Below are the most recent 3 friends' journal entries.

Monday, December 21st, 2009
xianpu	11:25a	christmasy goings-on despite my looming deadlines for my IUC applications and my upcoming trip to cambodia (i leave tomorrow night! unfathomable considering how ill-prepared i am), i have managed to get into the holiday spirit, minus the whole buying presents thing. i'm kind of bad about that now that i don't live near or regularly see the people to whom i would normally be obligated to give gifts. anyway, what i have managed to do is make lots of gingerbread cookies and eggnog (and eat and drink WAY too much of both). i shared my first batch of eggnog with a very happy crowd at katie's thanksgiving party, and the second batch with a similar crowd at michael's christmas party (at which, i should add, i totally got the BEST presents in the room when we did a white elephant gift exchange). when those drinks were all drunked, though, i realized i was little bummed that i only had about a half a glass while everyone else had been guzzling. and so, i made a 3rd batch, for my own greedy mouth (and sam's, and allison's, and megu and hinata's, when they've been around). i don't have any good liquor to add to it though, so it's been a teetotaler's drink this year. as for the gingerbread, the story was similar. i made a mediocre batch and brought the results to 2 christmas parties, and then decided i wanted more for myself. this time, though, i invited megu and hinata over to roll, cut, and bake the dough, and frost the cookies. let me remind you, in case you forgot, that cookie-making is exponentially more fun when you have company, and it is taken to an even higher degree of christmas-spirit-tastic when one of your fellow cookie-makers is under the age of 10. i love that hinata likes cooking, and that her mom lets her help without babying her too much. i don't remember having my hands in everything so much when i was little. i'm not sure if it's because my mom was a perfectionist, or that she just couldn't be bothered to slow down her process enough to have the kids make stuff (probably the latter). hinata got pretty good at everything but frosting, but even the results of that were adorable enough to be worthwhile. what can i say? cookies made by a 6-year-old are just perfect no matter what they look like. Current Mood: sleepy (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
xianpu	10:42a	one thing i really like about snow, or at least, its presence on the ground when it's sunny outside and i'm warm and cozy inside a room with big windows, is that everything is twice as bright. it makes me feel alert and studious, it reminds me of j-term spent reading and learning at my own pace, sitting in the smith campus center, and drinking tea from a thermos. mmm. i long for the days when i would work like crazy and then veg out for over a week at a time. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
xianpu	1:02p	i had an impromptu interpreting job this morning. seemingly out of nowhere, the mayor's assistant came over and asked if i could interpret for a group of thai people who were stopping in as a part of their trip around the area to learn about soil improvement and agricultural...stuff. i was too nervous to even say "sawatdee ka" but the interpreting went pretty well until people decided to start using fancy schmancy technical terms. this is the problem with interpreting, people... it's impossible to know all the words in both languages, on every subject under the sun. but it's fun giving it a go anyway. (Comment on this)