Viennese Ball, the prom

Viennese Ball (Prom night)
Date: 9th April, 2010
Time: started at 6 but we entered at 9 till 1am
Venue: Davies Center (the whole building being decorated up)

Thanks Kathy for setting up my hair and makeup! We had fun getting ourselves ready! (Gorgeous dresses that we had!) Haha =D

The venue was really well-decorated! It’s not like the normal student center at all!
You could seriously felt the sense of “ball”~!

It felt like you’re in a totally different place of “Viennese-styled” with music going on and dressed-up people dancing around…

I never knew that social dancing was so fun! Kind of regret that I didn’t learn properly before the event! Haha~!

As in Malaysia, if you dance during the prom, people would just “look” at you… Yet it’s definitely not the same here…

People enjoyed dancing so much! Even I fell in love with the Waltz and other dances! It was so fun and interesting!

Well, the night was GREAT! Guessed I’ll be joining it for next year too!

ticket~!

theatre room with the amazing grand piano!

Billy and i~!

Thak's Kelsey, Thak, me and Pang~!

Funny Thak and me~! lolx

My RA Lindsay and her roommate, Aimee... (both my "neighbours" who live right "opposite" of my room!)

Alex, my KINS class partner!

One of the ball dance venue~!

the ice-crafting and me~!

Guys~!

Girls~!

My 350 math buddy Promise and I~! She played piano for the night too!

Thak's RA Anthony and me! (well, kind of "dare" by the gang to take this picture! lolx)

another dance floor~!

Kathy and i~!

Peer Guide, Mary and me~! She did perform Chopin's pieces during the night too!

Spring Break Continues

MOA trip

Date: 3rd April 2010
Venue: Mall Of America, Minnesota
Time: 8.30am – 4pm (including travel time which was about 3 hours in total for 2-ways)
MOA the largest shopping mall in the United States, here I came!




The mall was big as we couldn’t get to walk/shop for the whole building since we had time limit… (went there by joining ChooiWan’s and her host)
People said it’s a must to shop for clothes in MN since clothes are all free of taxes…

And the stops for us would be Forever 21 and H&M before going for other shops…
Yet, I actually didn’t get suitable clothes from these 2 shops at first, but then at the end I went back to them and got myself a few items! Haha… Felt so guilty of myself if I couldn’t get anything here since I had traveled so far… LOLX

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Spending Quality Time with Host

Venue: Host family’s house – the princess room, Around Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Date: 3rd – 5th of April

Friday night:
Supper of Broccoli rice, baked fish, cake with fresh strawberries and cream as dessert… yummy home-taste~! Haha
Rummy 2000 with Aunt Mary, Uncle Ray’s sisters: Jean and Kathy~!


Saturday:
Venue: Chippewa falls
Was about to visit the museum of technology or something, but it was closed…
Joined tour for Leinenkugel’s brewery! Interesting~!

Picnic at Irvine Park… Oh come on, I had never done picnic for a long time (and it’s so dangerous to do it in Malaysia, haha)… Jean and Kathy were supposed to join us but they refused as the weather was not that warm compared to the last few days…

The outdoor temperature was alright, yet the chill breeze that “swiped” intermittently made us felt really cold… Hmm, guessed I just brought the winds from windy city of Chicago back to Eau Claire?! Lolx… (I wondered how I withstood the cold weather by wearing just sweater and a thin spring jacket, haha, yay I’m getting stronger! LOL =D)

After the lunch, we visited the park… there’s even a small zoo inside the park!
Hmm… Visited “The Woodshed” at Augusta/Fall Creek which sell Amish’s wood furniture and other woodcraft items… Those stuffs were really nice and delicate… =)


Road trip around these areas… Went on to the Amish Museum but it isn’t open until May… Checked out others country stores too! (which really located around farms, haha)

Dinner of Chinese cuisines~! We ordered food from the Chinese restaurant and Uncle Ray went to the restaurant to get them… We painted/coloured eggs using food colouring after the meals! It was fun =)



Sunday - Easter

Attended Easter’s Church service with Aunt Mary… (Uncle Ray went there in separate cars since he had to “count money” after the service, haha)

Finally dropped by Jean and Kathy’s house, wow, they really have a neat and gorgeous house! Haha

Picked Pauline from KT to join my host’s Easter lunch (actually it was kind of hi-tea since we had our meal at 3pm, lolx)

Good food of hams (real big), salad and others ^^
We had an Easter little game session (looking for coloured eggs at the surrounding of the house) after the great meal! It was quite fun though! hahahha

~~Back to School Life~! Bye Princess Room! Hello, My Oak Ridge 239~!! ~~

The Chicago Trip!

Finally, after the long-waiting, here comes our spring break!

Friday



The day which I “officially” commenced my break right after 9am when the Kinesiology class was done… Stayed in my Oak Ridge room doing nothing more than packing stuffs to move down to KT hall for a week (my dorm was closed at 6pm) and wasting time watching videos, lolx…
Thanks Billy for “kind of” helping me to bring my luggage down the hill…

We had Malaysian-styled cuisine for dinner (since the cafeteria would be closed for the whole week)… Thanks our “super-chef” Pang for preparing the tremendously delicious food! Eg: bak kut teh, curry chicken, fried eggs with onion, luncheon meat, and the “something-i-don’t-know-red bean and eggs” haha… I really enjoyed the bak kut teh!! It felt so much like home~! Haha

Saturday

Gathered for Chicago trip! Nice rental cars~!



