December 21, 2007

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas...

I can't believe there is only a few days left until Christmas! I feel like I am so behind this year because of school. Christmas cards went out late...Christmas baking was late...and Christmas shopping was delayed. Man! At times I kind of felt like a hamster or gerbil in one of those little wheels they run in...just running and getting nowhere. I do love this time of year though so it's all worth the stress for me!

As you can imagine....the last couple of weeks have flown by! Nifer and I did our usual Holiday Stockings for Homeless Children volunteering again this year. I did another donation box this year for the program and had a lot of coworkers donate this year which was very cool. The volunteering was a little frantic as usual, but I still love doing it and seeing all the kids coming out to make sure other kids have a great Christmas. It's very inspiring! Oh and this year I ended up having to deliver to a shelter out in the b00nedocks in North Bend. Boy was that an adventure! I got to venture way east into a part of North Bend I'd never been to before through dark wooded areas with icy, windy roads. I was determined that my little Corolla would make it to deliver the stockings for the kids though. Not sure if I ever want to visit that neck of the woods again, but mission accomplished.

Another Christmas related activity I took part in was a concert at Benaroya Hall. Anna & Sarah (my two closest friends from highschool) bought tickets to take me to The Coats Christmas concert this year. This was an a capella group that we first saw way back in highschool when they were fairly new. Now these guys are winning competitions, playing at Benaroya Hall, and even have songs play on WARM 106.9 during the holiday season. The concert was amazing and so much fun! I think the best part was when the entire audience broke out into song and sang a lovely round of Silent Night. It was quite beautiful actually.

Last weekend, a bunch of school friends took out a few classmates who are fairly new to the area. We met up in the International District to hang out and have lunch. It was a lot of fun just hanging out and sharing the newness of the whole International District with people who haven't been there before. We realized just how big Uwajimaya really is as we continued to lose eachother in the store. All in all it was another good time had and we even finished our day with some roasted chestnuts. You can't get more Christmasy than that!

December 15, 2007

School Daze...

It seems like I've been in a daze lately where I was living and breathing just school. I've been awful at keeping in touch with most friends and have only occassionally seen my family. The only people I see other than school folks are my coworkers and that's just because I have to see them everyday 5 days a week. That's pretty sad! Since I finished my last essay in the wee hours of the morning earlier in the week....hopefully I can rejoin the real world.

One very cool thing happened a few weeks back when we got hit by some snow in Seattle during class one weekend. Our classmate James is from Indonesia and just moved to the U.S. back in October. He'd never seen snow before so some of us dragged him outside to play in the snow a bit. It was amazing to experience someone's first experience with them!