Banana muffin

I never learnt how to cook until I came to the US. Cooking was a painful thing for me when I just arrived here, but I had to cook since I was not used to American food at all. I wasted a lot of food when I just started, and I was stressed. I realized that I needed to learn it seriously, so I tried to check whatever I wanted to cook from the internet before I start cooking anything. Things got better after that, and I would call my mom or friends to ask how to cook some dishes better. I have to admit that my cooking is getting so much better, but I am still wasting food, but better, because I always enjoy buying all the food and dreaming about the delicious dishes whenever I go for grocery shopping.

People from the south of China eat rice mainly, but flour for the north people, so south people always make sticky rice buns which is sweet and like some kind of desert, while north people are very good at making breakfast buns, dumplings, wantons, etc., of course all those are made from flour. However, don't be surprised when you see south people make dumplings and wantons, sometimes. But for 25 years of my life, my family, my mom never made any of those. So I never had dumplings or wantons until I graduate from college and started working, which means I never went out to eat other food except my mom's until few years ago. I was happy of course.

So, never know how to cook, let alone baking, flour is just something I would never touch except rice. But a friend called Nancy came to my house and taught me how to make dumplings and buns, Nancy is from north of China. Ever since then, I bought flour the first time in my life and unbelievably I enjoy so much making these things. And I make all of those a couple of times already. Robert bought some bananas few days ago, I told him that I would use his bananas to bake some muffins if he didn't eat them the next day, and he didn't. I didn't want to keep wasting food and fruit anymore for there are definitely some people in this world still going through the starvation. So I printed out all the steps from online and started making banana muffins, which surely was my first time of making muffins. I was happy to see that it was a good try and the muffins turned out pretty good. Robert laughed me and said that I almost became a baker. Sighhhhhhh....

Mr.baked potato is coming back

Today is Friday, I am happy, because Robert is coming back from Reno tomorrow. He switched the plane from 5:30pm to 3:45pm, which means he can get back two and a half hour earlier, so that he can take the same plane with one of his buddies and get a ride home. I am so fine with that, I have not seen him for a week, I missed him.

But I know him so well, sorry I have to say that, because he is just such a nice person and he is a good friend. I don't mind him switching the flight and spending almost a hundred dollars on that, what gets me deep in thought is what does his friend do for him when he has done so much to his friend. Robert is always the planner, for anything, I admire him for this. He gave his flight information to his friend before his friend booked the flight, but his friend didn't book the same flight; The return flight Robert booked was 5:30pm, I can tell that he wanted to spend as much time as he can with his buddies, even though he needed to sacrifice, like getting home at the late of the night; while the return flight for his friend was 3:45pm, kinda like he wanted to get home as early as he can, spending the morning with the buddies is enough for him, if he can choose to get a flight home in the early afternoon, he would do that, in fact, he did. I am just guessing all of these, like a psychologist, but it's highly possible that I am wrong. Then Robert chose to spend another $94 to fly back with him, or maybe it's because he wanted to get home earlier after spending the whole week out. Robert is my poor baked potato. I don't care what he does. He is always doing the way his friends like, it is a good thing, because they are good friends for a lot of years already; but sometimes I feel bad for him, because it's not all good sometimes.

Anyways, I am really anticipating him back tomorrow, I miss him very much. Life is not complete without him around. He is a good friend to his buddies, he is a good life partner to me, in soul and spiritual.

Ahead the road is, ahead the life is, Let's live like a fish, smile to whatever is going to happen in the life everyday.

I have been in the United States for a year.

Up till today, I have been in the US for a whole year, officially.

It's amazing to think about how times flies by, I still remember that Robert and me had a last dinner with my dad two nights before we flue out, and we stayed in HK the night before....I remember we landed in LAX and went through the customs very easily...Robert took me to the new place he stayed, which was Larry's house, and we are no longer staying there....

Everything was so so new to me when I just came here, even though I had my first visit last April, but to move forward to live in a different country for a long long time is completely a different picture for me. I was scared, I felt insecure, I was afraid of talking to people in English, I couldn't eat the food, I didn't have any friend, I was even afraid of failing in everything here, concisely, I had so many many fears, which was fair, I think. Life is consisted of relatives and friends, I had Robert back then, he was and will be the only real relative to me in the US, so life told me that I need to have friends first before I could do anything, so we went to Chinese bible church, which made me feel at home, and I was so lucky that I made some friends from there...The most brutal thing that happened to me when I just came here was that Robert needed to travel out a lot in Sep and Oct, he actually had his first business trip after I got here only ten days, I was very scared, I didn't know anybody, I didn't drive, I couldn't go anywhere even for some food, I had to store so much food before he left...life pushed us hard, so we made some choices, the very first time I asked help from Wen, a very nice lady I know from the church, I stayed at her place for two nights, and stayed the other two at my own place. He had five business trips in two months, the hardest thing for me ever, because I've never used to stay alone even when I was in China. I remember we tried the city bus since I didn't drive, sometimes I couldn't stand stay in the some house for four or five days and never walk out....I took the city bus to Russ and Kouls shopping for one afternoon...

