Whenever I read books, I like to highlight my favorite quotes and moments. Winter break is my time to start reading again because my to-read list is getting excessively long and I'm excited to start slowly shortening it. So with that said, excuse my geekyness as I share two of the quotes that I loved from the book that I recently finished, Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta. 

"What are you so sad about?...We're going to know him for the rest of our lives."

"I remember love. It's what I have to keep on reminding myself. It's funny how you can forget everything except people loving you. Maybe that's why humans find it so hard getting over love affairs. It's not the pain they're getting over, it's the love."

I hope everyone's having a lovely Christmas Eve, I'm spending mine with my family in Georgia. It's a bit of an inconvenience to not have internet at my grandma's house so I have to go over to my aunt's house for it, but it's all right because I enjoy the extra family time. My grandma always loves when her favorite grandchildren come to visit her, so there's no complaints from her. I have caught my grandma trying to be sneaky and checking up on us through the doors of our rooms because she seems to be afraid that we might suddenly disappear if she doesn't keep her eye on us! She's definitely a character, haha.

These past few days have been full of fun activities, all of which are most deserved since the semester is now over for me. On Friday I went to the city with a few friends who were nice enough to be my tour guides for the day! It was my first time being in New York City during the Christmas season, so I was really excited. The entire day was just so much fun, and I guess I was pretty entertaining to everyone because I was fascinated by a lot of the things they were used to seeing growing up. 





They all had me cover my eyes once we got to the tree so they could surprise me with it, but the thing is they showed me the tree up close so I couldn't gauge the enormity of it. They were offended when my first comment was that "the tree isn't THAT big." Hahaha, no wonder why Chris calls me a princess.

I came home from school a day earlier than I had planned because living in Upstate New York, there are always unexpected weather conditions that we have to worry about. There was a snowstorm that was going to hit my area so I had to leave early to beat the snowstorm and the terrible traffic. We ran into the snow while I was driving...If you've had any experience driving in the snow you would know how scary it can be. Driving through unploughed snow on the freeway is terrifying especially when you can feel your car slip and slide once in a while. Thankfully we got home safely!

This is the first time I've come back home in about three months, and I have to say this break is much needed. I've come to really enjoy going home after going off to college, which wasn't always the case before I moved out. This may sound cliche, but sometimes you don't realize how much something really means to you until it's gone..or in my case until you part from it for a while. It's one of those cliche sayings that didn't really have much meaning to me until it started to directly relate to my life.

I hope you all spend your Thanksgiving stuffing your faces with turkey or whatever kind of food you have with your family. Take the time to tell the people in your life how much they mean to you.

Happy Thanksgiving!

On Wednesday it was Sonia's 21st birthday, so we all had a small get together for the first part of her birthday celebration. We went to the Cheesecake factory, which always is a good choice when you want to get dressed up for dinner! I have to say it was one of the most hilarious dinners I've ever been to simply because Chen and Ilana interacting with each other was a show within itself.

This is a long overdue post since this week has been extremely hectic. Anyways, these are some of the pictures that I took when during our Dumpling Day last weekend.

Today my friend brought up a question that I have never been asked before. She asked me, "What career path would you choose if money weren't involved?" The first thing that came to mind was that I would still want to be involved in healthcare except it would be more specific, such as working in a clinic in a third world country. Then I said I wanted to be like Andrew Zimmerman, someone who just traveled the world trying foods of many different cultures. Afterwards I said another option was to be able to use art in my career if money wasn't involved, for example being an art teacher. I thought my answers said a lot about myself in terms of the things I believe are important for me to feel complete: Helping others, traveling, and art. I think we should all really think about this question once in a while to ensure that we would still love what we do even if weren't paid for it.

So, what career path would you choose if money weren't involved?

 Happy Tuesday! I woke up pretty early to study this morning and found myself staring out the window most of the time because watching snow fall never seems to get old to me. Oh and the first snowfall of the fall/winter season always makes me super excited for the holidays!

I don't have many of these inspiring, helpful books on my shelf but this is one that I refer to whenever I feel like I'm going through times where I need solid advice. There are "secrets" in here that everyone can relate to, not just people in their twenties. I've mentioned this book to a few friends, but I felt the need to write about it today since I opened it earlier and felt enlightened again! Haha, sounds like magic. I guess you would have to read it for yourself to really understand, but this guy gives good tips for surviving your twenties because none of us really knows what we're doing during this stage in our lives. Paul Angone has many funny analogies that goes along with his tips too, so this book is anything but boring. Some of the tips that I have found particularly helpful for me were:

#6 Life will never feel like it's supposed to.
If we're always trying to live like we're "supposed to," we're never going to truly live.

#63 Breaking up is like a fire. It destroys. A lot. But sometimes it's beneficial and necessary, like a farmer taking a field overgrown with weeds and setting it ablaze.

You're going to have to read it to find out the rest. I recommend this to anybody, especially students graduating college soon! I'm definitely going to be gifting this to some people because it's just that magnificent.

I have this habit of documenting my life through writing in journals and taking pictures. I fear that once I get old and my memory starts to diminish, I'll forget all of the wonderful things that have happened during my lifetime. To me the human memory is not completely dependable, which is why keeping things on record is so important. So the next step for me in all of this is to keep a blog! It's a combination of both writing and pictures, so it's the best of both worlds. Hopefully I learn to take better pictures, and ultimately create amazing memories that I can look back on in the future. I'll try to post when I can because I'll mostly be busy being a senior in college.