Life after classes

Hello everyone!

So classes have been over for a week now, and I thought I would have so much free time...  oh how incredibly wrong I had been...  haha

Even though Houston is in full summer mode, (80 to 90 degrees every day!)

I have been stuck inside most of the day learning music, or performing music..  Here is the Pierre Jalbert Piano Trio that I have to learn before I leave the country in 2 weeks that has been giving me so much stress haha.  

The piece itself is awesome, don't get me wrong, but the fact that I will be performing this the week I get back from Korea and Taiwan, after not touching my violin for more than 2 weeks, really really really stresses me out.  Not only do I have to learn this, but I have to learn 3 other new pieces during the next 2 weeks and the week I get back to this country, so...  yeah, so much for summer break, huh?   I just have to really plan it out well because my tendinitis has flared up again, and the last thing I need is to have to take time away from my violin even more..  le sigh.. 

During the nights, I have been performing this hilarious musical with the Music Box Theater here in Houston.  This week was the closing week, so we got to play for a full house almost every night, and it was so much fun!  =D   a lot of playing, and some more learning music really fast because we had 1 rehearsal before I had to jump into the performance (I was subbing for a friend), but it was all worth it because it was such a fun musical to play!

Even during all that, we did manage to fit some cooking and baking and generally just eating lots of food, as you may have come to expect from us.  haha.  Sometimes, we did resort to ramen at midnight, but after a long night of performing, that's all you crave at times.  We know it's not good for us, but it sure was delicious.  Oh, and we made some broccoli/tofu side dish to go with it so we felt a little better haha

We also went out to eat, which is pretty rare for us, but,, desperate times call for desperate measures? actually, it was just on one of our H-Mart trips, and someone had ordered this in front of us in the food court, and it looked so good that we just haaadd to get it ourselves  haha  It was pretty amazing though  =p

Our experimental kitchen also got some action when we tried to make a loaf of seaweed bread.  In Korea, we eat seaweed, called Gim, a lot, and it's one of my favorite side dishes ever!  I mean, just give me some rice, Gim, and some Kimchi, and I'm set to go just about every meal.  So we thought we'd incorporate it into bread and see how it turned out. I had high hopes for doing a recipe for it here on the blog if it turned out well...

The making process went smoothly, and we had fun trying to take some action shots of the Gim falling into the dough, etc.

but while it looked really good when it came out of the oven and all that...

it wasn't really blog recipe worthy...  and we ended up eating it with some Kimchi...  haha

yeah... so we'll just keep experimenting a little more, and maybe we'll perfect it at some point!

There has also been some craft projects,,,

and lots and lots of packing...  our apartment is looking so chaotic and empty all at once!

In our free time, when we manage to find some, we've been exercising and getting into the usual David/Janny fooling around, doing things like this..

=)
so that's been my life after classes so far!
I'm sure there will be even more of that in the next week and a half until I graduate, and I'm going to try to make the most of my last week and a half in Houston.
Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you have a wonderful week!
--Janny

A Musical and Nature in Downtown Houston :: The Book of Mormon and Tranquillity Park

Hello everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!!

David was in LA for a wedding for 23 hours (well, he spent 23 hours in LA, but of course, it was more like 2 days with traveling) so I logged some quality girl-bonding time with a few of my girlfriends both near and far!  I'm not the greatest at doing long distance of any sort, whether it's friendship or a romantic relationship, but one friend who has always been there--through growing up together to now going on 8 years of long distance friend-ing--is Linda!  (You can see a couple of posts of when she came out to visit me in Seattle here.)  so we did about 3 hours of Skyping one night, catching up and bonding over our shared terror of roaches...  aha ha.. ha...  eep.  unfortunately, we both live in areas at the moment where roaches roam freely, like they own the whole city!   Anyway, that aside, it was so nice to get to catch up, and I can't wait for our next Skype date!  =D 

Then, the next day, I spent the afternoon shopping with Lijia!  I know, such a girl thing to do.  But you know, sometimes retail therapy is necessary, especially when it includes thrifting!!  I have always found thrifting to be much more interesting than,, say, going to a mall. I mean, if I specifically need something on short notice, I will head to the mall, but when I'm just in the mood for retail therapy (when it's ok to just window shop and not get anything), then I much prefer thrifting..  perhaps because there's the sense of surprise? like a feeling of having found a treasure when you do get that amazing silk blouse or that amazing pair of leather boots because you weren't really going into the experience expecting to find something?  and of course, the usually lower price tag is an added plus  ;)

