Happy New Year!

Gosh I can’t believe another year has come and gone! Last year, I spent New Years Eve in North Carolina with my family, getting ready to go back to Champaign to finish up college. Since then, I’ve graduated, moved from Champaign to North Carolina, visited China and Taiwan, moved from North Carolina to New York, and started my life as an adult (scary, I know). It was really great coming back to North Carolina for the holidays and I had such a wonderful time with friends and family. For New Years Eve, we went to our friend’s house to have dinner, play boardgames, and ring in the new year. The family we always hang out with, the Khanlarians, have three kids - Somer, James, and Shane:

(Somer is MIA in the picture, but it’s Shane, James, me, and David).

If any of you were wondering (and I’m sure you were), I cut off four inches of hair the day before and highlighted/toned my hair as well. It’s much more of a winter look since the blonde is mostly out, but I like it. I was initially going for a bob/shaggy cut, but my mom convinced me not to since it’s winter and my neck might get cold. I’m really tempted to cut it all off…stay tuned.

Okay, back to the main story…so James and I needed to redeem ourselves since we lost to David in Ticket to Ride two nights ago. We were pretty confident of our awesome skills, but in the end, we lost to James’ little brother, Shane, and his mom, Cindi. We came in…last place, actually. The final board:

We were so caught up in our game of Ticket to Ride that we didn’t even watch the ball drop (it’s not THAT great, anyway). We actually planned to watch it go down, but I guess we turned on the television AT 12:01…oops! That just goes to show you how intense Ticket to Ride is!!

By the time we finished our game (around 1:30) we were ready to just stay and play another game (and pull an all nighter and get breakfast together). We eventually decided not to, but look at how pooped Butch, one of their dogs, was, by the end of the night:

New Years Day
We headed back to our favorite Greensboro family’s house for lunch and to see their clubhouse. For lunch, Albert, Shane/James’ dad, cooked kabob and roast beef, and Cindi and James made dolma (rice and meat wrapped in grape leaves). David did the initial honors of cutting up the roast beef:

Our family also thought it would be incredibly cute and original if we wore the same outfit (my mom and I have two of the same cashmere sweater sets from Christmas):

And a picture of me and David:

After lunch, James and I wanted a rematch of Ticket to Ride and we were REALLY close to winning, but I think we bit off more than we could chew (we drew six routes that we were supposed to finish and we ended up finishing…three, which put us at negative EIGHT before we even started counting our routes). We were SO sad:

And look at my mom rubbing it in our face:

We played again with a new strategy (taking over the border of the United States) and we were pretty close, but we never finished on the west coast. OH WELL it’s okay because our team always wins for best looking:

After our two games of Ticket to Ride, we took Camu and Butch out for a walk around the neighborhood:

Camu is full of energy and Butch is…not. We also ran into a goldendoodle puppy (the CUTEST DOG, EVER OMG I WANT FOUR OF THEM) and played with all three dogs before we had to leave

I’m heading back to New York tomorrow and I’m so sad to leave North Carolina. I figure if I don’t get on a traveling project, the next time I’ll be back in North Carolina will most likely be the fourth of July….which is SO FAR AWAY!! Hopefully I’ll have opportunities to come back before then John, Steve, and Angie are coming this Friday - it’s been almost 7 months since I’ve seen them!!

By the way, I’m looking for a new apartment for February 1st, so if you have an opening/hear of something, let me know!