and here i am.

hello! i'm in oregon! have been for the past two days (or three, depending on how you look at it)... still hasn't sunk in that i'm gonna be here for a long, long time (or "only" two years", again depending on how you look at it) - still feels like a holiday! just a quick recap of what's been going on..

the flight(s) here was pretty good... flew from kl to hong kong, hong kong to san francisco, then san francisco to eugene - all in all the journey took about 30 hours. the sleep-deprivation strategy worked really well for me! spent the night before i left at home with a bunch of my best buddies... played taboo and pictionary and didn't sleep the whole night. and then all of them and about 11 family members sent me off at klia.. emo yet wonderful. then most of them wrote me "love letters" to read on the plane, and i also got a photo album with photos that made me smile to myself like a nut on the plane! don't think anyone saw tho, haha. thanks guys, you know who you are. it meant a lot...more than you know! =) missing all of you...

sooo after that i managed to sleep most of the way, whether or not i wanted to! as a result the journey didn't seem so long for one, and also when i got here i wasn't too tired, so that was good too. the mini-bolster i got from ikea was great! helped me sleep extra well =)

had "adventures" along the way lol. first was at the san francisco airport - on the plane i'd gotten a customs form to fill out, so when i got to immigration i gave it to the guy at the counter and he said i had to fill out another form, and directed me to this counter with green forms on it, so i filled one out and went to a different counter, then the guy at that counter said it was the wrong one and that i had to fill out a white one! so i had to go back and fill another one up, and when i went back again i had gotten the right form this time, but he also wanted my I-20, this document that UO gave me... and i didn't know we had to carry it with us! i had checked it into my luggage. so i had to go into this office and they escorted me to get it out and go back into the office for them to process it before i could get out! thankfully i didn't miss the flight to eugene - had time to nap some more. =P

then at the airport i only got one of my bags on the luggage carousel (i had two)! had to follow them to another counter where they tracked my bag using the tag they gave me... turns out it was already at the airport but wasn't put on the belt for some reason! dunno why. but i'm not complaining, at least i got my bag! that's about as exciting as my flight was here... just the right amount i think.

yesterday i followed my foster parents (peggy and dick, they're really nice!) to a baptist church, , then they brought me for a buffet lunch.. was pretty nice. eugene was having this celebration thing in town and so we went there for a bit... had a lot of stalls up, and there was a pet parade! people dressed up their pets (and themselves!) and paraded down the street... had a few different categories, includingpet/guardian look-alike! they also had "most talented" - this guy just made his dog sit down at one end of the street, walked about 5 meters away and just whistled and called his dog to him, and that was his trick! that evening we went out for a drive - i got to see the place where i'm staying - it's right opposite the field where they're gonna have the 2008 olympic athletic trials! it's literally across the road... so cool right? drove round campus for a bit, then we went to this place called skinners butte (pronounced biut, go ahead and say butt, i know you want to) where we saw the sunset over the city... it was pretty nice =)

today peggy brought me round campus on foot - got my student id done, went to this hospitality table they have set up for international students, and then she showed me some of the more important buildings i'll probably need to go to. the people at the hospitality table were friendly, gave me some info that i needed about orientation. oh, and there's this football (as in american football) game on this saturday at the autzen stadium nearby, and the university football team will be playing - apparently football's pretty big here, so they reserved 50 seats for international students to go watch, and i signed up! shoud be quite an interesting experience =)

the weather here's been pretty hot actually... been close to 30 C in the afternoons, but other than that it's been pleasant. not too cold, but just nice for me. even when it's hot we don't perspire actually, cos it's not humid and there's almost always this nice breeze blowing. i'm not too sure what the exact temperatures are actually, cos everything here is in farenheit... haven't figured out the math yet. i know 84 F is 28 C.. and 32 F is 0 C. so. you figure it out and let me know la kay? or i'll look it up soon... can't be bothered now. anyway, the temperature drops quite a lot at night - been about the high 40s to 50 F, which i guess is pretty cold, but we don't feel it so much indoors.

there're loads of trees everywhere here, which i absolutely love! lotsa grass lawns, flowers, bushes, hedges... the works. it's gorgeous =) it's really pretty on campus too, which i'm glad for cos i thought the pictures they put up online were just to con us into going there, like you know how they do in msia... but the pictures were more or less accurate representations of reality =) i've managed to take some photos, not much, just some. will try to put them up soon!

i guess that's about it for now... written loads already! need to do some research about laptops and bank accounts lol. feeling all grown up, or rather trying to be all grown up. still feeling kinda lost and confused, but that'll pass. i hope. =P i can get a macbook for loads cheaper here than i can in msia! but then i have to learn how to use a different os, and i'm not sure tech-noob me can handle it. speaking of which, can anyone tell me what the difference is between a combo drive and a double-layer super drive? and if that plus 40gb is worth rm630? hehe thanks.

til next time, all my love to everyone back home!