We stopped by Madison, met up with Yi Jing and Bernard, and then we had our Indian cuisine buffet!
It was really mouth-watering as I had not been eating any kind of Indian food lately… We visited the State Capitol and UW-Madison… Nice!

Continue our journey to Chicago… Reached Hilton Hotel in the evening… the hotel was not located in the city but somewhere like 25 minutes drive… Thanks GPS Garmin gor~~! Hahahhaha

After that, we had our dinner at Chinatown… WOW! I love the food! Haha..

Since it was late, we took a “road” trip in the city by simply driving around! Lol… I was so thrilled when we got to the city, it felt so much like “home” as in it felt like KL (well, KL is only like half or 2/3 of the city I guessed).. At least I was out of the small town of Eau Claire! HAHAHHAA
Finally saw Citibank in the US! Haha


Sunday

Was a windy cold day which I need my winter jacket on, haha! (the windy city of Chicago)

Had our brunch with the treat of dimsum at Chinatown~! (Extremely tasty DimSum I should say) People just shopped around… (wuhuu, with bubble milk tea!~)

Got a bit late when we reached Museum of Science and Industry… Such an elegant building! It was so huge! Yet the interior of the building was so sophisticated!

It’s so worth it as you could really see the “technology” of the century; items were real as they were the one that accomplished those tasks for human beings! They’re now presented in front of you, it was so amazing… (As in I don’t see such things in Malaysia, and we could only see them either from the book or the internet?!)

Funny that we rushed to the lakeside of Michigan Lake and took pictures! The day was awfully chilly and we still forced ourselves to stand at the shore there! Great fun! Hahhaha

Super cool McDonalds in the city:

Dinner was Gino’s East of Chicago (thick crust pizza)… That was a very famous pizza restaurant with a lot of celebrities that had been there… It was a super long line outside the restaurant before we got in… lol… the food was quite good~!

Visited Millenium Park for the night~!

Monday

According to our initial plan, it should be our last day in Chicago… But since we like the city so much (actually that’s because we’re not in schedule of visiting places, haha), we decided to extend for one more day…

Due to that reason too, we couldn’t get a cheaper rate for staying in Hilton Hotel, hence we moved to another hotel which was located in downtown Chicago… Had our breakfast at Panera’s bread~!

We were separated into two groups as ChooiWan, Pang, Billy, Pauline and I had made up our minds to visit the Art Institvte of Chicago, which seemed to be one of the most important highlight in Chicago… The main attraction of the art institute was its collections of impressionism art pieces… (while David, Kay, Stanley and Crystal went to somewhere else in the city)

It was so cool to be so close to the world-famous paintings… Yet some paintings did frustrated us as we sincerely think that those were just some kind of “graffiti”, hahahhahha

Next, we went to the Millenium Park again for the Chicago Bean in daytime! In my opinion, I think that it was way more beautiful during daytime… haha… Took picture with the statue of Abraham Lincoln too! =)

Another great attraction, the Sears (which changed to Willis) Tower! It used to be the world tallest building and was built in 1970s… We were brought to the 103th floor by skydeck in about 30 seconds++ I guessed?! (Saw Petronas Twin Towers when we passed through the corridor before the elevators, hmm, 1998’s building was even lower than Sears Tower, lolx)

That’s the place which you could see the great views of Chicago! The transparent glass walls which expanded out of the building were exceptionally cool!

Dinner at Chinatown again with the treat of Roast Duck/Soya Chicken/Char Siew(BBQ pork) and other Chinese foods~!
Finally, visited the night Navy Pier… It was closed but we still got to walk around, lolx…



Tuesday

Well, the day which we have to leave the great city of Chicago…
We’re again separated into 2 groups since only 4 of us (Billy, Pauline, Pang and I) who wanted to visit the Field Museum(with Dinosaur, hahhaha XD)…

Others went for Todai for Japanese buffet lunch and outlet, while we went to search for a temple at somewhere near Chinatown…

This was the most interesting part of the journey! We had no GPS, so we used Pauline’s Iphone of google map in locating ourselves and trying to find the temple (and getting back into route)…
We kept getting lost, and fortunately we still got to find the temple after an exhausting and exciting trip… (we almost crashed into a big truck, shhh…. lol)...
It was so funny to get lost in a city, and I actually enjoyed that moment! Hahaha… That was a REAL fun and a memorable experience though! Hahhahhaahhaha

At the end, we had our lunch/hi-tea at a Japanese+Cantonese+Korean restaurant at Chinatown… Had “mui choy kou yuk” but it was sweet in taste… hmm… quite disappointed on that dish however other dishes was really good… Returned home with a whole bag of buns and egg tarts from a cake shops along that street too! ^^

Trip ended, it was so enjoyable and I miss Chicago trip!!!!!