Another busy week...

I totally wished that I could have written more posts here in the past week, but this week has been ridiculously packed. Although classes this year don't start till 12 or 1pm, I have been waking up at 8am every day. Usually I get up, go for a run, come back, shower, eat some cereal with fresh blueberries in it or make myself an omelette (eggs beaten, with mushrooms, cheese, tomatoes, and spinach folded in it).

After breakfast and showering this week, it would be around 9.30am. I'd prepare for my interviews that I have had 5 of in the past week at the medical campus, hoping to get a research opportunity with a professor. Some of the research projects I have been interviewing for include: Cystic Fibrosis, Cancer prevention and nutrition, Children's outcome post-anesthesia/ post-operation, a Diabetic study in neural degeneration, and next week I have some lined up for research regarding Medical management and marketing (a little more related to the business field). So before classes start and in between classes I have been making the long walk over to the medical campus for interviews. These interviews are through the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program at Umich. You basically interview for several projects and hope a professor selects you out of the several other students he/she interviews. Hopefully I'll find something I like!

This week we also had cheerleading tryouts for the club cheerleading team. Because I was already on the team last year, I didn't have to try out again, but I did have to be at tryouts to choose the new girls for the team this year. One of the girls from Troy High that I cheered with in high school tried out as well, and she made the team! Hopefully I'll get to stunt with her, it would make things a lot easier since I am familiar with Troy's style of cheerleading.

My brother Jason called me this week, asking about school and getting into a Spanish class. I was very glad and impressed to hear that he did take my advice and took the initiative on his own to go see his counselor to get his schedule changed so he could start taking Spanish early! Although I had made the suggestion to him before I left to move in for college, I didn't know if he would actually make the effort to go see his counselor on his own to get his schedule changed. I was so happy to hear from him!

After a busy week, my weekend was even busier, because I had to stay on top of my academic studies and homework. Friday night, after the Asian Intervarsity Christian Fellowship large group, instead of hanging out with people afterwards, I went to the computer lab and did my homework for my Business Information Technology class at 9.30pm. The computer lab, which contains over 135 Mac OS and 235 Windows workstations, usually bustling with 300+ students fighting over the use of computers in the daytime, had a total of 13 students on a Friday night at 9.30pm. But, I got my homework done by 11pm, and I met up my roommate Taylor who was studying at the library, and we went to get some Frozen Yogurt as a little reward to ourselves for studying during a Friday night, when students were usually out having fun.

Yesterday, was an even busier day, workload speaking. I woke up at 8am again, and Taylor and I went together for a run, down Main street downtown Ann Arbor. Afterwards, I had breakfast, showered, went downstairs to Starbucks and picked up a green tea, and went to the Graduate Library by 9.30 am to study. Saturday was a big football game day, and as you could have guessed, most college students don't get up at 9am on a Football Saturday to go to the library to study. But I had no other choice, I had so much work to do! This library [image shown below] had a total of only 8 students that morning! Everyone was either still sleeping or getting ready to goto the Football game, which I sold my ticket for since I had so much work that I needed to get done. [At least they had a big win of 38-0! This was our first Big 10 game of this season, and since they lost the first 2 games to non-big10 schools, that just really shows how bad the big 10 is this year.] Unfortunately, I have sold all my football tickets this year, just because I have been so busy. Hopefully I will be able to find the time to go to at least one of the games this year!
The Hatcher Graduate Library- Reference Room

Anyways, yesterday morning I sat in the library and read my Accounting textbook and studied until 2pm, then I took an hour break and went home to eat lunch. After lunch, I went back to the graduate library and did some practice problems for my Business Economics class until the library closed at 6pm. At 6, I went home to eat dinner and take another break, then after dinner, I just did some homework in my apartment until 10pm. It was a crazy Saturday filled with nonstop studying! But it felt so good to be able to get so much work done and learn so much.

This morning I went for a 3.15 mile/ 5K run; the weather was a little chilly, but the run felt good. This was the route I took:

After the run I came home and ate breakfast and went to Sunday church service. After church service I came home to write this, and now I am about to meet up Donica for lunch. After lunch I plan to resume a schedule similar to yesterday's, filled with a lot of studying. I actually enjoy studying a lot, and I would rather be studying at the library on a Friday or Saturday night than partying like the majority of the college population.

