how to turn the worst weekend full of yucky school stuff into the best weekend ever!!! :)

Step 1: Go home. As in home, home. Not Syracuse apartment! :)

Step 2: Surround yourself with people you love as soon as you can!

Step 3: Give and receive lots of hugs. High fives just don't cut it on weekends like this!

Step 4: Join your bff old roomie for the BEST LUNCH EVER at her house. 

Step 5: Talk and play with little kids under the age of 4. (The more, the better).

Step 6: Read through the book of Galatians out loud. The more people you read it with, the better!

Step 7: Eat ice cream cake.

Step 8: Have your whole family, bf AND bff beside you/helping you as you do all your work!

Step 9: Take funny pictures with your bff.

Step 10: Blog about it!

hehe :) i wuv u!

nat

NCAA & peace

The campus was basically empty on Monday... and the skies were soooo dark and rainy. SU is mourning its loss on Sunday's game, ending their time at March Madness. :(


"In the past, we've lost in the Sweet 16 and weren't satisfied," SU's lone senior Rick Jackson said. "So for us to take a step back, I'm not satisfied with that."
Tear! 

Today, I've just been taking a step back. I woke up this morning and checked a midterm grade and was so upset all day because of it. Then in the evening, I had a client and my supervisor gave me the best comments on my session of the semester and I was beaming for probably a total of 5 minutes before I started worrying about my next evaluation. What has been up with me lately? I've had no peace in my heart this whole semester. School has been much more of a challenge this winter term, and I've been accrediting it wholly to the abundance of activities and increase in responsibilities that I've been trying to juggle. I keep telling myself that I'm just in over my head. But when I got home, I realized that I've been sounding exactly like everyone else in the clinic... complaining about work, miserable about everything, and a nervous wreck. I've been putting so much pressure on myself because I've been chasing after everyone's approval. I'm trying to get amazing marks to win the approval of my professors, since this leads to the possibility of being able to do my externship back home, to win the approval of my family and everyone back home. 


Why haven't I been able to live my life like Galatians 1:10? This is ridiculous. I'm creating a huge burden that's been crushing me! I'm holding on to it for dear life when Jesus has been waiting with outstretched arms to take it from me. This has been so tiring and it's no wonder I've had zero peace in my heart! I haven't been relying on God at all... only on myself. And of COURSE I can't handle all of this by myself. But He has brought me to this point and given me all the things on my plate for a reason... and I know that if He's brought me to it that He'll bring me through it. 


It's challenging, but I'm going to try to really let God take the reigns. I need to live a true God-centered life in order to not only get through this, but to get through this with joy in my heart! I know this can only be possible through Christ working in me. :)
How are you guys doing? Going through a rough patch too? Well, I miss you guys and I hope that you can also find the "peace that transcends all understanding" when you look to Jesus. I also hope that I'll be able to share this peace with you. :)


Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. - Philippians 4:6


i love you! :)
nat

depression city

It gets harder and harder to leave Toronto every time I come home. 
I'm dreading going back to Syracuse. That's putting it mildly. 
Watching the CN tower shrink into the distance makes me feel like everything awesome in life is somehow shrinking too! :( 


WELL, Syracuse is not thaaaaaat bad. Haha, but with the amount of work lately, I've been dedicating 7 days a week to school and I'm starting to burn out. After I came home, I bought a kajillion megabus tickets so that I can enjoy as many weekends in Toronto as I can this summer! The 5 hour bus ride used to seem like a huge nuisance. But i've been missing home so much that it now seems like the most minor of inconveniences. :) 
I'm currently blogging from megabus. Thank goodness for WiFi! But the bus is packed and there are quite a few young children crying. I guess it's expected though... the tickets are so cheap!


Anyways, I'm trying to hang in there... School kicks my butt, but I know I'll be home in no time. :)


See you soon!
xo nat

zomg

8:00 AM - Finish Lesson Plans and SOAP notes for Client 1
9:00 AM - Prestaff
10:00 AM - Work on Lesson Plans and SOAP notes for Client 2
11:00 AM - Anatomy and Physiology of Speech and Hearing class
12:30 AM - Finish Assignments for Articulation Disorders class
2:00 PM - Articulation Disorders class
3:30 PM - Prepare materials for Client
4:00 PM - Tx with Client
5:00 PM - Language Disorders in School Aged Children class
7:30 PM - Back to clinic to complete revisions for SOAP note
9:00 PM - Super hungry
10:00 PM - Finally home... to work on Lesson Plan


Tomorrow the cycle begins again! 
Except there's research at the lab in south campus and ballet. 
I'm swamped. :)


Hehe.... GRAD SCHOOL KICKS MY BUTT. and i love it!!!

passive agressive

I'm a light sleeper. But I swear, I've been more than patient with the dude upstairs. At 4 in the morning, I'll still be awake counting sheep or trying ANYTHING to help me sleep. The varied beats of his bass make me want to scream! Then yesterday, I went to bed breathing a sigh of relief because I couldn't hear any bass. But as soon as my head hit the pillow, I could FEEL the beats of the bass coming from... DOWNSTAIRS!

WHY ME???

To make matters worse, they play terrible trance beats and the sound is ISOLATED to my room. My suitemates never hear a thing. But when they step into my room, they make sad "I feel so bad for you" faces. Do these loud losers find me? I haven't been able to catch a break since I moved out of the house for university 5 years ago. The fact that the noise is isolated to my room is a huge problem for security because even though they want to help me, if the dudes don't answer the door when they knock, they can't go in. So i just have to lie awake and wait until those dudes decide to go to sleep and turn off their music. :( School is getting so tough this semester so I'm not going to let those people take my Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday sleep away from me (sigh). 

