I’m taking a break from writing about New York City because I’m in California! My mom and I came to visit my brother for the weekend and it is SO beautiful and clean here (while we were driving today, my mom asked how anyone could ever want to live in New York over California. WAIT - I LIVE IN NEW YORK!).

Today was seriously so sunny and beautiful out (what a change from NYC) and we drove to Napa Valley to visit the wineries and walk around. The drive wasn’t too bad (around 1.5 hours?) and very beautiful:

The flowers are mustard flowers (I think) and there’s even a mustard festival going on soon. The first town we visited was Yountville, which had beautiful art galleries, cute shops, and little tea shops filled with pastries:

Initially, we were going to have lunch at a little restaurant called Mustard Grill that we read about online, but since the wait was so long, we decided to try our luck elsewhere. HOWEVER, we did get a funny picture by the front fountain:

We didn’t even have anything to drink yet!!

Since we couldn’t have lunch at Mustard Grill, we drove around and asked for recommendations and found a cute restaurant called Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen in St. Helena:

I had the hearty meatloaf with garlic mashed potatoes (which was AWESOME), my mom had the ahi tuna salad, and my brother had some kind of free range chicken with guacamole and veggies. My brother and I waiting for our food:

After lunch, we headed to our first wine tasting, which was the Beringer wineries. We tried six wines (three reds and three whites), which were good, but not great. My mom actually had a sip of one of the wines we were sampling and said that it tasted like one of the ingredients from the glue she used to make when she was a kid (I’m not quite sure why she was making glue as a kid, either). After Beringer Wineries, we headed to another winery down the road called V. Sattui. Their wines are ONLY sold in Napa and offer sampling as well - I really liked their Johannesberg Reisling and bought a bottle to take back to New York. A picture of the three of us sampling their Muscat wine (a dessert wine that was a little too sweet for us):

During the wine tasting, my mom somehow got a little tipsy and on our way to the next winery, look at the picture she took with me:

She ruined my picture!!!! (but in a funny way, so it’s okay)

The last winery we went to, The Robert Mondavi Winery, which was by far the most beautiful winery we visited (although, the Beringer Winery was amazing):

I can definitely imagine wedding in the winery area (actually, I’ve heard weddings in Napa Valley are really popular since it’s so beautiful and scenic there). AND, while walking around, we actually ran into a couple that got engaged! The winery is really a feast for the eyes - even though the trees were all really short and stubby, the area was still so beautiful and there was so much open space (and GRASS). A picture of me and my mom by the wine presses they used to use:

Finally, what blog entry would be complete without a funny picture from the day:

We left Napa around 6, got back to David’s area around 7:30 or so, went to a chinese restaurant my brother likes in Milpitas, and then headed back to David’s apartment. Tomorrow, we’re going to drive to the Hearst Castle (I think) and driving along Highway 1 (it’s supposed to be very scenic). I’m charging my camera battery tonight, so it’ll be ready for lots of pictures tomorrow!

How do the weekends go by so quickly? Last weekend we celebrated President’s Day (yay!) and it was one of those three day weekends that you look forward to all winter since once you start working, you don’t get holidays like you used to in college. One of the things I miss most about school is the fact that if you didn’t want to show up…you didn’t. Now I don’t have that luxury (as if I ever took advantage of it during school, either :)). Anyway, for President’s day, Chris and I drove to upstate New York to visit the Outlet mall! A picture of Chris on the way up:

I made him wear my sunglasses since it was slightly sunny out (although you can’t tell from that picture) and since he was driving, I didn’t want the sun to blind him!! The drive to the outlet malls is only around an hour (very short, actually) and since we got a late start to the day, we had to eat lunch at the outlet area (in the food court). Chris, being the country gentleman that he is, treated me to the best mexican lunch at Desert Moon:

Also, in the spirit of being tourists and wanting to capture the memory of our great trip to the outlet center, we made a PRESSED PENNY!!

There are a ton of shops at the outlets, including Brooks Brothers, Burberry, Kate Spade, Juicy Couture, St. John, Off 5th, Chanel, Lacoste, Escada, Gucci, and others. I didn’t end up buying anything (although there were some great sales in honor of President’s Day AND I did see a cute cashmere sweater set at Brooks Brothers) but Chris made out with a shirt. Was it worth it for the drive? Maybe not…but it was an adventure and everyone should go at least once. I can see myself going back again if I was better prepared and started earlier (good thing I took a map for the road and signed up on their email list!).

