I Miss Swimming!

When I was living in my country, I used to go swimming every day before I moved to United States. Swimming is the only sport I enjoy although some people might argue that it is not considered as a sport. Nonetheless, it sure make me work out and I really enjoy being in the pool.
Back in my country, I used to have a swimming buddy who was also my childhood friend. She and I were competitive partners. We would always have friendly races like how many laps we could swim within 10 minutes and so on.
 I completely stopped swimming when I came to US....Perhaps I haven't found a swimming buddy and don't want to go alone? I am not sure what the reason is but I do seriously miss swimming in the pool. I miss my swimming buddy. I miss our friendly competitive races. :(

I Have No Talent In Gardening :(

Ever since I was a little girl, I love flowers -- especially red roses! But I have no talent in gardening. My mother said every time I touch a plant, it dies. So she wants me to stay away from her garden. I don't blame her. As much as I love flowers and want to plant them, I've never successfully planted any type of plants.
So instead of planting from scratch, I now buy those already planted flower pots from nursery. Even that, my poor little tiny plants turned gray after a few weeks later, No luck at all!

Hollywood Walk of Fame

Last two weeks ago, I took my visitor friend to visit Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was not that bad of an experience until when one of the characters in costume grabbed my friend to take a picture with him. At first my friend said no because we already visited Universal Studios and she had already taken lots of pictures with characters in costumes. We were more interested in enjoying the walk down the street than taking pictures with them because some of them looked really creepy. But the man in Spiderman costume followed us and insisted on taking a picture with him. My friend started to feel uncomfortable so she finally said yes. I did let her know that she had to give money if she decided to take a picture with him. Then, when I started taking a picture of them, two other characters just jumped into the scene out of nowhere. One was a creepy Mickey Mouse and the other was Donald Duck. Suddenly they too started to ask money from her --- $20!!!! I was totally shocked. We have seen people just gave a dollar each when they took a picture with those characters before us. It was just a ripped off, and besides, we didn't even know about the other characters when they jumped into the picture in a spilt second. My friend finally just said she didn't know about the other characters and she only gave the Spiderman a dollar and we quickly walked away from those creepy characters. So if you are a tourist, please be careful when you visit there. Once they sense that you are a tourist, they would follow you until they get money from you!

Who should I tip???

Since tipping is one of the most confusing customs, I always doubt when and who to tip. I know about tipping the obvious people such as waiters and barbers but I am not sure if I am supposed to tip other service people, like plumber, cable guy, or electrician here in the United States. In Singapore, service tip is already included in the bill when you eat at a restaurant so there is no need for you to tip a waiter. I always give at least 15% tip to the servers when I eat at restaurants. Depending on their service, I wouldn't mind giving up to 25% tip. They do work hard and some of them really deserve it.

Celerbrity Hunting...

Ever since I came to US, I have always wondered when I could run into Hollywood stars. I have been to a lot of tourist attraction places such as LA The Grove and Beverly Hills Rodeo Drive but never seen any celebrity until last summer. It was at LAX airport. I was walking back to my car after dropping off my brother at terminal 5. I saw two paparazzies passed by me with their cameras all ready to shoot. I happened to walked the same direction with them. They seemed to be in a rush. After we reached at Tom Bradley terminal, I saw another two paparazzies waiting on the street. So I stopped and asked them. When I was asking them, Kain Egan from Westlife came out from the main door rushing into his car. His wife was there too! Although it was a split second that I could see him, I was extremely excited to see him live within a few feet apart. He seemed to be nice although he looked tired. After putting away his luggage, he smiled at us and took off! That sure did make my day...

The Happiest Place on Earth Is Getting More Expensive!

Last week, I visited Disneyland with my good friend. We each paid $ 127 for both theme parks, Disneyland park and Disney California Adventure. Parking was $16 and we had to park all the way towards the end of the lot because there were a lot of cars already packed before 10 o' clock in the morning. My friend and I walked all the way across the parking lot, went through Downtown Disney and by the time we get to the theme parks, we were almost out of breath in the heat.
We visited Disneyland park first for almost half of the day and had our lunch there. We spent almost $20 for a sandwich, chips, and a soda. The food was not that great but it was surely very expensive. Then, we spent our entire evening at Disney California Adventure.
Overall, my friend and I had a great time even though each ride had a 40-minute wait and everything was a bit pricy in there. Oh, well! What can I say? It's the happiest place on earth!


               

A Bowl of Rice

Being a typical Asian, I love to eat rice! Rice is the main dish that my family and I eat everyday but it has to be the right type of rice. I don't like brown rice. I don't like sticky rice. I don't like long thin slender rice. It has to be the perfect texture of rice.
When I first came to United States, I couldn't find that right kind of rice that I like. I tried Buddha rice, Jasmine rice, Basmati rice, and even brown rice. Nothing can satisfied my crave of the perfect grain of rice. One day, I though about mixing up the two extreme types of rice, one is very sticky and one is very mushy, and measured 1/2 a cup each into the rice cooker and waited anxiously to see what happened. There, after I opened up the rice cooker, I knew that this would be the one. Yes, it was perfect! It was the perfect type of texture that I was looking for. From then on, I mixed two different kinds of rice (Jasmine and Buddha) to enjoy my warm delicious bowl of rice. Yum---yum!
    

Being the first generation migrating to the United States, I struggle a lot with spoken English and listening the first couple of months. Up until now, I consider myself an English learner. I graduated from college with a Bachelor's degree in Child Development and became a preschool teacher. I taught preschool for three years and continued with my education and got my Multiple Subject Teaching credential. Currently, I am enrolled in the MA TESOL program at California State University, Los Angeles.
My first six months living in the US was very challenging in terms of work and study due to my lack of prior proper training in language learning. I also had culture shocks -- some were funny and some were rather scary!