Belated Holiday Party

Ann hosted a wonderful holiday party for the alums of my sorority who were in the NYC area. But since there were so many of us with different schedules, we ended up doing it towards the end of January. We had a white elephant exchange - but the rules were that we had to re-gift instead of buy gifts!

The night before the party, I went over to Ann's to help with some of the preparation. First of all, Trader Joe's in the city is crazy. The place is tiny and you can only push these mini carts around, and the line is unbelievably long. Before I got there, Ann said that they weren't allowing people into the store because it was so backed up. I don't know what I would do if I had to shop there every week for my groceries. While Ann prepared some of the appetizers for the next day, I was in charge of the dessert. I think I caused more trouble than I was helpful. First of all, the recipe for the dessert called for chocolate toffee, which we couldn't find. So Ann improvised and bought chocolate chips and Werther's candy which is like toffee?! But we needed to crush the Werther's so Ann said I can use a hammer. I failed miserably and so we decided to use a blender, which worked better. Then I was supposed to use melted butter, except I didn't melt it completely through, so I ended up having to use my arm strength to blend the butter in with the flour. What made it worse was that Ann didn't have an electric mixer, so I was using spoons, forks, spatulas to mix things. There were all these bubbles of flour, clumps of butter, cream cheese, I was really doubtful of how it would turn out. Anyway, the dessert took me like 2 hours to prepare. Although it ended up not being very pretty it was super sweet and delicious.

I can't remember what these things are called but they were SO good - it's made with potatoes, peppers, some spices, dipped in flour and fried I think























This is what it looked like trying to crush the Werther's candy. Would you believe we were baking dessert??!!


















Ann made everything from scratch. She is amazing. She's like a Chinese Martha Stewart.

















Two girls I met at the party - they were too young for me to have known them when I was in school .... sigh


















Gift exchange time!


















Tina got two books that were re-gifted, the person who brought them never read them, haha


















LOL. I laughed so hard when she opened this gift. Lisa's fiance got the Homer chia pet at their white elephant gift exchange over a month ago, and she re-gifted it! We joked about possibly seeing it again the following year, hahaha.

Hot Pot and Korean BBQ Dinner Party

One of my friends' parents invited a whole bunch of us over for dinner right after new year's. It was a crazy food fest - there was a BBQ grill and 2 hot pots in the dining room. We all stood around the table and cooked our own food. It was great fun - eating and chatting. Most of the girls were at one end of the table because we liked more vegetables in our hot pot, the boys were like, meat only in our hot pot, haha.
























I think they're in a serious discussion

















She's knitting socks. She got stuck on a stitch and couldn't figure out how to continue, so she brought it to the party in case someone could help her. Yeah, she was asking the wrong group of people, we had no clue.

















He chose the stuffed animals over his friends























Such a romantic picture ... I love Sherry's expressions ....

















Another happy couple ... hahaha

















And of course, the happy, single girls ;)

















I'm not sure what they're laughing at

















I had a lot of fun at the party, but I wasn't completely able to relax and enjoy myself. I was scheduled to stand on stage and translate the sermon from Chinese to English at church the following morning. I was kind of a nervous wreck and wasn't able to concentrate on anything for at least a week leading up to it. I knew it was stupid to be nervous about it and that I couldn't fully 'prepare' for it. I could only pray that God would give me the strength and wisdom to get through it. All in all, it went fine. I didn't mess up so badly that the spirit of the sermon couldn't get across I think. But afterwards, I was SO relieved. It really felt like I could finally breathe again. Everyone was very supportive and encouraging, which I definitely appreciated. Nevertheless, it was a challenging and interesting experience and I am glad that I went through it. Let's just hope I don't have to do it again anytime soon :)

Happy New Year - 2009!

On new year's eve, I went to a prayer meeting at church. It was really nice - we had a time of praise and worship, then we had alone time to go to each 'prayer station' and pray for specific issues and people (our country, family, co-workers, personal prayer requests). We can write our prayers down on a sheet of paper so others can pray in agreement with us. Then at the end of the year we can look back on what we prayed for. It was a great time of reflection, meditation and just talking to God. Afterwards, we separated into two groups, guys and girls, shared and prayed for one another. The kids and young adults group ended around 10pm, some of the adults stayed there all night praying! It was pretty amazing.

Joe and May hosted a new year's eve party at their house. A few of us joined them after the prayer meeting. We played Rock Band (SO much fun!), 'ghetto taboo', watched the ball drop and drank champagne. Really chill, just the way I like to spend my new year's eve :)





































We kind of cheated on the drums, haha





















































We attempted to create a waterfall effect with the champagne but it didn't quite work the way we wanted it to .....























Hilarious - PAINKILLERS!!