Anyway, having thoroughly enjoyed the girl time, I was happy to have David back on Sunday!  =p  It was pretty intense actually, because he had gotten the tickets to go see The Book of Mormon on Sunday at 2 pm back in March. Since the wedding was on Saturday, he had to fly back on a red-eye flight after the wedding on Saturday, and land in Houston around 6:30 am on Sunday, take a quick nap, and then go to the show!  poor guy..  lol but he handled it like a champ.  See? can't even tell he's sleep deprived in the photo!  haha  =p

and the show?  TOTALLY worth it!!

It was so good!!  the actors/singers/dancers were amazing, the music was incredibly catchy, and the story line was really funny. we highly recommend it.  However, if you are easily offended, this may not be the show for you..  I mean, it wasn't terribly raunchy or anything, and even I understood all of the jokes (I'm usually the one who has to ask 'wait, what's so funny..?' whenever a dirty jokes come up...  I pull out the Asian card for those instances, I didn't grow up here!  hmph  haha)

When we got to the theater, they had these binoculars in the front, and we got them just in case we would have difficulty seeing the stage from our seats (we had never been to the Hobby Center, so we weren't sure how everything would be set up)  and proceeded to play with them until the show started..  haha

However, the binoculars were completely unnecessary!  Because David got the tickets so early, our seats were amazing!!  We were on the second row of the balcony, right in the center!

Having thoroughly enjoyed our selves at the show, we headed back out into the Houston heat.  I hear all of my friends in other places starting to break out their fall outfits, beginning to enjoy the crisper weather, etc etc.  but in Houston, it's still 98 degrees.  People here seem to keep all indoor places at about 60 degrees though, so we have to dress like it's fall anyway when we go to these shows (or class.. Shepherd is always freezing too), and then suffer the consequences when you walk back to your car/home, etc  haha

On our way back to our parking garage, we stumbled upon this little park, right in front of the Hobby Center, called the Tranquillity Park.  Yes, it's actually spelled with two 'L's, and it's in honor of the first Moon landing!  you know, the first words transmitted from the Moon by Neil Armstrong was "Houston, Tranquillity Base here.  The Eagle has landed."  Since 'Houston' is in there and everything, the city of Houston had to have a park to commemorate the event  ;)

When we went, the fountain was dry (maybe they were cleaning) but we still had fun walking around the park and enjoying the greenery in the middle of the downtown.

While we were strolling around the park, we found this cluster of trees, so I went to see if I could be like Momo.  Momo is a border collie who is amazing at playing 'where's Waldo'. In my opinion, it's a much better version of 'where's Waldo' because Momo is soo darn cute!!  you can subscribe to Momo on Instagram here if you want a daily feed of puppy cuteness mixed with 'where's Waldo' ness.

Anyway, back to my attempt at being 'Waldo'. or is it 'Walda'? doesn't Waldo have a girlfriend of that name or something?  

hmmmm,,, as you can see, it didn't work very well.  something about those neon pink pants...   haha   

^^^ me admitting defeat and abandoning my attempt to be like Walda, or Momo...  

Oh, and look at that interesting temple looking building poking out in between all of the sky scrapers! =D  anyone know what it is?  We wanted to walk over there and check it out when we noticed it, but we didn't have enough time..  =/

We resumed walking around the park afterwards, and noticed these cylindrical pillars are everywhere!  Later, we learned that they are supposed to represent Apollo's rocket boosters!

It's a charming little park with a lot of trees (which seems to be a rarity in Houston), so we enjoyed as much of it as we could before heading back home for one of my rehearsals...  a musician's work is never done!! 

a better(?) attempt at 'where's Waldo' ing.

ahh.. so green.. and peaceful..

some more interesting architecture spotted on our way back to our car...

We have never really explored downtown Houston because the city of Houston is quite spread out, and the part Rice is located is not very close to downtown, but we're looking forward doing some more exploring as we go see more shows in the theater district  =)

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful rest of the week!

--Janny