...while doing Laundry!

I thought I could FINALLY sleep in today and not have to rush to complete my readings before class (can't believe I've been spending like at least 5 hrs a day reading for the past 3 days. and I thought I knew the meaning of "teacher's pet" before, but now I Really Do!! SO ANNOYING. but that's for another time. ) but noooo... the're construction going on and I awoke to the sound of Spanish radio.

Nevertheless, I was all excited for laundry day!! Yes, it's the first time doing laundry since I arrived. No, I don't wear the same clothes everyday. Yes, I brough enough to last 4 weeks. No, they weren't stinky.

Treasure the free washing machines in hall man! It costs $1.25 per wash here. I didn't know what I was doing, it being the first day and all, so I had to trudge (because I was carrying all the laundry) from apartment to laundry room to house to leasing center to laundry room to house, to buy the card, fill the machines, try starting them, realise there was no value in the card, top it up, and finally get the machines to work.

15 more mins of the wash then the drying can begin!

update:

I totally forgot to take my woollen sweater out before dumping the loads of laundry in the dryer!! bahhhhh. Have to wear the shrunken thingamajig to sleep cos it's too cold not to sleep without it. Grumble.



View from the outside



The laundry room!



The machine I used



Came down too early, spent the 6 minutes taking photos.

...and went to South Coast Plaza!

Left the house a bit late and made the bus driver wait for us to cross the road to get to the bus. Terrible. Missed the stop and wanted to walk all the way back to Alton (10 mins by bus, 1 hr by walking) but Kenny saved us! Kenny is this guy who went on exchange to Thailand so he was being friendly by offering to drive us to South Coast. By then we had already made our way to 99 Ranch where we had BUBBLE TEA. (Lippy they call it Boba tea here and it's like $4, so ex!) He picked us up and called his girlfriend Sarah and his buddy Brent to meet us at the..

High class, Takashimaya-like shopping centre! that was Indoor! Check out some of the stores. Xiaoyun, wish you were here? I got an A&F bag! Then lost the mood to shop. Even though Aldo was having 70% off. Zara 50%.

Yam Milk Tea.

Abercrombie and Fitch where I got an $80 bag for $24.90 (without tax)
Said bag.

Paul Frank store.

H&M

Zara

Banana Republic

Xy's fave shop. Ted Baker.

My future fave shop - Burberry

Where we had lunch. Mexican food! It's called Wahoo cos that's what you say once you eat the food.

My wet burrito in front (meaning drenched in sauce and cheese!), Lois' taco with rice behind.

Altogether now!

The rest of the people starting planning their quarter-end trip to various locations in the states while I bought my ticket to San Francisco, back at our apartment. Then we watched Family Guy and South Park for some comedic relief. Dinner was yesterday's leftovers.

More crabs! and soybean milk!

Of course, this can't compare to what's happening at home right now. I got a calling card and have been trying to use it but it only connects to Canada and not to Singapore! ARGH!

check for backdated posts of the many dinners I had this past week.

...and had Reunion Dinner, exchange student style.

The day dawned bright and sunny, Californian style..not. It was dreary and gloomy and rainy, London-style. But the weather didn't dampen our moods cos it was Chinese New Year! Like every good Irvine-ian Chinese, we stopped at 99 Ranch Supermarket to get our groceries.

Check out the goodies! The music was the usual CNY songs.

The real reason we came here: SEAFOOD. Huge lobster! There's a free steaming service, which was good cos we don't have pots big enough to fit the crabs.

So many varieties of the stuff, we didn't know what to buy!But we were sure we wanted crabs. The sign says "1 for $1.99." How cheap is that?!

Chinese supermarket filled with Asian premixes. Even Filipino ones.

Tribute to the crab just before I chopped it up.

Taking photos while waiting for the others to hurry so we could eat!!

Except for the crabs, we cooked the rest of the food. Cooked!!! By ourselves!!!

NUS Exchange Students to UCI 2009! Yvette's missing cos she's taking the photo.

The apartment really is that dim. Imagine how we study.

Yumyumyum! There's wine in the mug. No wine glasses :(

After-dinner party playing card games and having fruits. We were at Saboteur in this one. Look at how the miners are winning! (I was a miner.)

...and had dinner at Debbie's house!

Remember the people we met at the Christian Students booth? Debbie and Grace are housemates and they live in this townhouse at...Columbia Court? somewhere near school anyway. the people who live there are all Christians and go the same church. Yvette and I got invited over for their weekly Thursday house dinner!

Apphia and Yvette! Apphia grew up in Singapore but her father's American so they came over. Good choice. Instead of getting stuck in ACJC.

Jasmine, Debbie, Grace. Jasmine's husband's a prof at UCI. They're from China.

Top: Grace, Debbie, Me, Jasmine.
Bottom: Apphia, Yvette, Johanna
The artwork on the wall behind is done by them, on Painting Night.

Me taking a photo of Debbie cos she didn't wanna join the photos.

There's Nancy! She was taking the group photo. She ran all the way around the table just to hug the rice cooker and be in the photo.

Carrots in ORANGE JUICE.

Casseroles, Singaporean Carrot cake, Kung Pao Chicken and Spring rolls for dinner.

Clearing up after.

Doing homework on the floor.

Their house is a nice place to live in, although I don't know how I would react to the bursts of loud laughter and giggling that seems to occur every 5 mins or so. Good times, good times.

...and had a Weekend Trip: San Diego!

Thank you, Martin Luther King Jr., for the long weekend in your memory.

