November/December: Holidays in NYC

With the busyness of the holidays, I've decided to do a 2-for-1 blog post for November/December. I had lots of 1st times because I went to New York City twice! Life has been full these last 2 months...

(please excuse the weird formatting, Blogger had some updates recently)

1st time seeing "Sister Act" the musical
I was super excited to see this Broadway version at the Kennedy Center of one of my favorite childhood movies but couldn't fully enjoy it due to the sacrilegious treatment of Christ, the Catholic Church, and convents. Dance choreography was overly simple but the singing was great.

1st Motown dance video
After 3 classes at Joy of Motion Dance Center, I finally got Jamile ("So You Think You Can Dance" season 1 finalist) to videotape it with me :) So fun! Check out my dance blog for more pics/videos.

1st contemporary dance concert
I don't usually like contemporary dance but I wanted to be open-minded, challenged, and maybe even inspired by a less familiar genre. So I went to the GW Danceworks showcase and got some friends to come with me. None of us were particularly impressed or enamored but we had fun recreating some of the poses afterwards haha

1st time dancing at work
At the GW School of Medicine and Sciences' Thanksgiving potluck, one of the fun-loving deans taught and led the line dance to Robin Thicke's hit "Blurred Lines". I think we should dance everyday at work haha.

1st time at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
We woke up at 4:30am to start staking out a spot at 5:30am at the beginning of the parade route. Mind you, it didn't start until 9:00am. It was fun but way too cold to do again!

1st time ice skating in Central Park
After the parade and brunch, we went ice skating in Central Park. I was a beautiful sunny day, there was jazzy Christmas music playing, lots of holiday spirit amongst the skaters, and the backdrop of the buildings behind the trees were just beautiful.

1st time in Grand Central Station
I met Darold at a party in NYC and we were planning to go salsa dancing that night but all the places were closed for the holiday, so we ended up taking a tour of downtown :) The famed Grand Central Station was one of the few places still open at midnight on Thanksgiving.

1st walk across Brooklyn Bridge
I didn't go shopping on Black Friday but I got to visit one of the great architectural/technological feats of modern America! It was glorious indeed.






1st Thanksgiving at an Italian restaurant
I've spent Thanksgiving with various friends since I left home but never at a restaurant. Pablo, George, Leslie, and I had gotten to become pretty comfortable on our NYC roadtrip and there was plenty of food at Buca di Beppo so it was just as good :)

1st taste of raw fish

I pride myself on being a foodie but I've always been repulsed by the thought of eating raw fish and have successfully put off trying sushi all these years...until today when I was offered raw salmon hors d'oeuvres at my office Christmas party. Most unfortunately, it was just as nasty as I imagined and I ran to spit it out! How do you people eat this stuff!?

1st piano keyboard
I've been playing piano since I was 10 and have been lucky to always have easy access to a piano at work or in my apartment, but I don't have one in my home right now and I have limited access at work/church so I finally decided to invest in a keyboard to keep up my skills. (Matt 25:14-30) Now I can hibernate and create music all winter :)

1st time to Twins Jazz
I tried to get a group of jazz lovers and would-be-jazz lovers to go to a jazz club in October but the concert didn't happen, so I was excited for this 2nd try. The Redwine Jazz Band was actually just a clarinet and guitar duo, but they were really good. "Warm fuzzies" jazz music and nice conversation made for a lovely evening before everyone left for the holidays.

1st time not going home for Christmas/touring Harlem
I didn't go home for Christmas this year because I don't get very many vacation days at my job and I'm saving them for an overdue trip to see my extended family in China. But I do get Christmas eve & day off so I took a bus up to NYC to spend the break with my beau Darold :) He knows I'm really into African American history and he lives in Harlem so he took me on a little tour and I got to see a few memorials of key black figures I've read alot about and really admire - Duke Ellington and Frederick Douglass.

1st time to St. John Cathedral
Darold used to be Catholic before the joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and his Catholic friend Carla was visiting so he took us to the St. John Cathedral. Definitely very different from an LDS chapel or temple!

1st time seeing the Rockefeller Christmas tree
It's as beautiful and romantic as they say!

1st time Dominican party
Most of Darold's extended family lives in Manhattan so we went to his uncle's house for a big Christmas eve party. We didn't eat until 11:30pm but it was worth the wait! And even tho most of the people didn't speak English, I had fun playing with the kids and dancing with Darold. Every family party should have dancing :)

1st time to Dominican buffet
On Christmas day, Darold introduced me to one of his favorite Dominican restaurants - El Mofongo Buffet. I'd never been to one before but it seemed wonderfully familiar to me because I grew up eating out often at Chinese buffets and my aunt made Puerto Rican food all the time, which is in the Caribbean cuisine category. It was deliciosa!

Great end to a very eventful year! The future is as bright as our faith and we can have an abundant life through Jesus Christ (John 10:10). Let's see what 2014 brings...

October: Apples and Apostles

1st time watching all of General Conference by myself
My tradition during these 2 glorious weekends each year is to house-hop and watch each session with different friends. However, I woke up Saturday with a bad cold and had to stay in bed all weekend :( Of course, that didn't diminish the power of the talks. I actually think this was the most powerful General Conference I've ever experienced. Even President Monson said that and he's 60 years older than me!

