Meaningful Gift

My parents sent my birthday gift back from Taiwan with my brother-in-law. Instead of waiting until my birthday, I opened it early (I know, I cheated). My parents had put together a photo album for me from my baby photos up to my recent photos. The album must have taken a long time to complete. It included most of the major events in my life - graduations, baptism, engagement, and wedding. They also left blank pages in the back. Initially, I thought they didn't finish the photo album. But as I flipped to the last page, I realized that they left blank pages on purpose. They wrote a note on the last page saying that the photos captured the best memories they had with me. And the remaining pages are to be filled by my new family with Tomio. Isn't it so sweet? I'm really touched by the gift. I miss my parents.
On the other hand, I think Tomio was very entertained by my childhood photos :)

My favorite couch

I got to stay on my favorite couch in Los Altos house multiple times this past month when Alice and Tomio visited.




For some reason, everyone made fun of my new sleeping pose,


and took lots of pictures with me while I was sleeping.




I'm so embarrased... I don't think I'll sleep in that position anymore.

Seattle

I had to attend an AP training in Seattle last week. Since Tomio had just finished his board (yay for Tomio!), we decided to go to Seattle a couple of days early to sightsee. The trip was relaxing, and seafood was great! We visited Seattle downtown, Seattle Aquarium, Pikes Market, Pacific Science Museum, and Space Needle. If you ever go to Seattle Aquarium, you've got to go see the sea otters. They were so adorable, I could have spent all afternoon watching them. Pikes Market was the largest farmers market that I've been to. We bought some salmon jerky there and walked around a lot. We also went on a boat tour and enjoyed the waterfront view. Even though we were unfamiliar with the roads, we managed to find the international district with a large Japanese market. I think we went to the international district for Asian food every other day.
We love Seattle!

Summer Vacation

Yay!!!! Today's my first day of summer vacation. I got to sleep in this morning and got up at 8:30am. Yeah, I know, 8:30am still sounds early, but it's a lot later than 6am. Then Joyce and I took mom to get pedicure and had lunch. I love hanging out with Joyce and mom.

Tomio and I celebrated our wedding anniversary this past week. It's been two years! It felt like we just got married not long ago. Tomio took a night off from studying on our anniversary and took me to eat fondue. The fondue was so good that I ate so much cheese and chocolate! I'm not even a cheese or chocolate fan... That's how good the food was :)

13 more days to go for Tomio...

4 more days!

There are only 4 more days of student teaching! I'm almost done. Don't get me wrong, I love working with the students. But I'm burnt out from the combination of credential classes and student teaching. I'm ready for the break.

Yesterday was the seniors' last day of school. Even though I taught a couple of the seniors for only one year, it was still very emotional to see them leave. I felt especially attached when the seniors invited me to attend their graduation. I'm definitely going to miss these students.

Over the weekend, Joyce, Han, Sam, Tomio, and I celebrated belated Mother's Day and early Father's Day with my parents. We surprised my parents with hot pot dinner. Because it was getting pretty warm, we turned on the air condition in order to enjoy the hot pot. Mom and dad were pleasantly surprised :)

While there are 4 more days left for me, there are 21 days left for Tomio until his boards. He's been studying really hard. Maybe Oski and I will do something nice for him when I'm done with student teaching...

Five More Weeks!

I'm counting down! Five more weeks of school for both student teaching and credential course work. I can't wait, summer vacation is just around the corner. As a student, I have always looked forward to vacation. But for the first time today, I realized that teachers want to be out of school just as much, if not more. I have the entire summer off until I start work toward end of August :)

Tomio, on the other hand, is done with his second year of medical school! To take a short break from studying, we went over to his med school friend's place for BBQ on Friday night and watched "House of Flying Daggers". On saturday, we spent the afternoon at the gym. Tomio played basketball for a couple of hours, and we played badminton afterwards. On Sunday, we hosted a BBQ and invited some of his med school friends over. He will be studying for his board exam from now until June 23rd.

I have fully recovered from visiting Baltimore two weekends ago. I made a trip out with Joyce to celebrate my cousin's wedding. Eva and Eric took us out to eat "Baltimore crab"! It was soooooooo good! I got to see their new cozy place. Also got a chance to hangout with Olivia and Evelyn.

I made my first cup of homemade thai tea today! Thanks to Brandon, we have a bag of tea from Thailand and a set of instructions to make thai ice tea. After following the step by step instruction, I decided to skip the last chilling step. So instead of thai ice tea, I had thai (hot) tea. Yum :)

A Blessed Weekend

Amy and Mike are married! It was so neat to see both sides of the family & friends gathered together to celebrate, especially with all four sets of grandparents at the wedding! Congrats to Amy & Mike.

After the wedding celebration on Saturday, we went over to East Bay to see Akiko's baptism on Sunday. It was sooooo neat to see Akiko publicly commit her life to God. The celebration ended with lots of food at the Nakamuras (yum!).

