Unwritten

yes people ive finally found the time to post ever since i reached washington dc two days ago!! well i have just one word to say. AMAZING.

This whole week i just experienced is certainly one of the best times of my life! dc is just BEAUTIFUL! the buildings, the food, the people, the weather (although i almost freezed to death yesterday. ehhe.) is simply ado-ra-ble. :D

well let me just extend my apologies for not posting up any pictures today. Rest assured i have taken LOTS! i have had to use two memory cards so far :D. i just have to wait till i get to my host family's house to upload them. i have SO MUCH though i dunno how im going to find the time and energy to fit them all in here :D

lets start off with the pre-departure orientation back in Malaysia. i did look forward to it, for the sole reason of meeting up with my fellow afs-ers. pretty fun it was, we all bonded a little extra than we previously had during the selection camp. So that was good. it was really great to meet such friendly faces once again :)

Then came the flight. Ah yes, the flight itself was an adventure of its own :D. 6 hour flight to shanghai by MAS. unfortunately we had to make a detour at the neighbouring airport in china (i cant remember the name at all!) because shanghai was apparently covered in mist ; thus making it difficult for the plane to land. So yes u can imagine the hullabaloo (?-dont ask :D) that happened once we reached shanghai airport. There we were thinking we could have a nice breakfast and do a lil bit of shopping as we were supposed to land at 6 in the morning and our next flight to san fran was only at 1. Alas, we reached shanghai at 11.30!!!! so we practically had to run (im not kidding) to the check in counters with our luggage. and the immigration forms were a pain. gosh we didnt even get to see the airport much. The flight to san fran was pretty interesting. No doubt it was a 13 hour flight but still cool :) i didnt really sit much cos my seat was at the inner egde of the aisle. REALLY stuffy and uncomfortable. So some of us just ended up gossiping and lepaking at the back of the airplane-near the toilets. i did shift then next to ariff, who was in his own world. lol. he ordered this starbucks coffee ( yes the serve starbucks on united airlines!) but it ended up abandoned on my table. haha. the in flight movie sucked big time by the way. Some real random movies most of which i never knew existed (sheesh). It was only ratatouille and rush hour 3 that i knew. this rat shit movie turned out to be complete well , shit :D i slept through it:D they only played rush hour 3 halfway. That too with jo sitting next to me. lol. he was laughing to himself like a maniac and real loud too :D the flight from san fran to dc was probably the least eventful. probably cos everyone was already bloody exhausted by then :D and it was only 5 hours. i slept through the whole thing.

FINALLY I WAS HERE! YAY!! as the plane touched down, i was just in awe of the fact that finally everything i had dreamed of before coming here was going to turn into reality in front of my own eyes!

Orientation here at dc was really good. the coordinators here are really nice and they did their best to make us comfortable during our stay here. I must say, the conference centre in which the orientation took place is amazing. The best part about it is the recreation room which has a pool table, foosball, arcade games, a piano much to my delight:), and a computer lab-i am posting from here:). Oh they hv this HUGE plasma screen tv too. awesome stuff. THE FOOD IS GREAT!! i tried mexican food day before yesterday-something called chicken fajitas and another bread like thingy with cheese in it-gosh it was effing good! and their breakfast in just mmmmmmm:D i tell you the food here is delish! i even got this chocolate box of truffles from aunty betty-wow, DELISH :D. and the cookies:D i dont even wanna start cos i wont stop guys :) and yes the pizza-wow the size of one large pizza is as big as a car tyre-again, i am NOT kidding!!! lol.

basically during the second day of orientation, we went to Galleaudet university-its the only university for the deaf in the world! O and by the way-i learnt the alphabet in sign language-how cool is that? not from the university though, i did it hands on by interacting with my four deaf friends i have with me here-they are part of my group of YES students as well. One of them is Tim choy, he blogs too. maybe you guys could go check his out-ill post the link up later. he's still typing out his post right now. i really do have an admiration for the deaf community. here in the united states they have set up their own community- and this university is a fine example of that. I really did love the tour of the place. it had so much history in its establishment as well and that was an eye-opener to me too. like the fact that the founder of the university was not deaf himself. he developed a passion for deaf culture-and this initiated the birth of the university. apologies cos i cant really remember his name. You might wanna google galleaudet university if u wanna find out more-i would but i have so much to type right now :D

we also went for a tour in dc. pretty amazing. Among other places,we went to the lincoln memorial. it was real cool. This was where martin luther king made his "i have a dream" speech. Those exact words were immortalised in stone writing in front of the memorial. the park surrounding the building were especially beautiful! we did go to the drugstore after that-we were on a budgeting exercise-three items for less than 10 bucks. I managed to get mine for around 4 dollars. i couldnt believe that the wet and wild lipgloss here cost only 2 bucks. HELL YEAH!! i also got a chapstick and some bubblegum. We then went to a place called cafe Asia-i shall not comment on the food. But it was real cool to hang out with each other there-it was our last night before everyone flew out to their separate destinations after all. we got bak, hanged in the rec room for a while and then headed to the boys' room for some light chit chatting-until we got kicked out by Sarah-lol. so we had to settle for a little girls' gossip session with Jodi. everyone else basically went to sleep after that-except for cheryl, sherilyn and myself-we stayed up the whole night just talking :D that was really good :). i love them :) :) :)

Well u can imagine the emotions that were going on when we had to say goodbye to each other this morning at four. you see everyone else except for five of us were leaving to the airport to be on their respective flights-i am being picked up by my darling MaryAnn's host mom since my own wont be able to pick me up. Its still all good though-cant wait to go to penn :D. gosh after spending just one week with each other- we became family especially some of the ones which i gradually got closer to-wai quai, danial, MaryAnn, Cheryl, Sherilyn, Cristabel, irham, ariff, faiz, jo andrew, albert, & michael :D. I couldnt control the tears pouring down my face as we say goodbye:):):)....oh well it is saaaad but then again-we will meet each other in six months :)

well i guess thats about it- i actually do have more to post about but i think i shall save all that for when i have pictures. Some of the stuff explain themselves better through the pictures so i wont waste my time aimlessly typing everything :D

LOVE YOU DARLINGS! -missing my family, darling kareena & precious luck soo much :D:D:D

Also missing my dearest sha, chuen, eli, JD and gee!

if you guys are reading this, miss you guys loads!