Some favorite talks:
* "Come, Join with Us" by Dieter F. Uchtdorf - he is a gifted speaker and always seems to talk about personal poignant issues that everyone struggles with.
* "The Moral Force of Women" by D. Todd Christofferson - I really hate man-bashing and extreme feminism; I love how this talk emphasizes the important roles, duties, and potential of both men and women.
* "No Other Gods" by Dallin H. Oaks - Bam! I just love how straightforward he is. Direct and simple doctrine. God is eternal and His commandments don't change with the trends.

1st Country concert
Friday night. I stayed on campus after work and did some school work at the library, planning to go home and study some more. Around 6:30pm, I got a mass text from my friend Trent asking if anyone wanted to go to a Lee Brice concert with him that night at 8pm in Silver Spring, Maryland (about 30 min drive from GW). Instead of saying I had to study, I told him I can't afford it right now. But then he offered to pay because he really wanted to go and no one else could. I had a bad week and had to miss a Rascal Flatts concert earlier in the month due to school work, so I said sure. Trent picked me up on campus in my work clothes and backpack and we got to the Fillmore about 10 minutes late. Some other guy was opening for Lee Brice so it was fine. I had no idea who Lee Brice was but I trusted Trent's taste and I was excited to be going to my first Country concert w/ a huge country fan!

Lee Brice turned out to be a great performer and was really talented. Kinda funny that about 10 of his songs mentioned beer or whiskey. We got to hear a new unreleased song that was really sweet. Sometimes spontaneity pays off.


1st time to George Washington's Mount Vernon estate
I'd been in DC 1.5 years and still hadn't visited the home of my university's namesake (along with many other places). Britt helped me finally pin down a Saturday and off we went. She had been there many times and was so sweet to let me take my time reading everything. She knows I have a thing for African American history so we went on the day of the annual slave memorial.

It was a poignant program of dances, poems, musical performances, speeches, and awards...but it was waaay too long. We stayed for the first 2 hours and finally had to leave to see the rest of the estate. First, we took a tour of the main house but couldn't take pictures inside :(

I was fascinated by all the separate little buildings for all the many parts of a fully-productive plantation such as smoking meat, laundry, salting, spinning...not to mention the stables and carriage houses and manure depository.

I most wanted to see the slave quarters. I studied slavery alot and it definitely put a knot in my chest trying to imagine the terribly dire and difficult life of a slave. These quarters were much "nicer" than the ones I'd read about and seen pictures of, but it's an understatement to say life was hard for them. It makes me even more grateful for Christ's Atonement, which not only satisfies our debt to justice but "also satisfies the debt justice owes to us by healing and compensating us for any suffering we innocently endure." (see "Redemption" by D. Todd Christofferson)

Every time I see some historic place like this, I think "I am SO grateful I live in this time and place!"

1st Motown dance class
My local dance studio, Joy of Motion, was offering a week of free exercise (vs. dance technique) classes so I jumped on it. I was sad I only had time for one of them but I was super pumped to try the Motown class. I grew up on "oldies" music; that's the only radio station Dad allowed in the car. I got so tired of it but then in college I learned what great DANCE music it was! I had an awesome time learning a routine and new dance moves to James Brown's "Soul Man", which I kept practicing weeks later. The instructor Jamile McGee was so fun and enthusiastic.

Later, I learned he was a finalist on the 1st season of So You Think You Can Dance! Luckily, they had a 4 classes for $40 deal (normally $17/class) that week and I bought it to keep going to his class :)

1st time apple picking
My friend Stephanie organized this wonderfully autumn activity one Saturday and I knew I could not miss another opportunity to cross this off my bucket list. It was a perfect fall day and we drove an hour to Larriland Farm in Maryland. I realized it was where we went berry picking for the Ward Retreat last month! (see "September: A Berry Good Month") It's an awesome place for families with all sorts of seasonal fruits and vegetables. The best part was getting to sample as many things as you want along the way. I tasted and bought 3 kinds of apples: Stayman (1st time!), Fuji, and Braeburn. I also loved getting to know a new group of acquaintances :)


1st time eating risotto
As a huge foodie, you'd be surprised by how many foods I haven't tried yet. But that's ok, it makes it fun to still have things to cross off my food bucket list :) I grew up on rice but never cooked this way. They always make a big deal on Food Network about how hard it is to make a risotto correctly. So I was really excited to finally try my first risotto with great company at Landini Brothers, a rustic Italian restaurant in Old Town Alexandria.

It was fantastically cheesy and delicioso, tho a bit salty. Looking forward to trying other kinds of risotto!

1st time dressing up as a librarian
I tried to proactively plan my Halloween costume this year but still ended up with a lame one :/ the problem is I'm cheap and don't want to put any time into making one either haha. So I ended up using clothes I already have (but never wear because they're so uncomfortable) and changed my silhouette by putting my hair in a high bun. I also wore pearls, carried a real library book, and kept telling people to "Sssshh" but the music at the party was so loud that most people were confused why I was telling them to be quiet haha. So I added to my costume by saying "Stop talking in the library!"

About half the people guessed secretary, principal, or Sarah Palin (I don't see it). The other half guessed "sexy librarian", to which I responded, "No, I'm a modest librarian!" And then they would say, "Modest can be sexy!" Haha I love Mormons, and I love being one! A few people didn't recognize me at first, so I don't consider this costume a total failure :)