The Ride

The Radio Station: Sophie 103.7 playing the same songs over and over and over again. Heard Sara Bareille's Love Song, The Fray's How to Save a Life, Ingrid Michaelson's The Way I Am, Linkin' Park's Leave Out All the Rest, Pink's So What and a few other songs for about 8 times each over the past 3 days. Why? Songs worth playing are worth playing over and over. That's what they say.

We started on our journey at approximately 10am and sleepily made our way to Carlsbad Premium Outlets to shop and have lunch. Everything was on sale! 30%! 40%! 50%! 60%! 70%! I got stuff from Gap like a new hat!! Which can be seen in use at the Wild Animal Park, Day 3.

People from the Dog Rescue Society set up this area in the centre of everything to get people to adopt the dogs. So cute.

On the way to San Diego! Another Flores road.

Like it says.

Panda Express! Chow Mein with various things like hot and sour soup, eggplant and tofu etc.

Cute Panda drinking.

We had lunch at Panda Express! Real chinese food. Just really oily. Loved the peach green tea! Barely shopped for half an hour after that at Banana Republic and just glanced at Guess before had to leave to catch the sunset at La Jolla [lah hoya].

UC San Diego at La Jolla.

La Jolla beach!
Took this photo cos the scene reminded me of God and how He watches over us like a father watches over his son. And He made sunsets like these to wow us. Indescribable.

Why don't the East Coast sunsets look like the ones here?? We played at the ice-cold water, dug our feet in the sand, watched the surfers (of all ages, including tiny kids) coming in, and tried to steal heat from the bonfires/bbq fires that other people set up on the beach. The stars and airplanes in the sky were amazing. When we couldn't take the cold anymore we hobbled (cos our feet were so numb there was no feeling) back to the car while listening to Little Wonders, which is the theme song of this entire exchange, by the way.

Dumping our stuff. Girl at the bottom was one of our roommates, Stephy from Germany.

Attached sink, bathroom and lockers.

We checked in at the Ocean Beach International Hostel, the photo of which I can't find. It reminded me of hall - old and creaky but surprisingly clean and modern. I got a top bunk above an English girl whom we never spoke to cos she was either sleeping or out. Dinner was at the Ocean Beach Noodle House. What did we order? Pho of course!!!

Lovely lovely lovely Vietnamese Beef Noodles!!
Look at how happy we were! Posing with a REAL Vietnamese prince. Really!

We went to check out the nightlife at downtown San Diego after that, at fourth and fifth streets especially. It was so cool, with all the live jazz bands and live rock bands and live pop bands. But we couldn't go in cos we had under-21 kids with us :( I really wanted to hang out at Croce's Jazz Bar (Jim Croce's wife started it) cos they were playing WATERMELON MAN but we ended up in Hard Rock Cafe instead.

My Vodka Cocktail.
Ka Ho being weird after ordering the worst drink in the place - Platinum Bloody Mary.

The next morning we had a buffet breakfast early at the hostel before setting off for the Zoo!It was fun riding the various contraptions of transport they had, like the cable car. But all the animals just kept showing their butts or sleeping in some shaded area of their enclosures. By 3pm I was tired and wanted to go off. Mexican food for lunch was gooood.

Breakfast: Toast, Scrambled Eggs, Oatmeal with Cinnamon and Honey

Kitchen and dining area. Hostel guests get to stay for free if they work for 3 hours.

Zoo!

Watching an animal show! Check out our bodyguards behind.

Sloppy Panda drawing by a kid, in the Panda enclosure walls.

Panda...eating bamboo...!!

Guess what!! The bird in the show flew away!! Keepers had to scale mountains to get it back.

To Little Italy!

Another Indescribable sunset, outside the restuarant.

Amanda checked her guidebook and recommended Filippi's in Little Italy. So we went to check it out. It's so famous that people queue more than half an hour to get in cos reservations aren't allowed on weekends. Look at the photos of the real food!!

The deli right in front of the resturant. Italian baked goods! Torture queueing in front of these for half and hour.

Real lasagne!!
(Bad lighting, sorry.)Real clams with white wine linguine!!
Real pizza!

We ordered so much that we had a whole pizza left! Tried to play the number game to finish the rest but we gave up after finishing the lasagne. Packed it up and gave it to Xian Cong to give his friend. For free entertainment, we went back to the hostel for Guitar Hero!! Out on the back patio, the smoke was suffocating, but the xbox was too mesmerizing.

The patio.

Guitar Hero!

The next morning, I drove us to the Wild Animal Park, picking Xian Cong up on the way. It was so fun cos everyone's so nice. Rarely do you hear honking on the roads here. Especially when I made two wrong turns haha. GPS is really needed here man.

Woohoo!

I LOVED this park!! It was like being on safari, even though I've never been to Africa before, I would imagine this was what it would look like. Giraffes! Condors! Gorillas! More birds! We watched two shows, one of birds, one a game-show-like thingy that was funny. Unfortunately, there was not that much drama cos all the animals went back into captivity willingly.

Ain't we cool?

Spongebob! You're here too?!

Munch.

"Mommy, I'm hot!"

At Condor Ridge, way above the rest of the Park. Hot air balloon ride in the background!

Scientific name of Gorilla: Gorilla gorilla gorilla.

Another Indescribable moment. Blurred cos in the car.

We drove back to Irvine and reality (SOBS) for 2 hours, dozing off in the backseat with the same songs blasting surround-sound-like. But not before stopping at an International Buffet at Garden Grove near Luanh's place. There was a filipino family there. And everyone else spoke either vietnamese or chinese. So american, eh?

Food! More food!

Our last stop was WalMart, but my camera and phone had run out of battery by then so no photos. Bought a vacuum cleaner and groceries to last the week. Yay! Clean floors!

Only two days of school this next week, whee!