Next weekend I am planning on going home, hopefully that will be really nice. I will probably still have a lot of work to do when I am home, but it will be nice to have food cooked for me and not have to worry about cooking my own meals! I really look forward to that, and seeing my family.

First week of college classes

After a weekend of organizing, classes have finally started. On Saturday I had Grace Lee over for lunch, then I drove about 15 minutes out of the city to play at a wedding. And then in the evening I took her and some of her friends who were International Students to Hua Xing mart. They were very excited to see Asian food.

So, finally started all my classes on Tuesday. Classes seem all right, not too hard. My introduction to music theory class is a joke, it is very easy, it's almost tedious to go to that class since everything is just a review. My Jesus and the Gospels class seems very interesting, the professor is straight from Italy and speaks with a heavy accent, but he seems very knowledgeable about artifacts and facts from the bible and "The Jesus days". It should be an interesting class.

Yesterday, I had my business school classes. Accounting 271 seems intimidating, it will definitely be my hardest class this semester. Business Economics 300 seems like a lot of challenging work as well, but it seems like it should be interesting. I also woke up at 8am to goto the Farmer's Market in Kerrytown yesterday, since my classes didn't start till noon. It was amazing, I bought lots of fresh organic fruit and vegetables- some baby eggplants, a honeydew, fresh basil, zucchini, and vine ripened tomatoes. It is open every Wednesday and Saturday morning, I think I may try to go more often because of all the fresh produce. Not to mention, it's an enjoyably nice 5 block walk at 8am.

Last night I attended Meet the Clubs for the business school. It's an event where all the Business School clubs set up tables and have information about them so you can find out what clubs you want to join. I found a Business in Healthcare and Hospital Management club that I think I will be joining. After that, I went over to Couzens Dormatory for an InterVarsity Christian Small Group Leader meeting, where we planned for our upcoming small group material and then did some outreach in the dorms.

Today, I woke up at 8am, although classes didn't start till 11am for me. I went out and ran 3 miles around campus and had a nice work out before my first class. I had my Business Information Technology 200 class. It seems like it will be an in-depth class on Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access. I did my homework for that class this evening, and learned an overwhelming amount of information on Excel. Festifall was today, the day where all the clubs on campus come out and set up booths in the Diag. It was very crazy and people were everywhere.

My books that I ordered online finally came in the mail, it turns out it was $30 dollars cheaper to order books online, so I returned the books I bought from the bookstore when I received the books today from the UPS man. Textbooks are SO ridiculously expensive. Taylor spent $600 on her nursing textbooks. Luckily some of my friends are letting me borrow their books for the semester, so it will not be as expensive for me. Thank goodness.

I cooked dinner tonight with all the fresh produce I purchased yesterday. This is what I made:
I sauteed the eggplant I bought, served it with some soysauce, made some eggs with basil and tomato, and Jie Lan which I bought last weekend from the Hua Xing food mart. It was a very tasty dinner. You can see in the background the tomatoes that I bought from the Farmer's market.

This is another picture, of the cantaloupe that I bought and what our counter looks like nowadays:

And lastly, I finally figured how to cook a perfectly textured rice in this cheap americanized rice cooker. The first time I tried to cook rice in it, it turned out hard, uncooked, and dry, and the second time, it turned out like Rice porridge. But finally, it seems like I have figured out the correct amount of water to put in the rice so it turns out delicious! And this is the rice I made for dinner tonight; a cup of brown rice, half a cup of white rice, and water filled to the 1.65 line.
Success! I absolutely LOVE being able to cook my own food, meals are finally delicious and healthy again; no more butter and oil drenched, cheese slathered dorm cafeteria SLOP! How wonderful.

After dinner, I spent a few hours reading my textbooks and doing homework before heading out at 9pm for Praise Band practice for tomorrow's Large Group for InterVarsity. What a day. It is now almost midnight, I think I am going to goto bed now. Good night!