Freshman year reflection

Monday morning-- strawberries and nectarines for breakfast, gray clouds hugging the skyline, fragrance of freshly baked cookies.

This quiet, sleepy start to the day is perfect for writing my end-of-the-year reflection. =) I remember the initial feelings of excitement, curiosity and homesickness during my first week at Foothill, the nights when I stared up at the foreign ceiling of my dorm room wishing for just one glimpse of my familiar glow-in-the-dark stars shining down upon me. I remember marveling at the library and the stacks and stacks of tomes, and how awed I felt by the accumulation of so much knowledge, passed from hand to hand and generation to generation of students. I remember Welcome Week -- making new friends, learning and forgetting names, getting accustomed to dorm food, navigating my way around a campus that seemed so new and big and capable of swallowing a little student like me up within its large, noisy crowds.

But now... now I look upon everything with a strong sense of fondness. As summer cooled into autumn, and autumn transitioned into a cold wet winter, my suitemates became my friends, and not long after, my second family. During first semester, we had long talks gathered around the white board, where we would chart out elaborate family trees and assign Lord-of-the-Rings and Harry Potter characters to one another, laughing, teasing, and bonding all the while. The trip to Emeryville to watch American Gangster, playing hide-and-seek late at night, dinners at La Val or northside asian ghetto or The Original, Secret Santa during Christmas, the boys stealing our good shower, "surprise" birthday celebrations with presents and delicious cake messily devoured on napkins stolen from the DC-- these snapshots have formed a colorful mosaic of memories in my mind that I will treasure forever.

I made friends not only with people, but with buildings, trees, specific benches and sun-dappled spots around campus. Each time I stepped foot onto campus, it was like welcoming an old friend and asking, "What do you have planned for me today?" I never quite knew what was in store, whether it was bumping into an old friend in the GBC or spilling HCl acid over my thumb in chemistry lab or randomly wandering into a bookstore and reading a novel that moved me to tears.

And then there are a million little memories which I hope I will never forget, such as eating free Godiva samples AND gelato AND ice-cream AND iced lemonade with Emily at the mall, and being so stuffed that we both skipped dinner later. Or watching those ridiculous PBL videos and laughing until my sides hurt. Or smuggling snacks into the library with Angela and getting caught redhanded not one hour later (plus, I like how our five minute "breaks" always turned into thirty minute long chats while facebooking). Or the one time Melody and I went to the gym together and laughed so hard because we didn't know how to operate the machines. Or eating In-N-Out for the very first time of my life! =) Even the more unfortunate memories -- like getting rid of the mite infestation or falling ill from food poisoning after eating out at a curry restaurant -- seem almost humerous today.

Altogether, my freshman year was truly wonderful. =) More updates later!

Blog!!

Heheh

Seee, I DO blog! And I will try to blog more often if you blog more regularly as well! HEHE

=)

Btw, don't you think the word "blog" has an ugly sound to it? From now on, we'll just say, "Let's update our online journals!"

Library Moments

I was diligently studying my notes on plant photoperiods when one of my favorite songs from high school began playing on my computer, and suddenly an overwhelming sense of quiet beauty flooded over me. These moments where my soul is "uplifted" are rare, but they always affect me profoundly and infuse me with such penetrating thirst for something deeper. They remind me that life is full of poetry and starlight and gentle breezes on a spring evening. =) Suddenly I feel like traipsing through some faraway blue-green meadow, with silence as my only companion and the sun a warm, golden cape against my back!

Ah, and when I glance upward now from my biology binder, I see hills and trees and soft, cotton-candy clouds framed by the library window. So beautiful! =) I wonder if anyone else sitting here in this library is in secret rapture over the beauty of the world, the artistry of the rich colors surrounding us, and the air that lets us breathe and think and imagine.

C.S. Lewis

Quotes from one of my favorite authors -- C.S. Lewis

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world

You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.

We are what we believe we are.

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way."

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst.

God has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.