It's been a busy weekend traveling between Sacramento and the bay area. But it was definitely worth it! :)

Job offer

I got my first job offer as a science teacher this past week! Although I probably will not be able to take the job, it felt good to receive an offer :)

My interview from last Friday did not go very smoothly. I think my interviewer was distracted and grossed out by my unending cough. I don't blame him, I was pretty grossed out by my own cough too. I battled with my cough for the entire weekend. I didn't sleep very well because I was constantly coughing. Tomio didn't sleep very well either because of my coughs. Oski, on the other hand, slept very well due to the drowsiness effects of his allergy medicine. My cough had "forced" me to slow down and get lots of rest on Sunday. I wasn't very productive, but at least I felt rested.

Thanks to Mike, Tomio and Andy got to see the Kings vs. Timberwolves game at Arco Arena yesterday :)

Evil Virus

Tomio had been battling with the evil virus for over a week. And now I have it. I can definitely sympathize with the pain that Tomio went through. It has been a miserable week. We have two sickos in the house. Too bad Oski can't take care of us while we are sick. I have 3 interviews with the school districts tomorrow and Friday, pray that my cough attack will not happen during the interviews...

No skiing :(

Joyce, Sam, and I had been planning to go skiing during our spring break for over a month. They drove up to Sacramento on Monday evening, and we had planned to take an one day ski trip up to Tahoe on Tuesday. We woke up early on Tuesday morning and decided to postpone the trip to Wednesday because of the storm. We ended up going bowling and playing bomberman on Tuesday. Unfortunately the storm didn't go away on Wednesday, and our ski trip was cancelled (sniff, sniff). Although we didn't get to go skiing, I had a relaxing time hanging out with Joyce & Sam. They drove back to the bay area on Wednesday afternoon.
I woke up this morning and it was nice and sunny outside - perfect weather for skiing. Grrr... if only the storm was a day earlier...

I took Oski to the park today because the weather was so nice. There were other dogs with their owners playing on the field. Oski was so focused on playing fetch that he ignores the other dogs. Two dogs were particularly friendly and followed Oski around as we played fetch. After a couple of minutes, one of the dogs stole Oski's tennis ball and ran away! Oski didn't notice the dog running away with his tennis ball and ran around the field looking! The dog's owner didn't even do anything about it. How rude!

Eva & Eric are married!

Congratulations to Eric & Eva! It was a beautiful wedding. Joyce, Pamela and I spent the morning at my sister's house on hair and make-up. It was so much fun to dress up with Joyce and watch her reaction. It was like watching "Miss Congeniality" in real life :) Rest of the day was a joyful and heart-warming celebration.

I took my last final for the quarter today and turned in my final project. Spring break officially starts today. Yay!

Infinity

I saw some of the Canaan youths that are also at Davis right now for school at the Davis church today. Somehow we got into a discussion about different young adults, and Bob's name came up. One of the youths said, "Bob? He's been at Canaan forever. Bob's like infinity!" All of the sudden I feel this age gap. If Bob was infinity, then I am infinity plus one...

One more week to the end of the quarter. I can't wait! Spring break is finally in sight. Eva's wedding will be the beginning of my spring break (if I don't count my last final on Monday).

Updates

Can you believe our last blog entry was November last year? Yeah, it's been awhile... Let's see, what have we been doing for the last 3 months?

We finished our fall quarter in December, and visited dad & mom in Taiwan for two weeks with Sam, Joyce, and Han. We had a great time. Poor Oski had to stay at the kennel and lost 5-10 pounds while we were away :( The good news is that Oski's now back to his normal weight.

Winter quarter started in January. We've been the biggest nerds in town.
Updates from Tomio:
* Study study study!
* Doctor cleared his knee for BASKETBALL!
* Boards are three months away in June. Can you believe he will be half way done with school by June? Time flies.

Updates from Alice:
* Crazy winter schedule. Two more weeks to go. Student-teaching two science classes with full load of course work at Davis. I've been deprived of sleep. I can't wait until spring break!
* Student teaching has been an adventure. I never know what to expect from my precious students.
* Starting to interview for jobs for next year.

Updates from Oski:
* Play fetch in the park.
* Go to his favorite store (Petco/Petsmart) on the weekend.
* Dig dirty mud in the backyard. Fun for Oski, headaches for Tomio & Alice

October & November

10/30 - Go Bears! Home game vs ASU with old college friends.


10/31-11/18 - Study study study.

11/19 weekend - Lake Tahoe with Andrea & Caroline.
Oski's first time in the snow - brrrrrrrr...

Silly waffles for breakfast



Thanksgiving with our cute little nephew!

Life Wide Open

My accountability partner and I are going through “Life Wide Open” by David Jeremiah. The book is about living a passionate life. Although we have only read through two chapters, I have been inspired to evaluate and reflect on several areas of my life. “All too rarely do we meet Christians who are equally passionate about ALL of life.” I find it interesting (and sad) that many people (including myself) have segmented their passion. Some are passionate about serving in church but not outside of church. Some are passionate about watching sports but not play sports. Some are passionate about pursuing physical health but not spiritual or emotional health. Some are passionate about building stronger fellowship in church but put little effort to get to know their neighbors or coworkers. Do we choose what we want to be passionate about in life? If God was the source of our passion, does this mean we choose to put God in specific segments of our lives?

