before meeting some others for lunch at Lou Malnati's for some deep dish pizza. At Lou's we met up with our host, Jenn (Rae's brother's friend from college) and Darien (my childhood friend from OK) who's boyfriend's aunt lives in Chicago and they find any opportunity to drive up from Memphis.

Stuffed from our deep dish pizzas and Pinkberry, we headed over to the Navy Pier. Since we decided to skip the $20 for the Sears Tower, we thought the $7 Ferris Wheel ride was a bargain. Still stuffed, we decided to walk back towards the Millennium Park area and I got to meet up with Carl (my friend I met in NYC at Most Promising Minority Student that will be interning at Leo Burnett in Chicago for the summer). After tea with Carl, we had some time to kill before dinner, so of course we did some shopping.

For dinner, we met up with Matt & Joe (Darien's boyfriend and his best friend from WI that came down for the day) and Madison and her boyfriend (Madison, another childhood friend who's family moved up to WI and she goes to college there) at the Grand Luxe Cafe.

Long story short - my day in Chicago made me realize a couple of things.
1. It's a very grown up thing to do to just casually meet up with old friends when you're in that area.
2. How cool is it to have friends in all different parts of the country?!
3. Mi amigos es su amigos. Between Rae and I, we have built up quite the network. I feel like I know her friends as well as she knows mine. And I'm glad we've both been able to meet each others friends and become friends.
4. And lastly, friendships can last past high school (and college) if those friendships are important to you.

We left early the next day for Sioux Falls, SD. Check out Rae's blog for our adventures in South Dakota.

An Oklahoma/Family/Chinese Buffet Wedding

Delayed recap of events:
The weeks just continue to fly by and I don't seem to be getting much accomplished. Last weekend, I flew home for my long-time family friend Richard and my cousin Jiao Jiao's wedding. Yep that's right, after all of these years of referring to him as Uncle Richard, he's now my cousin. It was a quick trip home, and I attempted to balance seeing friends with family/wedding things. Funny how every time I go home, it doesn't feel like any time has passed.

My mom put on the entire wedding, from decorating the church to the reception, and she even cooked all of the food at the reception too. It occurred to me why I love special events so much, it's genetic. It was a beautiful Chinese themed wedding at the First Baptist Church and the wedding reception, of course, was at Grand China. While she did a great job making the wedding happen, Shirley could work on the communication skills. I felt so useless when it came to helping with the wedding, and I didn't even told I was the maid of honor until I got to the rehearsal.

This could be a lot of people's family situations, but it's always interesting trying to explain mine. Since pretty much all of my family lives in China, we have a lot of unofficial family through long time customers of Grand China as well as former employees and current employees. It is a crazy mix of people. It would make a really great NBC Thursday night awkward comedy, if you know what I mean.

Belated New Years Post

Hello everyone! Sorry I have been M.I.A for a few weeks now, and for being a flaky blogger since September. I could say that I have been crazy busy, but I have not been any busier than normal, if anything, during the break I was not busy at all.  I could take the time to catch up for lost time but I would rather just reflect on 2010 and move forward.

2010 was full of new friends, opportunities, and experiences. I am so thankful that my mom has made so many sacrifices and worked so hard for me to be able to earn my education here at Johnson and Wales and to be able to experience living somewhere completely different from the place I grew up. I am proud of myself for working through the realization of never having to start from scratch and having to make new friends and find my own way and actually creating a whole new life here in Rhode Island. I am sad when I realize that I no longer have much of a life back home in Oklahoma anymore. My purpose for being there is to spend time with family and friends, nothing else. I am excited/terrified of graduating college a full year early. I realized that all of my dreams and ambitions for a career can be achieved with hard work and determination. I also feel so blessed when I remember that my prayers were answered and I did make that lifetime friendship that you're supposed to make in college. I have complete faith that Rae and I will be friends for the rest of our lives regardless of where our individual paths may lead.

As for 2011, I do not wish to be a new person this new year. I am happy with myself. I am not perfect by any means, I have not achieved all of my goals, but I am in the process of achieving everything I have set out to achieve. Some things have progressed further than other and others may not have progressed quite as much. This year, I do want to take some time to slow down and build more relationships with people. It is very easy for me to get caught up in myself and what I need to do and forget to stop and have a conversation with someone every once in a while. My new years resolution is to put myself out there and make more of those "lifetime friendships you make in college". 2011 will also be the year I slow down and let God lead me to where I need to go. For the longest time I thought that that was such a passive way of living life; just sit and wait to be led, but that is not the case at all. God is the ultimate GPS of our life. When we don't listen to him the first time and turn right instead of turning left, he will re-calculate but that just makes the path far more complicated than it needed to be.

All and all, I am very content. I live a healthy productive lifestyle. I have a job that gives me the freedom to come up with new ideas and learn problem solving skills in the process. I have leadership positions that allow me to be a role model to someone else as well as develop organizational skills. I have great professors that care about my success and will do anything to help me have a successful future. I have also accepted that this is probably going to be the only time in my life that I am allowed to be concerned about me and  working on who I am before loving someone else. I am okay with not having a boyfriend. When the time comes, I will be ready. But as for now free and open to anything that comes my way and that is so liberating. I really enjoy blogging and WILL find time to do it more often.

Goodnight and Happy New Year.