*518 - cancun day TWO

Breakfast on the sand, getting roasted (boiled?) in the crystal clear water, lunch at the beach, drunk Katie (haha!), sleeping off the alcohol, watching the beautiful sunset, heading out for dinner overlooking the lagoon.

Private hotel beach






Breakfast: frootloops!


My eyecandy. She was so hot.








Katie so sexy












Random drunk Mexican who leapt into the photograph
(See his large bottle of beer on our chair)


My favourite (even though I typically hate coconut): pina colada
Together with a margarita


Fajitas


We watched the sunset!
I love how the water reflects the sky


Dinner by the lagoon
Also by a rather pretty fountain




Continuing the pretty-cocktails-at-every-meal trend
(& the waiter gave me 1 of those little umbrellas to put in my hair!)

*517 - schedule

1 week into school and I'm exhausted. The work hasn't really started piling in yet, and I'm already doing at least 2 hours of homework per day. Which is incredible, by my standards. Haha. This semester proves to be really exciting; I love challenge, although I tend to get really emo when I fall short of my own expectations, so we'll see what happens :P

My schedule has pretty much stabilized and it looks something like this:

Mondays begin with an 8.40 am Hotelie class, followed by econ lecture, econ section, FWS, modern class, rush back for dinner, head straight to salsa intermediate, which ends at 9.

Tuesdays begin with another 8.40 Hotelie class, followed by food science, and then architecture, which ends at 4.30.

Wednesdays begin with yet another 8.40 Hotelie class, followed by econ lecture, a lovely break to rush back to my dorm to sleep, then FWS and modern YAY. Followed by Pandora dance at 8.30-9.30 pm.

Thursdays guess what begin with an 8.40 Hotelie class, followed by food science, and then NOTHING (what joy) until Pandora dance at 7 pm.

Fridays are for waking up late, going for horticulture (best class ever) from 12.20 - 4.25 pm, and then it's my weekend! :D

Saturdays are for snowboarding! :D from afternoon to evening.

Sundays are for church! And then Pandora dance at 3 pm.

6 dance classes/practices a week, plus snowboarding for PE, lots of fun classes that I actually enjoy ... college life is looking up. I'm taking a lot of credits though, so we'll see what happens when things get busier.

Modern improv classes make me So Incredibly Happy - it's hard to explain why, but I think it's the sense of freedom, the lack of restrictions, how anything anyone does is never wrong but always just another form of movement. You don't have to be a good dancer to be in this class; you just need to know how to move to the music in any way you like but not be shy about it. Plus all the people in the class are amazing people <3

Salsa was amazing too - I ended up being the only one there for the intermediate class ... so, I get free private salsa lessons from 2 instructors, who normally charge US$70 an hour for private lessons outside of Cornell! Wow. I love the personal attention because I get to go at my own pace, ask questions, and get corrections, and I suppose they like it too because they still get paid the same amount by Cornell regardless of how many people turn up :P So much fun!!

Pandora dances haven't begun yet, but I can't wait :D Everyone seemed to decide on choreographing lyrical this year, which is good for me, but not so good in terms of variety for the show. We'll see how it goes.

:D

*516 - loss

Together with my passport, I guess I've lost my diary too. It mostly chronicled the milestones in my love life over the past few years haha. Me at my lowest points, because who thinks about writing in diaries when you're busy being happy?

I suppose it doesn't matter that my diary's gone. After all, I only wrote about the important things, and the important things are the things that will remain with me whether I have it written down somewhere or not.

I'm being melancholic over nothing.

Just got back from snowboarding (I can't muster the energy to type out the exclamation points that this phrase very much deserves), and for no conceivable reason at all, I feel like sitting here and bawling. Keeping up a cheery facade over dinner was tiring. Why, though?

(I know I started off talking about my diary, but it's got nothing to do with losing it. I'm not that sentimental when it comes to objects.)

Losing losing losing.
Losing from the start.
I'm losing my touch.
Better to have loved and lost?
(Debatable.)
I'm lost.
I lost.
I've lost.
Lose losing loss lost.

Some words look strange when you stare too hard at them.

*515 - first afternoon/night in cancun!

The swan that greeted us on our bed
(I only noticed after I ran around the room for a few minutes shrieking "I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS HOTEL DOESN'T PROVIDE TOWELS" because I was desperate for a shower)



Sangria: red wine with lime and soda, I think! (I had this impression that sangria typically contains sliced fresh fruit, though?)
With fresh salad, sandwiches, and beefy-cheesy-nachos









Whereupon we fell asleep and got up in time for dinner - a lot of tacos - and flea market shopping.







Katie's "Spicy Face" (It really was very, very, painfully spicy)




Spray-paint artist at work




Bargaining! (We got the price down to almost half!!)


Romantic night walk by the beach <3

*514 - dance like nobody's watching

xY - any time, email me!

First day of classes today. It went pretty well, even though I had classes from 8.40 to 6.20 pm. Phew! Kind of tired now.

DANCE 233 Explorations in Movement: the coolest modern dance class I've ever taken. Amazing live (contemporary) piano, violin, and drums. We spent the entire class improvising to funky music in the dark. There's a strangely exhilarating sense of freedom when you throw away all your shyness and go all out, dancing in your own special way, not caring about the girl on your left doing her pretty cotton candy leaps and twirls, the boy on your right balancing on his head and then galloping around the room (imagining he was in Africa, he later said), the instructor in front of you convulsing and snaking about the floor ... ok I'm making it sound kind of crazy, but the crazier thing was that everyone was dancing according to their own interpretations, but we were all dancing together.

I remember laoshi's attempts at making us improvise back in those RGS/RJ dance days - everyone was always consciously or subconsciously holding back, cracking an eye open to look around even when she said "eyes shut" to make sure that they weren't doing anything silly, wondering if they were going too fast or going too slow, wondering if anyone was watching and laughing. Or at least, I did. But it was a totally different atmosphere here, no one has anything to hide, no one has anything to be embarrassed about, everyone let themselves go, everyone was beautiful. That's the wonderful thing. We were dancing our hearts out, dancing like the way we dance only when nobody's watching.

I'm pretty glad I chose modern improvisation over dance technique, though we all know how much I'm lacking in terms of classical technique. Haha. I've missed dancing.

*513 - new york, new york

Classes start tomorrow, and what am I doing? Uploading photographs :D Haha. Some pictures from our brief visit to NYC before heading off to Cancun.

Jacq was having an off-day and so she brought us around the city. Katie and I were deathly tired from the 4 am bus ride down to NYC, but I'm glad we stopped over at NYC! The first time I went to NYC, I didn't like it one bit; now, it's a 180 degree change, and I think I'm falling in love with the pretty streets of New York City. Sometimes quaint, sometimes quite magnificent, always kind of magical somehow. (:

Great dimsum, shopping all the way down 5th Avenue, sipping coffee to stay awake, yummy Korean dinner, excellent company (:





The strange olden-day-Chinese phenomenon of sharing a table with strangers






Korean town, looking very Korean indeed


Runrun, Evelyn, Katie, Jacq








I have to say, I still don't like the subway.
Old, rickety, dirty, ominous.
And there are RATS by the tracks :O


Waiting at JFK for way too long




First glimpse of Cancun! (: