Saturday, August 27, 2011

Virginia Beach is for lovers

I'm back from vacation (#2)! We went to Virginia Beach, which is somewhere that we go almost every year, although the last time we went was two years ago. Last year, we went to Florida.


That's the view from our hotel, we spend 4 days there and our days consisted of going to the beach, eating, and shopping. On our second last day, we went crabbing.


We caught lots of crabs, the most in a really long time. Everytime we pulled one of our nets up, there'd be at least a crab in it. And we would pull up our nets once every few minutes.


We also caught other things.




After our days in Virginia Beach, we packed up and headed to Williamsburg so that we can go to Busch Gardens and Water Country USA. Busch Gardens had a something called Illuminights which pretty means that they put lights everywhere so that the park would look really pretty after the sun went down.




The park is organized into different countries and it was voted as the world's most beautiful theme park.



In Germany, we bought a handmade German cuckoo clock. I don't think it's in this picture but it's so cute! We love it and the bird comes out every half hour. It cuckoos whatever the time is on the hour and once every half hour.



We took a break during the day and replenished ourselves in Germany. We ate in their huge and colourful dinning hall. It made me thing of Hogwarts because of how big and spacious it was and because of the long tables and benches.



At certain times during the day, staff members would come out in costume to dance and sing in German in the middle of the stage. It was cute but nothing special.

We sustained ourselves with desserts! The cupcake was almost the same price as the huge slice of Black Forest cake -_-




Now, while I was on vacation, I had acquired the following plushies!


I had my eye on the two rilakkumas for the longest time but didn't want to pay the same price for both of them for shipping so I waited until we went on vacation in the States. Korilakkuma is a birthday gift from my sister..back in April. The monkey, ugly doll and HK were gifts from my parents. My dad won the monkey for me at a crane game. The Japanese panda I bought at Busch Gardens because it's so DAMN CUTE! Look at those eyes!



Those little ones were in my mailbox when I got home from vacay. Now, I need to save up and stop spending money on kawaii things.



Wednesday, August 10, 2011

"Yer a wizard, Harry"

3 days until my vacation to Virginia Beach! Yaaaay! I'm so excited. My family and I visit Virginia Beach pretty much every year (and if it's not Virginia, it's Florida) over the past 15 years. Nothing better than lying on the beach, getting a nice tan. Although I already have a pretty good one (for me anyway, since I never tan), I'm looking forever to keeping it and frolicking on the beach.

Since I will be the US, I decided to have a bunch of parcels shipped there, because shipping to Canada is so damn expensive. It's ridiculous. Anyway, one of the packages that I'll be shipping is........

-suspense music-

HARRY POTTER JOURNALS!!!!!!!

When I went to Universal Studios last year, I obviously went to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. It was AMAZING! Like a HP fanboygirl's dream come true. The butterbeer was damn amazing and the ride in the Hogwarts castle was my favourite ride out of all the amusement parks that we went to.

I got distracted for and I'm going off in a tangent. So as I was saying, I visited those souvenir shops, cleverly named...I forgot, I saw the Hogwarts Crest Journal on display and I asked of the guys wizards who worked there and I asked him about it. He told me that it was sold out (NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!) and they didn't know when they would receive another shipment. Dejected and depressed, I bought the plainer, reject version.

Image taken from Life with a misspelled name.


To which I am now pouring out my heart and soul into (sound familiar).

BUT! Opportunity presented itself in the form of a vacation so when I searched for it on the Universal Studios online store, not only did I buy the Hogwarts Crest Journal, but I also bought these two:

Image taken from Universal Studios Online Store.

Image taken from Universal Studios Online Store.


So now, I won't run out of Harry Potter journals to pour my deepest darkest secrets into. At least for a long time.

Oh and before, I forgot, of course, here's the sought-after Hogwarts journal.

Image taken from Universal Studios Online Store.


Aren't they beautiful?

I couldn't decid which one I wanted so I got all three. At least now, I have the whole collection and imagine how amazing it'll look on my library with the rest of my Harry Potter books.

Aaaaah, life is good.

But I still haven't seen HP part 2. Why won't anyone go watch it with me???

Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Friday, July 29, 2011

back to reality

I've just come back from a relaxing and wonderfully, hot and sunny vacation. I went to Punta Cana with Alex and his family. It was my first time ever going to an all-inclusive and I love it. I love the sun, the beach, the pool, the free drinks. I love how you can sit by the pool/beach and just let yourself tan (not that I did much of that) and relief is a minute away. As it is with all vacations, I felt it was too short and I was not looking forward to coming back home and back to work. Especially since I'm sitting in a room that HAS air conditioning but my office partner is anal and doesn't want to turn the AC on because it's too noisy or something and she insists on opening the window instead. So instead of a nice cooling effect, I have a very sticky, damp and hot effect. If I were still on vacation, at least I could've had this by the beach or a pool in the Caribbean. But it's ok, I only have 2 and a half hours of this before I get to go home...via public transit which must be awful. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to get an air conditioned bus, that was an amazing experience. I was so blown away by it.

Enough complaning, let's talk about my wonderful vacation. So, we arrived at around 7 PM and we were about an hour away from the resort. By the time we checked in, found our rooms and got settled in, it must've been about 9:30 PM? We wanted to find some food but we weren't familiar with the resort yet so we wondered around, found the pool, which was huge and great. We found the snack bar but they were closed and were preparing for the midnight snack or whatever it was. They said they would be ready in 8 minutues. Now, we didn't know this at the time, but apprently, in the Dominican Republic, they have no concept of time, so when they say 8 minutes, they mean, they'd like to be ready in 8 minutues but we'll most likely be ready in 2 hours. Which is what happened that time and every other time. So when the snack bar was open again, I was starving but to my disappointment, it was only hot dogs and burgers but I ate like a pig anyway.

I'M SO HOT! I'm sweating and my office partner isn't even here. I should just close the window and turn on the freggin' AC. I think I'll go do that. Her ears can kiss my sweaty ass. Yay, it's turned on!

Now, we spent most of our time on the beach and by the pool, which was awesome. I loved every second of it. But we also did an excursion together, which was snorkeling and we swam with sharks and stingrays. But where we went, it was an enclosed area and the sharks had no teeth and they took out the stingers out of the rays, the poor things. I've swam with wild stingrays that have still had their stingers and they're not aggressive animals, what happened to Steve Irwin was literally a one in a million accident. Anyway, we took some pictures with them and swam around the enclosure trying to touch them while they swam away from you. It was good fun. Then, the boys went on a Jeep safari excursion, while Alex's mom and I went to the spa. It was so quiet and relaxing without the guys. We got the aromatherapy package where they scrub you in exfoliante so that you're silky smooth when you wash it off and then they give you a massage with oils and all these different lotions, gels and creams. We left smelling, feeling and looking great. But unfortunately, we had to wash our hair so we washed some of it off while we were trying to wash only our hair.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Earl Grey Experiment

Wow, it's been a while since I've updated but the list of usual excuses come up; exams and work. Although my exams finished on April 28th (day after my birthday, that's right, I had to study on my birthday!), work started the following Monday and so did my kickboxing classes. In addition to my full-time job (for the summer), I have a part-time job tutoring and the kid's exams were coming up so after my first job, I'd head to my second job and on Mondays and Wednesdays, I'd head off to kickboxing after and get home at around 10 PM. When I don't have kickboxing, I finish work at 8 PM and 7 PM on Fridays, arriving home between 8 PM to 9 PM.

My schedule is still like this but tutoring is going to finish next week since his last exam is on Friday, which gives me more free time after my first job, even if I do have kickboxing after. I love kickboxing! It's amazing and it's so challenging. I love that our coach makes out really work out and that he's still a nice guy. I'm definitely going to sign up again during the fall and even in the winter. Plus, it toning up my flab is a nice bonus ;)

So the weather is finally nice. It's only been raining for the past month, with a random sunny day before reverting back to rain. This is the second day in a row where it's been nice and sunny! Just looking outside makes me happy, never mind feeling the sunshine on my skin.

OMG BLOGGER DIDN'T SAVE MY POST AND NOW I HAVE TO TYPE ALL THIS AGAIN!!!! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE!!!

As I was saying, before blogger MESSED EVERYTHING UP! I love drinking Earl Grey tea because it's the best tea around, obviously. But for some reason, whenever I drink it at work, or at home, it never tastes nearly as good as when I drink it at my boss' house (tutoring). It was at his house that I was introduced to my tea soul mate. Strangely enough, whenever I drink it at work, it tastes like crap, at home, it's alright but at tutoring, it's soooooooo delicious. I wonder why, I add milk and sugar to the tea whether I'm at work or tutoring (milk and honey at home)and the brand is the same (Twinnings). Does anyone know why this happens? I highly doubt that china tea cups and sugar cubes make all the difference. I'll do an experiment tonight at tutoring and I'll post the results some other time.