Since moving into my apartment, I’ve had a couple problems (most of them have been fixed/dealt with). For instance, when I first moved in, I noticed that it was awfully drafty in my room. Reasoning? The heater was broken. (Fixed by buying a space heater for a couple of weeks and then having the actual radiator fixed). Second problem - mice. Solution? None so far, and I’ve seen one running around the past couple of days. Third problem - BED BUGS. So, I’ve never dealt with bed bugs before and I didn’t know what it was, but after carefully looking on the internet and reading about bug bites, I’ve come to terms that I HAD bedbugs in my mattress (it was a full-sized mattress that came with the room). Here are the bites to show you how badly I was eaten up:

I don’t know if you can tell from the picture, but I have around 8 bites on my right hand. I also had 5-10 bites on my legs and a couple on my back. I noticed it after President’s weekend, which is odd, because I’ve lived in my apartment since Feb 1st. Either way, I had to throw out the mattresses that came with the room and move my old twin sized mattress from David Li’s apartment back to mine. So far, I haven’t had any more bug bites (cross your fingers and knock on wood). Living in NYC IS TOUGH!

In other news, I decided I wanted to cut my hair (spice things up a bit). I had the hairstylist cut off FIVE inches and here’s the result:

I wasn’t really happy with the results, but at least it isn’t incredibly short and I’ll be able to grow it out quickly. I used to think I was a short haired kind of girl, but now I think I’m a long haired girl (for now, at least).

This weekend, Chris and I went to a musical (Gutenberg! The Musical!) on Friday night (after having lobster rolls at Mary’s Fish Camp - delicious, but we both thought Pearl Oyster Bar was better). On Saturday, we headed to The Armory Show at Pier 94 to see up and coming modern artists. Here are some of my favorites from the show:

And my two favorite pieces from the night:

1.

An actual watermelon. As in, a real watermelon. uhhh…yes, this is considered Art. I wonder how you would sell something like this….$0.29/lb? …. I LOVE WATERMELON and I can’t wait until the spring when I will eat copious amounts while watching Law and Order.

2.

When Chris and I first walked by this piece of “art,” I thought it was real garbage (it was towards the end of the night and I saw other people cleaning up). After closer inspection, we read that it was actually a piece of art (and made of copper). People are so…creative! After the art show, we headed to Korea Town and had an awesome dinner of dol sot bibimbap and kimchi jigae. I haven’t been to Koreatown in a while, so it was SO DELICIOUS I COULD’VE HAD TWO PORTIONS! Okay not really, but it was still really good.

Today I ran errands, got my life together, and started thinking about what to pack for my upcoming VACATION! I’m headed to San Jose this THURSDAY to visit my brother AND MY MOM! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I am TOO excited! It’s going to be tough to get through this week since all I’ll be thinking about is my upcoming trip to California! YAY!

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!

Last night, our family hosted a holiday party (more like a dinner with friends). We went to their place the night before and had dinner/played Balderdash with them and we reciprocated by hosting a dinner on Thursday. Whenever we get together for dinner, we always play board games; Wednesday was Balderdash, Thursday was Ticket-to-Ride. Two funny things that occurred while playing Balderdash:

1. My mom was the host (meaning she was the one that held the card with the correct answer). She rolled strange laws and we had to write down what we thought was illegal to remove in theaters in Winnetka, Illinois. Most people wrote down shoes, socks, shirts, etc., which my mom read, and then she read the option “riding your bicycle into a swimming pool.” umm….okay. Sometimes we have really “out there” answers to throw people off (since some of the real answers are oftentimes really out there) but this one was just…so odd. ONE person picked riding your bicycle into a swimming pool and we were all kinda laughing (I mean, it didn’t even MAKE SENSE) and when we were tallying up points, my mom gave the guy TWO points for getting it right! Then my brother, who was sitting next to my mom, looked at the card and realized that two cards were STUCK TOGETHER! hahahaha - it reminded me of the Friends episode when Rachel makes the trifle with beef, peas, and mashed potatoes because pages in the cookbook were stuck together!!