Here are more quotes for reflection…
“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.” (Quoting Jack London).
“To find the passion you seek, you must be passionate about seeking.”
“God alone is the source of true passion for all you do in life.”
“Passion is the inner spark, provided by God’s Spirit, that ignites you to live out your God-given purpose.”

Thanks Alice :)

Student Quotes

What happened in the classroom...
Student 1: "What? You mean we have to do homework at home?" (Yes, that's why it's called homework...)
Student 2: "Just like parachute, balled up boogers drop faster than flat boogers. It's true, I experimented it in my brother's coke." (I guess your analogy is somewhat scientific...)
Student 3: "Mr. Miyai!" (When did I become a Mr.?)
Student 4: "I don't get this Avocado's # thing." (You mean Avogadro's #?)
Student 5: "You said we were supposed to hide under our desk during an earthquake, but I'm too big, I can't fit!" (At least cover you head. If you must, I guess you'll have to carry your desk then...)
Student 6: "The unit for surface area is grams." (huh?) "I mean cubic centimeter." (let's try again...)

Yay! It's Friday!

I'm so happy it's Friday! It has been so busy trying to be a student and a teacher at the same time. Since school started in August, this is the summary of my weekdays - spent mornings student-teaching, afternoons back in Davis for classes, and evenings preparing for next day's lesson and grading. Weekends are usually when I get to catch up with sleep, people, and more homework!

I can't believe October is almost over.
10/2 weekend -
* Went wedding gown shopping with Amy in Concord - that was a lot of fun, brought back good memories :)
* Kim came by Sacramento for her review class, and we got a chance to hangout and eat together.

10/9 weekend -
* Caroline spent the whole weekend with us! She drove up after work on Friday, and we celebrated her birthday (belated).
* On Saturday, we drove to Reno for the annual Italian Festival. It was so much fun. There were pasta sauce cook-off, grape stomping contest, bocce ball tournament, and live music and entertainment. We spent most of the time going from booth to booth to try out free pasta sauce :) I was so full at the end of the day.

10/16 weekend - (mom's birthday!)
* Went to P Dan & family's appreciation dinner. It was sooooo neat to see the body of Christ join together to appreciate His faithful servants. And it was good to catch up with the Cannan folks.
* Had dinner with some of my Nvidia coworkers :)
* Spent the whole weekend at CSTA (California Science Teacher Association) conference in San Jose. I got so much FREE posters, softwares, and information for my future classroom! I also attended some neat (and nerdy) science seminars and saw a couple cool lab demos.
* The conference kept me so busy all weekend, and I didn't get a chance to have pearl milk tea while I was in the southbay... (Can you believe that?!)
* While I was in San Jose, Andy H. spent the whole weekend with Tomio (and Oski). I met up with them on Sunday in Davis, and got the pearl milk tea that I was craving for all weekend :)

Done with finals!

Woohoo...just finished my last final on Wednesday! Sorry for the lack of posts.

So...anyways...I was studying for micro this past Tuesday at the Starbucks in West Sacramento when a guy in slacks & a blazer walks in, looks around the store then makes a call on his cell phone. About 3-4 minutes later, 5-6 guys similarly dressed, walk in and go to the counter to order coffee. At this point I'm thinking it's just a bunch of businessmen coming in to get some coffee and talk shop. But then I notice that the initial guy who walked in is still just standing at the door and when the guy turned his head I saw he had one of those earpiece things that the secret service guys wear. My curiousity now peaked...I'm wondering who are these guys who just walked into Starbucks. I lean over to see past the display of coffee tins to see...(guess)...could it be a movie star...maybe a politician...how about both???? Yes...it was our one and only Arnold Schwarzenegger...the GOVERNATOR!

Ahhh...the perks of living in West Sac...the heat, the bugs, running into famous stars/politicians, etc...(don't you wanna come & visit???)
...and no - didn't get his autograph or get to shake his hand or anything...
nobody in the Starbucks really went up to him or said anything (i think they were all in shock)...but the minute he left just about everyone busted out their cell phones to tell their friends.

First day of school

In response to Bob's request for more posts, I'll share/journal about my first day of student teaching in high school.
Yes, I survived first day of school. I attended a 9th grader general science class as well as chemistry classes. Both were very interesting. Students were more well-behaved than I had imagined. But then I've been told that they are just getting used to the new environment, it will get noisier as the week progresses.
What surprised me about the school is its diversity. I have had to look up people and religious groups in order to learn more about them. Did you know that Sacramento is the most diverse city in the United States? I didn't know that until this summer! And this definitely shows in the school.
My greatest challenge for the week is to memorize the students' names. We'll see how that goes...