Exploring Organizations and Events

 The last weeks have been pretty engaging.

I joined several events with CASA and KSA. At the Lantern Festival event, I met Heng, Tif, and Keiyin. During the meeting it was raining really hard so Keiyin offered to take Heng and I home and Tif asked if wanted to join them for dinner so we went to a nice Korean restaurant. It was a good evening with them and getting to know more girls.







I am glad I met Heng, she is a sweet girl and we always go to the Late Knights events together. Our first event that we went to was for Valentine's day and it was a blast. There was different free food and fun carnival games to win different items. We tried winning a T-shirt and I tried 3 times, but event then I couldn't do it, but the volunteer helped me out so I finally got it! haha it was a fun night.


A great thing happened! I became an officer for the International Student Association. I am their Public Relations Officer which means mostly Social Media work and organizing events. My first event was a game night and a lot of people showed up! I invited Heng and I met a lot of new students. It was a great night. We played Jenga, Mafia, and other group games.

The IM Floor Hockey season started and I went to a game with the girl's BCM team. It was fun joining in and it is great to see Alyssia and Miriam. Although I am not as aggressive as I should be I can steal the puck. There was an embarrassing moment, I lifted my stick too high several times so I had to go in the box for a while...

Then this past week, Mom and us kids went to visit the Torres for five days. It has been a long time for us to travel as a family. We didn't do a lot, but it was a good time with the Torres.

Lively Times!

There has been so much that has happened since I last wrote! Everyday I am doing something. I've tried Pilates (that was tough) and I do the Barre Experience every Wednesday with Grace. Also, I joined the Shift girl's bible study. We meet on Wednesday afternoons and we are going through the book of 1 John. Then I played IM soccer with the BCM girls every Monday evening. 

Here are my teammates :)

We won three games in a row (every game I joined)! This Thursday we played a game to enter the championship, however, we lost thus we won't be able to finish the playoffs. I was sad that we couldn't continue since I didn't play that many games and it would have been cool to actually win the championship, but the girls we played were really good. I really enjoyed playing since the girls were inclusive, encouraging and I played a lot on the field. Anyway, I will join another IM sport with BCM. I don't know when we start playing Floor Hockey, but I am excited about it! 

I attended the International Potluck with the International Student Association (ISA). I went with Valeria and there was about 10 other students. It was fun trying new foods and learning about it. I am glad that we got to go and I will try to get an officer position with the club. It would allow me to be more involved with the organization and it would give me valuable experience. I hope that I can make many friends from the club! 

Joining another club!

Additionally, I went to the Korean Student Association's meeting (even though I missed most of it since they changed the time and they didn't update their facebook) and we made Kimbap for the Korean New Year. It was weird arriving late and kind of scary arriving by myself, but I am glad I went and I hope to be more involved in this club.

 I took my first exam this semester and it was for my statistics class. It was awful. I am not doing the greatest in lab (getting 8 points out of 10) and I haven't really kept up with the class so I took about 3 days before the exam and I just studied statistics. I got a B... which is a good score in comparison with my classmates, but I am disappointed since I studied so hard and I was getting almost all of the practice questions correct. Also, the questions I missed were because of careless errors. But I have more chances to bring up my grade and I am not going to let the homework slide like I did last time!

An immensely fun event that I attended was the Latin Rhythm class. I went with LiuLiu and there was some people from ISA and some of LiuLiu's friends. This made the lesson more enjoyable since I knew some people at the event. I of course went to the level 1 circle. I was a little nervous that I would be bad, but the teachers were really good at teaching step-by-step, repeating, and practicing. Actually level 1 wasn't too difficult and I was getting the steps! Although, I can't quite make my turns smooth, I've got to work on that. I may go again next week to try it again.


At BCM this week, they held the Hair Auction and it was fun to watch the bidding, but more entertaining watching them get their hair cut! Goodness their hairdos were embarrassing. hehe













Then today, I went to the BCM Sadie Hawkins Square Dance. It was so much FUN and I am so glad I went. I had a hard time finding a partner, I asked several girls that I knew if they could help me out, but none of their suggestions worked out. So while I was paying for Noemi there was a guy buying a ticket for one so I asked him if he wanted to go with me since I didn't have a partner. haha after he said yes, he said wait I don't even know your name and I was like oh I don't know your name either! So that was funny and then tonight he came up and said since we are going to be partners we should get to know each other a little bit. That was really nice of him since he was a stranger to me. He was a good dance partner and my square was a lot of fun and plenty of laughs. There was also hay rides and a huge beautiful bonfire. It was a wonderful evening and it will be a fond memory of my time at UCF.

Living the 'College Life'

It is a completion of another week and nothing exciting really happened, but I am enjoying the flexibility of being able to do what I want at school and being able to come home in between activities.

I made some friends and it is nice to be able to go through class with people I know. For my statistics I know a classmate that is in music education. She is easy to talk to and we sit together during lab and lecture. Then Valeria and I hang outside of class which is lovely because it is nice to experience college with someone. We even went grocery shopping together.

I went to the Center for Multitlingual Multiculture Studies for conversational hour a couple of times this week. Talking to the students is always interesting, since they come from different countries and it is fun to learn more about where they come from.

I also went to the gym a couple of times. I did yoga and the Barre experience. I did yoga before, but this class was more intense and it a small class so there was ability for correction by the instructor  which I like. I went to the Barre class with Grace and it was great doing ballet movies again. I am glad that UCF provides these classes for us since my goal is to become more fit this year.

