Sweet, sweet summertime

Hi. -hides in shame-

I know it's been quite a while, but HELLO! Freshman year of college was stressful beyond belief, but now I'm home and loving the sweet summertime. Finals were death, but I'm slowly fixing my sleep schedule, too.

I hope you've all had a good past few months. SO sorry that I couldn't post anything. Everything's been so hectic lately. Since the last post quite a few things have happened:

• I had spring break! I got to see my friends back home and celebrate Tae's birthday
• I went to Washington DC to see their famous cherry blossoms (see above)
• My school had their spring fair, which was super SUPER fun (least sober weekend on campus, but I just chilled and watched everyone else haha)
• My 1-year anniversary with Tae! <3
• Reading week and getting very very sick during that
• Finishing finals and everything else
• FINISHING FRESHMAN YEAR

I 100% promise that I'll be posting more this summer (to the point where you guys will be like, why are you posting so much).

I'm actually going to Italy in a few days so I'm off to planning that trip! If any of you have places you recommend in Florence, Rome, or Venice, please let me know! :) I will definitely be uploading pictures from there when I come back (and maybe throwing in more of my London/Paris pictures). I've been a bad blogger, but I'm trying to get better so work with me here.

Have a beaaaautiful May and day. :)

Roses and Candy Hearts

"Kisses are a better fate than wisdom." - E. E. Cummings

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hi, everyone. Hope you're all having a great February so far! Happy happy Valentine's Day! For the first time ever, I have a lovely Valentine this year. We actually ended up celebrating last week because next week I have two huge midterms for school so I need to focus and study this weekend.

Aww. :)

First we went to this dessert place in Little Italy called Vaccaro's. We had absolutely no idea what to get so we went with the sampler, and it was amazing. We were so full by the end of it that we couldn't even finish it.

It came with two cannolis, two huge cream puffs, and some other Italian cookies that we didn't pay much attention to haha. Next time we're skipping everything else and just going straight for the cannolis. Neither of us had ever had a cannoli before, but I can't imagine anything being much better than those.

Afterwards, we walked around a bit and then headed for the aquarium (the building with the pointy triangle roof in the picture above). I ended up somehow losing the tickets in those two hours before we went in and I honestly still have no idea where they went. The people at the aquarium were really nice about it and we showed them our receipt so they let us in. :)

Tae had never been there before while I had been there who knows how many times. Right before we saw the giant sea turtle, I told him how in fifth grade there was a turtle with only 3 legs. I honestly couldn't believe it was still there haha it's adorable! When it came to us, it lifted its head out of the water and then kept swimming. (Turtles are one of our favorite animals, which explains our excitement.)

It's NEMO.

The aquarium was so much fun because it reminded us of when we were kids. We kept staring at the fish swimming and laughing at the most random things. When we left, neither of us were that hungry (oops for eating dessert first!) so we went to Corner Bakery and got their delicious mac and cheese for dinner.

Overall, it was an amazing (early) Valentine's Day, and I can't wait for many more to come. But tonight it'll just be my textbooks and me. Sigh. College life is hard. (Although I can't complain too much because we got hit with about 17 inches of snow and got 2 snow days out of it!!)

Hope you all had/are having a wonderful Valentine's Day! What I've learned over the years is that it's not about being in a relationship or being single, it's about celebrating love in general. Love your friends, love your family, love your significant other, but most importantly, love yourself.

I'm still learning how to do that, but I think we all are.

Two

"It's beautiful here and we're still unhappy." - Ian McEwan, Enduring Love

In the spirit of Chinese New Year that happened this past Friday, I've decided to post some other pictures from my trip to China back in June/July. I've been meaning to blog about my summer trips to China and Europe for a while now, but I could never bring myself to. So here's a collection of unedited (can't be bothered to edit them, ha) photos from China. These were taken on my trip to Qiandaohu and Hangzhou, both beautiful, beautiful places to be. Unfortunately, I went during rainy season, but fortunately, the fog is also beautiful.

The scariest monkeys ever.

At one point, it was raining so hard that the path to get back on the boat was drenched in water. We had to take off our shoes and go barefoot to prevent our already soaking wet sneakers from getting even more destroyed. Thankfully all of the rain meant that it wasn't as humid as it usually was in China! There wasn't a single sunny day though during this part of our trip, and towards the end, I wished that we didn't have to take our umbrellas literally everywhere.

I definitely loved this part of my China trip the most though. If any of you have the chance, you should definitely consider going to Qiandaohu or Hangzhou! But anyway, 新年快乐 to all of you! Hope February's been treating you well so far.

And on that note, I should go back to studying physics and organic chemistry. Sigh. Happy Groundhog Day and Happy Super Bowl Sunday!! I can't wait to watch soon. (Anyone have any ideas for who will win?)

Until next time!

Hello

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art--write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself." - Neil Gaiman

After over 4 months of not blogging, I've redesigned my blog and decided that I want to come back. It's been a crazy 4 months of my life, but now that I'm back, I'm ready to start documenting again. College has definitely been an experience to say the least, and I definitely have a love/hate relationship with it. I'm not ready to go back to second semester in under two weeks, but all that I keep in mind is that summer is a few months away.

That being said, I met a lot of people, went on adventures, and just lived for a while. College isn't all fun and games as some people say--it's a ton of hard work and late nights, but in the end, I'm telling myself that it'll all be worth it.

I have a ton (no exaggeration this time, a few thousand pictures from the summer and hundreds more from the past few months) of pictures to post so I can't wait to get back in the routine of posting on here. My goal is to post at least once every two weeks (hoping to post even more than that). I miss talking to people on here.

And if you want to keep up with my photos as they come, follow me on Instagram. My username is ambzhang!

Anyhow, I hope all of you are doing well. Good luck with school and the new year! (A little bit late, but better late than never, right?)