Thanksgiving 2011

At Golden Harbor. 

Thanksgiving at the Apartment.

...with Mark too.

And can't forget about the family.

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Thanksgiving is a day to give thanks. I don't know how often we think of that nowadays. Sometimes it seems like some take it just as an opportunity to pig out and eat food. Do we give thanks to the people who prepared it, planned the events or the people who you shared it with? Outside of Thanksgiving, do we think about what we're thankful for in life?

As everyone else always says, I'm really thankful for my friends and family. However, how often do we tell our friends and family? Better yet, how often do we mean it? How do you know that I'm not just saying I'm thankful just to be a nice guy? Did I think about what it means to be thankful...or why do I feel thankful towards those friends and family? And another question -- how often do we show it?

I've had a really rough semester since school started and my year before that wasn't so awesome either. I've had a lot of ups and downs...struggles to be happy. Without going into details about all that, it's made me really think about what I have to be thankful for. Whether you believe me or not, I really am thankful for a lot of my friends and my family.

When you're in a really deep hole, you first need something to grab onto, then you use your own strength to pull yourself out. In this case, I grabbed onto a lot of things. Friends, new and old, held out their hands for me. Family held out their hands for me. And the thought of friends and family, who I knew truly cared about me, gave me the strength to pull myself out.

I'm thankful for all of these people.

Please, truly think about who you're thankful for. Tell them, show them. Don't take the important people in your life for granted.

REVEALING : 2011 - 2012 APARTMENT

It's been almost a whole semester already, and I'm only showing y'all my apartment NOW. I apologize. I neglected to take time out to clean and organize things...and I refused to take pictures and stuff when it's really messy. Besides, I didn't really do much unpacking until weeks into the school year.

Come Thanksgiving, I did considerable cleaning and stuff. Although there are a lot of bags packed to go back to Chicago, it's still relatively neat. So, I thought it would be a good time to show my apartment now. Legoo!

By the way, it's going to be a really long blog post with a lot of pictures. I tried to order it so as you scroll down, it's almost like a tour around the apartment. Try to just follow the pictures as if it were a slideshow. Bon appétit.

Zoom in +1

Zoom in +2

Opens door. "WELCOME"

Still looking straight.

(There's the storage room with water, longboard, skateboard, and bikes in front)

Turns a little to the right.

(Nice lamp on the dining room table, bunch o' bags, and sofas to the right)

In the back, you can start peeking into our kitchen and see the hallway in between the two walls. 

Turning more to the right.

(A very comfy couch and two armchairs...tv on top of table in the corner)

We will begin to enter the hallway area toward the kitchen and rooms.

Spices and sauces etc.

This area is awesome! Guests (or me) can peek through this little "window" from the living room and see what's cooking. It's to make sure all cooking is done cleanly. Just kidding. Who cares? :Þ

Turns toward hallway.

hEy look! It's Jeff and I's rooms!! But we have to check out the kitchen really fast first.

Kitchen. Check. Now let's see the rooms. Well....mine only.

"Henry Guan" sign done beautifully by my little cousins Judy and Lisa <3

*creeeaakk*

"Here we go. Brace yourself."

Full mattress, bikes I'm storing for friends of mine. Croco-gator tucked away in the corner.

When the door opens without stepping in, this is basically what you see. It's pretty small. 

Not shown in this picture - Drawers (to the left), closet (right)  

Drawers.

Closet. 

Drawers again...but we're gonna zoom in.

A beautiful painting (also done by little cousins Judy and Lisa) hangs above photo collages of my family and friends. Also, a bunch of assorted items.

Zoom in +1

Batman and ....

... Batman in a Box. 

"You like?"

I really like living in an apartment this year. I love sharing a place that's not a dinky dormroom with my best friend, Jeff. It's also really cozy, so it's wonderful having friends visit or hangouts here. It's so cozy. 

It's ironic how I just took pictures of my apartment this year after signing a lease for a new apartment for next year just a few days ago.

P.S. I know "Bon appétit" doesn't make sense in this context, but I just wanted to use it. 

P.P.S. I got a deck of cards for $0.25 cents the other day that I really, really like!

Dishroom Weekend

¡Hola!

Working in the dishroom this semester has been really great! The intense labor and late hours of washing dishes until midnight doesn't even phase me anymore, because it's soooooooo worth it. 

In the beginning of the school year, when I signed up to work in the dishrooms, the other dining hall workers felt bad cause I had the "hardest job"...compared to serving desserts or cleaning tables or etc. It frightened me a little. It's ironic though how the "hardest job" turned out to be so much fun. I can't even imagine doing the other jobs. Dishroom allows me to stay awake the whole time because there's always work or goofing off to do. We're hidden in the back instead of out in the open cafeteria, so we can basically do whatever we want -- Sing, dance, scream, throw ice around, slip and slide, or.....

..............STACK 150 PLATES!!!!!

It was about a foot away from touching the ceiling.

Another great thing about being in dishroom, it's easy to get to know each other really well and get closer. We're all pretty much stuck back there. We can't go out and socialize with people, but we socialize with each other. I can sincerely say I've made some good buddies working there.

In fact, in lieu of the upcoming holiday, we decided to do a little Thanksgiving celebration two weeks before the actual holiday on the 12th of November. We couldn't do it the following weekend cause we would've been gone on Thanksgiving break. yEp!!

Saturday, November 12th - Dishroom Danksgiving

After our different agendas for Saturday morning, we met up at Taco Bell in the afternoon for our Taco Bell Thanksgiving Dinner. HAHAHA! It was a pretty funny idea. We all ended up eating before anyways, so we just got something tiny from Taco Bell. 

Nacho BellGrande

Yum...I had the Nacho BellGrande. Becky and I used to like this a lot when we were younger. Still good!! :[]

After picking up some grub-a-dub-dub at TB (Cool kids call Taco Bell "TB"), we walked like half a block back to my apartment and hung out and junk until they had work at DISHROOM (WOOT WOOT!) around 7:30pm. I walked with them and checked out their apartments. It was a nice day. DISHROOM DISCIPLES! SPREAD OUT!! <---uh...we don't say that...I don't know why I did. 

Anyways, on to the next day. 

Sunday, November 13th - Breakfast w/ Late Dinner-ers
We're the late dinner-ers...cause we work together during Late Dinner. LOL.

Anyways...

We had plans to grab some breakfast at like 10am. Driving around campus during Dad's Weekend (an organized weekend where a bunch of dads visited their sons and daughters at UIUC) looking for a place to eat was such a pain in the butt. EVERYTHING WAS CROWDED!! Even when we drove out of campus to Bob Evans, the restaurant was packed. It was hard to settle for a sit-down place where we could eat. We compromised with Panera and I HAD MY FIRST BREAD BOWL. Bread-in-a-soup bowl? Soup-in-a-bread bowl? I don't know. I think it's just called Bread Bowl. I forgot to take pictures, but it was pretty good.

We had a good half an hour to sit and eat before Christian had to drive me to dance practice at 12:30pm. Most of our time was spent driving around, but it was still pretty fun.