Suburbia...yeah, it's real.

Across the street


Me being sketchy and creeping out our neighbor who was walking the dog.
To come: nicer pictures taken during the daylight...

This is our new house...or rather, my mom's new house in Fort Myer, Florida. Haven't gotten much of a chance to enjoy the neighborhood yet because we've been pretty busy fixing up the inside. While on the outside, the house looks alright, the insides are quite a mess. My current life can probably be best described as Home Ec boot camp (for reals). For the past few days, it's been wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, paint, eat lunch, shop for painting supplies, paint some more (or prepare the room to be painted), dinner, and then more painting or break. I really miss our nice cozy house in Santa Barbara, which we were OK with being slightly shoddy and didn't try to fix up. It was also a lot smaller (Florida house is probably twice the size of Santa Barbara house). On the other hand, it is pretty cool to see all the progress we've made. I've got two rooms to myself (a little bit extravagant I must say, but my mom says one of the rooms will become a guest room) and I've chosen a nice blue color (River Mist) for them (I've gotten the OK from the padres to paint white doves onto my bedroom walls). The master bedroom is painted a beige yellow called Bleach Wheat, and the last 2 bedrooms are painted in a neutral orange/pink called "Heavenly" (I could really go on about paint color names...), and we've decided to leave the kitchen and living room areas alone because as soon as we started painting the first two bedrooms, we realized that there is no way that we could finish all of them over break. Ademas, I've also learned a lot of useful home-maintenance knowledge. You need me to install your washer, dryer, ceiling fan, light? No problema!

Suite Sitcom

These are some photos my suite took before our Tacky Holiday Sweater Party!. I think it captures our goofy-ness pretty well and makes a nice storyline about how quickly our very normal outward composures can deteriorate when around each other. The entire series of us on the couch probably took place in less than 2 minutes. Also, watch for Molly's face in this series! She looks like she's having such a party! haha. If you're reading this, I hope you like the pictures and I miss you very much! Happy Holidays!


Getting ready for the party--my bathroom sneak attack...


Perfect picture family, awwwww


In response to: Joy- I always feel awkward when I have to put my lands on my lap. Where am I suppose to put it?


Let's look at our hands!


a second later...


Oooo, let's do the robot!!!! ( I would click on this picture to see an enlarged version. Your faces are so funny!)

Winter Window Displays

New York's winter window displays are soooo beautiful

A Day in the City

This past Saturday, David and I took the train and spent a day in New York City. David is a good friend of mine from this semester, and I had the best time I've ever had in the City! Not only did I have good company, but we saw a side of New York that I've never seen before.


New York's new city plans include building 1,800 miles of bicycle lanes in effort to reduce car traffic and encourage cycling. Check out how this street plan, where the bicycle lane and the car lane are separated by the parking lane, thus protecting bicyclists from cars! Also, on some street corneres, bicyclists even have their own stop light.


1) Check out the interesting looking parking lot on the left
2) High Line Park: a park made from abandoned railroad tracks! I am a big fan of this project because not only did they create something beautiful and wonderful out of something that was no longer functional, but they also create public space for people to gather and enjoy. Also, it has awesome views of the New York skyline and neighborhoods.


View of New York from High Line Park


One former bridge area in High Line Park was converted into a spectacular arena where anyone can sit next to the window and watch cars suddenly zoom out from underneath! The way the windows were framed made the scene look like a movie or a video game.


Natural History Museum: David and the Moose exhibit (David is in Stiles College and their mascot is the Moose).


Dinosaurs!


T-REX, YES!

Last of MIT

Longfellow Building


Math Statue...


in the shape of a person sitting crosslegged

A Night on the Town-in Boston

Boston Public Library

A Toy Model

Last night, Erika taught me this trick on photoshop called Tilt Shift . It is essentially a technique whereby the picturescape is made to look like a toy model.

Here are my attempts:

Hagia Sophia


The Bosphorous


Spring Salvage


Yale Harvard Football Game

Erika and Peter!!!

We ventured onto the fire escape that can be accessed from the bathroom window.

Bathroom help

I enlisted the help of Erika and Peter for my Photography Experiment.For more details on what it is, please click on the site link! This week's theme happens to be Poop on Joy's face (a grotesque subject submitted by my lovely and mischevious suite mate Dana Zhu). To create the "poop" Erika melted some milk chocolate and then Peter helped to spread it over my face. Don't worry, its MILK CHOCOLATE! But the idea is still nevertheless very disturbing. Geee, thanks Dana...


Poop on string

Poop ATTACK!

With Anonymously Returned from South Africa

Dinosaur love!

Erika's floor is super into dinosaurs. This is there elevator door

Around MIT

Yale Bottled Water

Current enemy #1

Fall

The best weather we've ever had

I live in the building on the right: McClellan Hall

A Perfect Saturday

Sorry for not posting for a...while. Either school has been super hectic, or I have been super busy having fun. :)

For example, within the last 48 hours, I have spontaneously joined a field trip to go to New York and help Professor Felson (Professor of Arch and Forestry) with an urban restoration project. Professor Felson is a landscape architect who works in urban ecology, urban planning, and architecture, and it was such a great opportunity to spend a day with him and pick his brain about all those things that I'm interested in! I realized that I really enjoy getting off campus and spending the day with people who expand my world view and knowledge base. I learned what a parkway is (there is one from NY to New Haven), what a bio-swale is, and even came up with an idea for my GIS project! The actual project was pretty fun too. We waded through a swamp all day and identified plants. The weather was sooooo beautiful!

Today, I woke up early, and after getting a text from Macrina, just hopped on a bus to go on a Yale Farm Tour. We ate a scrumptious breakfast at a local Connecticut farm and then picked apples! :)

THEN! My suite mates and I had a photo shoot in JE. We dressed up in swanky black dresses and all looked very hott. Best Saturday ever!


Close up


For our suite holiday card?


Asian!


In front of Branford Gate

Waste Energy generator

Today, my Cities and Sustainability class went on a field trip to a nearby waste energy generator plant. The facility, located in Bridgeport, takes garbage (excluding food scraps and other non flammable waste) and burns it to generate fuel. Their revenue comes from the disposal of waste as well as the production of electricity. The room where all the trash went into was the size of at least a football field, and four stories tall. What do I think about waste? They are such a waste!!!

STEP

I'm a STEP coordinator! Pretty much, our job is to be sustainable and get everyone else in JE to be sustainable too.


Matt (my co-coordinator) and I recycling! This is our JE STEP profile picture.