No more passive aggresiveness. hehe. I left a message with the Property Manager and we're going to address this issue on Monday. It's in the contract that those dudes can get evicted from their disrespectful behaviour. (Not that I want to do that... I'm so scared they're going to come after me!) Hopefully we'll just be able to work things out and that they'll at least be TOLD to stop playing their bass after 12. Sigh. If all else fails, my roommate is going to help me though. 

School night. 3 in the morning. She'll hold the broom and I'll hold the heavy textbooks. And we're going to start thumping and dropping 'em non-stop. She likes to fight fire with fire. Haha. Can you see how much I'm at the end of my rope? Sighhhhh!

But to end with something awesome, my very talented cousin submitted a cute t-shirt design to Threadless (an online retailer of cute/funny t-shirts). Click the "like" button to help him actually get the t-shirt printed! :)

Here's the link: http://www.threadless.com/submission/320387/Screaming_Dinosaur

Here's a picture of my little monster cousins jumping on the bed on their first visit up here:

I sure miss them. :( 

xo,

nat

pickles and pretzels

I bought a jar of pickles from Wegman's a couple weeks ago. The Wegman's we have here in Syracuse is supposedly the biggest one in Central New York. And boy is it huge! It's bigger than the mega Loblaws back home and I actually got a little lost by myself when I was there. Well, that's what happens when you're hungry and you enter a ginormous supermarket... you get lost in the food. :) So ever since that trip, my jar of pickles had been sitting in the fridge. Every time I opened the door I would stare at the pickles, decide that I wanted to eat them, then attempt to open the jar. But to my disappointment, I could never open the stinkin jar!!! This is due to a combination of factors: 1) the size of my toddler hands; 2) my non-existent strength; and 3) all jars are made with a nat-proof seal.


Now, what pushed this predicament into the possible temper tantrum territory was that I always had the craving at a certain point in the day when NO ONE ELSE WAS HOME. The first few times, I just shrugged it off and put them back in the fridge. But by the third week, I had to hold myself back from getting on my knees and shouting NOOOOOO at the top of my lungs. (I have to admit, I let myself have a little diva moment and stomped my foot once. Ha.) I just could never remember to ask my roommates for help when they were home. I had tried the hot water trick, the rubber gloves trick, and different physical maneuvers, but nothing worked. Thank goodness my roommate came home early one day and saw me trying to pound the jar until it opened (I really did try everything). Since then, I've been munching on pickles and pretzels. Salt overload. :)


This week has been sort of gross, but it's finally the holidays!!! :) I have a few days off to relax (the majority of the faculty and some students are going to a national conference, so classes are cancelled). Then after Monday and Tuesday is US Thanksgiving! It's more than just one day! (gasp) and it's full of SALES!!! (gasp x2). But I'm coming home, haha. Thank goodness for online shopping.... Heh heh heh. My wonderful friends here in Syracuse are going to have an awesome Turkey Dinner. Here are some random pictures of us at little pub:

Another random tidbit: I spent most of my weekend having an unintentional Harry Potter marathon. I had so many things due this week. But the more I felt stressed, the more I watched. Hehe... :)
'abc' has 2 channels in the states (normal abc with grey's anatomy and another channel called abc family). abc family plays movies every night... so distracting!!! Anyway, I am soooooooo excited for the new Harry Potter movie coming out. I can't wait until I get a chance to visit the theme park! Good thing I was able to catch the special Harry Potter Exhibit at the Ontario Science Center during the summer. Did you? 


Well I hope you have a wonderful non-Canadian thanksgiving non-holiday!


HUGS AND KISSES,
nat :)


P.S. If you were wondering, my roommate got the jar open by using a butter knife as a lever. I TRIED IT MYSELF BEFORE THAT, BUT IT DIDN'T WORK! As they all say, I must have loosened the jar for her. Har har har... :(

why am i sooooo bad at blogging? haha

It's been foreeeever since I've been able to write a blog post. Things are getting pretty busy with midterm season and I can't wait to get back to Toronto for American Thanksgiving. But at the same time it stinks... because I'm going to be missing black friday shopping when I actually live in the States! Before I was at Syracuse, I would beg my parents every year to go black friday shopping with me in the States. Well, I guess it'll be good for my credit card. 
Anyway, since it's been so long since I've posted, I have built up quite a collection of random pictures that I'll have to show you guys as I keep posting (even though the pictures will be from awhile back haha). 
Here's some randomness for today: the SU bookstore! :)


The bookstore hardly sells books. When you walk in, it's just a sea of orange and blue stuff for you to spread more school spirit.

Other than the very cute Victoria's Secret 'Pink loves Syracuse' clothes they sell at the book store, they also sell designer denim and UGGs!!! Haha...

Look what other cute things they sell! Hehe...

So I've been pretty swamped with work lately. I'm currently going back on forth and whether or not I should start a thesis. I came to Syracuse because I love the clinical aspect of speech therapy and there's an awesome university clinic for us to work from, but I also love the research side of the profession. A thesis would be a great way for me to see if I might want to pursue more schooling in the future, but there's so much work and it's super challenging! In the meantime, I have a pile of assignments due next week that are waiting for me. Yuck. 
I'm really missing home and the taste of good asian food... pho here costs $7 per bowl! Isn't that ridiculous??? Haha, can't wait to get back to First Markham food court. :)
Well to leave y'all, here's a picture of me eating (of course, am I ever not eating?) in my Halloween costume. Hehehe... can you tell what I dressed up as?

I'm the classic version of Hello Kitty!!! :) Hehehe...

Ok miss you guys!!! I'll try to update a bit more frequently.

xxxxxoooo nat