2. We had to re-do a bunch of the cards because people weren’t following the rules so we just discarded the piles of notecards where we wrote our definitions/weird laws/movie themes/etc into a middle pile. James, who was sitting next to me, was the host and read two of my cards, so I asked if he had read every person’s definition of a word, to which he responded, yes. I asked if he was SURE, and he said YES, and then he showed me the card (which was my old card) and it was because Albert, James’ dad, crossed out MY name and replaced it with HIS! He didn’t care enough to think of something new! I could not stop laughing but I couldn’t tell anyone at the table because then we’d have to redo the card (and we’d been redoing cards ALL night).

On Thursday, we hosted a party at our house and had hot pot (similar to what we had at our aunt’s house in Raleigh). Here’s the set up:

We also had edamame and while my mom was preparing it, I asked, oh, is that edamame? And my mom responded, “no, it’s already made.” Sometimes my mom is just too funny!!

I also made MAGICAL cookies and a delicious chocolate cheesecake for the party:

The cookies are cream cheese based and to find the sprinkles, we had to drive to THREE different grocery stores (are those sprinkles just not popular?) I like the sprinkles we bought because I feel like they’re a bit crunchier than the jimmies that are easily found in grocery stores.

The chocolate cheesecake I made was SO delicious and it took FOREVER to bake because our terrible GE oven kept locking (and has been since we purchased it). Everything was made from scratch - even the crust! It was made from fresh oreo cookies (I licked the cream off every single cookie :)) Basking the cheesecake actually took around an hour total (including the crust). Here’s the final product:

After dinner, we played Ticket-to-Ride, one of the coolest board games EVER. James and I were on a team and we were thisclose to winning (if we had only won the extra 10 points by getting the longest chain). My brother, who played by himself, WON, with 112 points, James and I came in 2nd with 105, my mom and Shane came in 3rd with 89, and Albert and Cindi came in 4th. Here’s the final board:

Today (Friday) we watched The Devil Wears Prada, Mission Impossible 3, and The DaVinci Code (we’re taking advantage of the Blockbuster online rental plan, obviously). I also managed to highlight my hair (it’s much darker now) and I’m getting a cut tomorrow. We’re also headed to Raleigh tomorrow and on Sunday, we’ll be heading to Cindi and Albert’s for a New Year’s Eve dinner!

Today, my family drove to Chapel Hill to have lunch with my aunt’s family. David, my brother, flew into Chapel Hill last night (Southwest doesn’t have a hub in Greensboro) and we met up this afternoon to have a Chinese style Christmas (hotpot!) A picture of my family:

Do you like my new cashmere sweater set my mom bought me for christmas? Those two pieces are one of the TWENTY (seriously, TWENTY) cashmere sweaters my mom bought for me. My mom was telling me that she was trying to stack up the sweaters but there were so many that they kept falling over! My brother’s also wearing one of the new cashmere sweaters he got for Christmas (umm…I have to rotate my old cashmere sweaters to sleepwear now).

My aunt prepared a huge lunch for us (hot pot, where you continuously cook meats, vegetables, and other things in a pot of chicken broth) and my cousin, Mimi, brought a bunch of desserts for us to enjoy. Mimi, my cousin, lives in Washington, D.C., and my other cousin, Teddy, lives in California. Mimi and I have seen each other a bunch of times because when I used to visit Bill at GWU, I would always fit in a dinner with her. Teddy, on the other hand, I have not seen since I was…two. HA! Now I can officially say I’ve met all of my immediate cousins (Teddy was my missing link).

Here’s a picture of me, my aunt, and my brother:

So, on a completely unrelated note, I’ve decided that it’s time to cut my hair. Recently, I’ve noticed that my hair is getting uncontrollably long (it’s all in my FACE) so, here are some ideas for my new cut:

1. My hairstyle from sophomore year in college (don’t you love my outfit?!):

2. Haircut from senior year:

3. Keeping my hairstyle from Christmas:

Any ideas?

Also, when I lived in Champaign, one of my mom’s friends mentioned that I looked like an actress from China, Gong Li. I never saw the resemblance, but recently, Joe and Brian have mentioned that I look like her (maybe because she’s Asian and she’s going to be in a new movie?). Here’s a picture I found of her online:

I tried to do a face recognition on myheritage.com, but…I won’t post the results because I think it’s really off…

Tomorrow night we’re headed to our friend’s place for a dinner and Thursday night we’re having a party at our place, which means there are TWO more opportunities for pictures! It’s so great having my Canon back!