And I had my first Holloween, the first Thanksgiving, the first Christmas, the first Easter, the first Fourth of July...I had so many great trips....I got my driver's licence, life changed so big when I started to drive.

It seems all the reminisces were so far away already, but it's really only a year, but it's been a year for me in the US, I can't believe it.

We landed in LA 6:30pm on the 14th of Sep, we had dinner at Chili's...

Time and Tide wait for nobody, how true do you think it should be?

You are my mr. baked potato

Sorry, it's been such a long time since I have updated the blog. I was studying very hard for my GRE, I can remember over half of the vocabularies in the red cover vocabulary book, but I am not proud of myself, coz I know I still have a long way to go.

Robert is on his business trip to Florida today, he was on the plane for almost a day, I feel bad for him, poor guy! However, I am very proud of him, he is a good businessman. I have gotten so used to have him in my life everyday, without him in the apartment, I feel like everything is just so quiet, even though two people being there doesn't things louder. I am thinking about him right now. Never know what love is, never know what the feeling is to love a man in my life, never felt so loved before...but all my love was changed after I met Robert. The relationship between a man and a woman doesn't require much, it is just like water and fish, you can breathe in there, and you can smell what the love is in the life. It is simple, but great.

When I was driving home after reading in the library, I was thinking about what's for dinner, it's really just me, anything could be fine. Suddenly, Robert flashed over my mind, baked potato sounded good! And then, I was laughing----good, thinking about him reminded me of baked potato, pretty funny. So, I went to safeway and got 5lbs of potatoes...when I was about to check out, I was told that it only cost .88cents, oh my...I thought it's $3.49...I was looking for my wallet and ready to get a dollar to pay for it, a big black guy threw out one dollar in front of the cashier with a loud voice" I will pay for her!". "No, no no, I am good, I can pay for it."..."No, I want to pay for you."..I was all blushing and kinda of embarrassed......Oki Doki, 5lbs of free potatoes. (I guess it never happened to me in China, we are so cautious and protecting ourselves whenever we go in China, I feel sorry about this. We need more people like the black guy who can be REAL nice instead of calculating people from being nice. Sorry! Mr. baked potato is going to like what I said now, sigh...

I will try to come up more tomorrow.

Nite nite..

Well said.

If you wish to succeed, you should use persistence as your friend, experience as your reference, prudence as your brother and hope as your sentry.

------Thomas Edison

I am getting there...

It is the 15th day for my GRE prep, I am still working on the vocabularies, I am heading to the word list 45 tonight, I will have finished the whole vocabulary book for the first time, I am doing it according to Yangpeng's 17 days memory skills, it has been working very good, the only negative part is that I didn't do the review job as good as I was supposed to, but I think I will be okay for there are still a lot of reviewing work coming up.

I spent five and a half hours in the library today, but I only got half of the assignment done of today, I will still need to finish up the rest in a little while. I felt good to study in the library again, it reminded me of my college life and made me feel like I become a college student again. Life is so much easier and simpler to be a student, but it really depends on what you want, as to me, I like reading and studying, to be a college professor will be the sweetest thing for me in the life.

Robert asked me what I wanted to do in this weekend, I guess I will stick to my study, I found my interest there, and I will be dedicated to it. However, I don't want to forget to thank him for all his support, his continuing support will bring me closer to the success.

When I drive back and forth between home and the library everyday, I keep pondering how big difference it is between America and China. The element earth of the U.S. and its small population, including the fact that everything is so far away, make people very hard to walk to the destinations they want to go, even for buying a bottle of water, thus, they need vehicles to help them, so almost all the people have to drive when they get to 16 or 17 years old. While the community transportation is so convenient, people in China could just walk out to the streets and hop to city buses, subways, cabs to go wherever they want to. Of course, China is growing so fast, the number of people who own their cars are getting bigger and bigger. I never drove in China, but I have to in the U.S., which makes me more independent; thinking about how high school kids need to drive on their own to go to school everyday just removes all the hampers I thought I would have in my driving life.

It's getting dark, the beautiful sunset spreads all over the blue sky, leaving all the tranquility and calmness in this little apartment.

July 4th

I literally spent the 4th of July in America, I had heard and known that this was a big day for this country. It is pretty easy to understand, because we have such an important and solemn festival in China, too, which is October 1st.

I've never seen that many people coming out of the house until yesterday, it seemed all the habitants just popped out for this special day, family gathering, friends party, big dinner...It's such a sunshine day, another beautiful southern California day, smiles, soft words from their mouth, and drinks in their hands.

By 8pm, cars got crowded on the road, cops parked by the road to regulate all the traffics, but it looked like the traffic could just get worse, drivers lined up and waited to get in patiently. As it became dark, slowly, I could see people were on chairs in the park, people stood by the streets---they were anticipating the big firework's coming.

It is a big 4th of July in the U.S, as what Robert said to me yesterday afternoon, "Let's go and see the firework, we are still a young and proud country."

Yes it is indeed.