On Friday I went home to visit my family. I took my sister shopping since she needed to pick up somethings and she couldn't get anyone to take her out. I finally got my soccer cleats and then went to was Ross where she bought us matching shirts of the Eiffel Tower. Then I got to introduce her to a Chinese restaurant I used to go to when I worked at Publix and we both got the lunch special. It was a good being out together and just being sisters.

Then at home Rebekah and I planned our favorite game Hand and Foot together and of course Jeremiah won. Then we played Wii golf, tennis, and bowling with Micah. This visit will probably be my last time until the end of February since I don't really need to go back home and I've been home every weekend since I left. Tomoko is on break from work so she came home with her new car that she bought that day. :) She is the first of us kids to get a car! Then mom decided that we should eat out and we went to Outback Steakhouse so Micah would join us. Yummy! I love good food! 

Then on Saturday, I went with the Happy Hour Showcase with some of my classmates. Valeria gave me a ride there since buses don't work on the weekends. We meet up with Victoria and her sister. Valeria and I went to some conference classes together and it was nice having someone that I knew there with me. For lunch we went to susHi and it has Chipotle style ordering for sushi! There was so many choices and everything looked so good! In the end I chose shrimp tempura with cucumbers and avocado. Then mangos, dried sweet potatoes,  green scallions and spicy mayonnaise on top! Altogether it was amazing now it is my new favorite place to eat! 

Being on my own is nice. Even though it is quiet at home since my roommates are busy and stay in their rooms a lot. They are really nice and we have kitchen time talks (mostly with Andrea). Besides the first night there we haven't really spent to much time together, but we did watch the Grammy's together. 

The only draw back about living on my own is that I have to cook for myself. Although it is nice to pick what I eat the only thing is that I have to work for want I eat it! I  have to go shopping for food which means a lot of walking to get to Publix! Here are some meals that I have cooked. 

The dish on the right was my breakfast one day. The dish is composed of stir fried bell peppers and onions in sesame oil with scrambled eggs. The dish on the left was a chickpea curry dish I made for dinner. I ate it with  naan bread that I got at Publix and it was made the meal complete. I found the recipe on Pinterest and this is the website: http://www.budgetbytes.com/2011/02/quick-curried-chick-peas/ I used sesame oil instead of olive oil and I didn't include cilantro since I didn't have any.Anyway, it was ok, it wasn't the greatest tasting dish since the spices weren't that strong. If I had more spices I bet I could fix it up, but I am too poor to buy them so I will just continue using the sriracha I have to spice it up. 

The apartment that I live at is decent and they even give out free food! One day they gave us a box of pizza and another day they gave out bags of chip and sandwiches. The only exciting thing that has happened is that at around 2:30am someone decided to pull a prank by pulling the fire alarm for fun. Thankfully I was still up studying so it wasn't a bad shock. We had to wait outside for more than 10min waiting for the fire department to turn off the alarm. The alarm was extremely load and it was freezing cold! But other than that the apartment is good and I am glad I moved here. 

First Steps of My Knightly Journey

The goal of this semester is to meet tons of new people, join numerous clubs, and try as many activities as I can. This is my senior year so I feel like I should make it the best year I can make it. Looking back at my college life, I feel like I haven't really experience an exciting college time and that I missed out of the regular experiences that most students have... Thus, this semester living near UCF is to be a grand adventure! 

It has only been 10 days since I moved in at The Pointe at Central, but I have done numerous activities that I wouldn't have done if I wasn't living near by. I have taken several dance workout courses, joined the BCM girl's IM soccer team, attended an IDS meeting, joined Shift, tried paddle boarding (Lake Claire)  and Racquetball for the first time, went to the BCM progressive dinner, volunteer at CMMS, and volunteer at the Highland Games!

The Scottish Highland Games

The Highland Games was a lot of fun since so many people were dressed up in traditional clothes, there were medieval tents filled with traditional items, knights fighting, animal shows, interesting games, and bagpipes! I got stuck checking tickets at the front and I wish I got something else that allowed me to see some events, but I had a good time seeing people in their outfits and kilts come through. I even took a couple pictures with some of them. After doing tickets for about 3 hours, we got lunch (chicken and chips, yum!) then we got to finally walk around! Amanda (the Arts and Recreation director) and I saw different tents. Some tents were dedicated to different clans while other were selling merchandise. Then we watch a rock carrying contest. It looked like contestants tried to carry a ridiculously heavy rock as far as they could before they needed to drop it. There were some Scottish cows so of course we had to pet them. After that we saw some knights fighting, although i didn't have the greatest view and the knights weren't the greatest at sword fighting, but it was entertaining to watch since I think they were actually fighting and not just staged! Across the field I heard the sound I really wanted to hear all day, bag pipes!! We went to follow the bag pipe band and it was wonderful to listen to them! Then we went to watch border collies herd sheep. It was interesting to actually see it happen and I loved the last trick that was shown. The dog split the herd into two and then at the shepherd's command the dog would watch the other group. It was cute seeing the dog immediately turn around on command. I enjoyed going, even though i didn't get to see all the events I wanted. The weather was pretty nice too so it made it a pleasant day and I hope it is one of many events I volunteer at with Volunteer UCF.