it's cold!

again, it's cold! it's now come to the point where i shiver the minute i take my clothes off in the shower, dread turning th hot water off, and then start shivering again the minute i do, until i dry myself off and put on my nice, thick bathrobe, which i'm so glad i have! have i described the showers here? don't think i have.. basically my floor has 3 cubicles that don't have doors but shower curtains. so if you take the first or second one, there's a pretty good chance of someone getting a peek at all of you at some point, if they come into the shower room. i only use the third cubicle. and then they don't have the twist taps with two separate faucets for hot and cold water, but this swivel thing where like you push it round, and it goes from cold to hot, if that makes sense. so you don't have a choice but to start off with a blast of cold water! it's very unpleasant, but an extremely effective wake up tool! so now i've taken to standing in the second cubicle (the cubicles don't have walls between them, just shower curtains) to turn on the water, then once it turns hot i step back in the third, more private cubicle to proceed with my shower. andd.. they don't have anything to put your soap/shampoo/whatever on, so you have to put them on the floor. which wouldn't be such a problem if turning off the water was such a problem (because then it's cold, and you have to start with the blast of cold water again) and if the cubible wasn't so small! it sucks when you don't want to wash your hair but get it all wet anyway when you bend down to get your soap >.< but i've been balancing my soap and stuff on the shower curtain rails, so it's not so bad now. exhibit a of neccesity being the mother of invention =)

moving on from showers, it's been a busy but pretty uneventful two days. to pick up where i left off, i went to this guy's place for a dinner party - a guy cooked, and it didn't taste too bad! -, played some cards (they do mafia too!), left to go for mass, and then went back again to play truth or dare jenga and i never =P mass was pretty good.. the church isn't too big, so it's quite cosy. felt like i hadn't been for mass for such a long time and it was nice to be back. also felt comforting to be at a place that was unfamiliar and yet so familiar... i liked the gospel readings too, so yeah daddy, they were pretty fitting =) one of the cool things that night was getting to know more people, and just hanging out with them. they're nice enough, and quite fun but not "too cool for you" kinda people, so i felt comfortable enough. the other cool thing was how i wasn't like shunned for going for mass.. i mean i got poked a few times (but in a good way) and i'm now known as the "good girl" (what's new =P), but they didn't like ostracize me for it, which i was (justifiably or not) worried about. and i thru i never i got the first round of finding out how many of them have had sex and have smoked pot, but there were also some of them who haven't, so yeah, we can never generalize. and then you also realize that they can be nice and have sex and smoke pot. culture shock that wasn't really a shock cos i was prepared for it. more like my first dose of american culture =)

yesterday was just packed with sessions, non of them worth mentioning. just boring stuff. got my english test results in the evening, and i got thru (woohoo) so i only have to take the regular classes, which i'm still working on getting out of. then i chilled the same people from the night before - played dai di (they do dai di too!), watched three guys climb a tree (it was a nice evening and a nice tree.. wish i could've gone up too but i didn't have the upper body strength for it =() then had dinner at the same house as the night before (fried rice - the guys cooked again =P), and ended up watching three movies back to back - fell asleep during the second two cos i was so tired! but it was funny cos when i woke up somewhere in te middle of the third movie everyone was asleep =P got one of the guys to walk me home and then i just crashed. nice evening and night.. i think it was the first time i felt relaxed and just hung out with a bunch of people since i got here =)

and now for the highlight of the post - the video ying and the gang plus my family and dav put together for me! as you might've guessed it inspired my previous post... it was really, really heartwarming guys, thank you so so much! rather than making my cry it put a really big smile on my face and i stopped myself from laughing out loud so many times cos i didn't want yayoi (my room mate) to think i was crazy =P but it touched me, deeply and truly. so nice =) and the fact that i could watch the video also means that with a lot of joon's help, i now have a media player that can play the two videos i have that yingky gave me, and that's not all joon did - i can now open the files on my hard drive! =D listening to the songs i have on it now and enjoying every bit of it. so joon if you ever do read this, thank you! you might be a chauvanistic, racist, foul-mouthed dumbass but at least you're a useful one =) and i meant that as a compliment. an even bigger THANK YOU to yingky for putting in all the effort to put it all together... i really appreciate all the effort, thought and love put into it, really really really. and to everyone who appeared on it, i love you guys too! thank you =)

kay i'm gonna try to catch a short nap now, and then i'm gonna get my first taste of the honors college. i haven't done my "homework" yet! but it's only due tomorrow so got time la. i hope.