There's always room for more nerdy posts!

I'm taking a break from my serious biz real life musings to make a post consisting entirely of GIFS to express how I feel about "A Dance with Dragons," as well as having to wait what will probably amount to another ten years for the next GRRM book. I finished the book a couple weeks ago, but wanted to wait until I had my emotions fully under control before making this post.
NOTE: my emotions are totally, fully under control. It's not like I have incredibly vivid ASoIaF-inspired dreams every night, and wake up crying. Not at all.

***needless to say, this post will contain spoilers for the entire ASoIaF series***

Recently I came across this interview with EW:
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So why did you kill Jon Snow?
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN: Oh, you think he’s dead, do you?

GRRM is the biggest troll on the internets.
Thank god I don't live near Santa Fe, or he'd be getting one of these.

I can't EVEN. Like I can't even talk about this. LALALALA Jon is not dead whatever I don't care what you think or the evidence against me. I DON'T CARE. I'm totally apathetic.

 Basically as apathetic as I was about this one dying.

........

..........

Oh you freakishly beautiful man. You know nothing, Jon Snow.

 

.......Okay maybe I'm not totally apathetic.
BRB while I burn all of my books in my grief.
(So you know how I originally said this post was going to be about how I feel about ADwD? I lied. It's about a beautiful man named Jon Snow.)

that awkward moment when you realize you weren't meant to be an economist, after all

I probably spent the last three years in college studying the wrong thing.

You don't know how hard it was for me to type that.

I've always been the model Asian child--academically, at least. I did well in elementary school, middle school, high school. I rocked the SATS. I got into my first choice school. I did well in college. Obediently, I bought GRE books and even signed up for a test date: Friday, September 23rd.

But now I'm kind of thinking. Wait a second. Why am I taking the GRE? Where am I going to apply for grad school? What kind of programs am I interested in? Do I want to study more? If so, what am I going to study?

Economics??

Oh boy. Economics. Everyone I know makes fun of me for being an econ nerd. Not because I am an econ nerd (I'm not. Not at all. I don't even have a favorite obscure microeconomic theory). But because everyone at Georgetown who isn't an econ major hates it with a fiery passion,  people in the SFS who choose to be International Political Economy majors are deemed as insane masochists.

They might not be too far off the mark concerning the last part, at least when it comes to me.

I came into college wishing, like the majority of SFS kids, for my 2 years of mandatory econ classes to be behind me. My worst grade in college was in macroeconomics. Yet, somehow, during that important season of my sophomore year when it became time to choose my major, I realized that the only classes that challenged me were my econ classes, so instead of taking the sane way out (majored in something that came much more easily, such as IPOL or RCST), I signed myself up for the most difficult thing I could: IPEC.

I would be lying if I said I haven't regretted it since. I've regretted it a lot. I regretted it through every PECO-201 lecture, with every page I turned in my econometrics textbook. I regret it each time I look at my transcript and my eyes zero in on my GPA. I regret it every time I see/hear/smell/taste the words: GRETL or STATA.

There are things, of course, that I don't regret. My awesome relationship with Dean Kaneda, hands down the best professor I've had at Georgetown. Reading Hal Varian's "Intermediate Microeconomics"--the funniest textbook I've read to date. TAing for International Trade. Meeting equally insane IPEC majors who would eventually become some of my best friends. And I'm sure there are other good things that I can't quite remember right now.

Or that's what I'm trying to convince myself. It's too late to change my major, regardless. If I could do it again, I would've studied education policy or education administration--things I'm passionate about. But Georgetown doesn't offer these majors, so I would never do it again even if given the chance: one thing I absolutely do not regret is choosing to go to Georgetown. That choice, at least, was right.

So I went to the right school but spent my years studying the wrong thing. s'not so bad, come to think about it. One day I'll look back on these years and laugh over all those tears spilled over bad econ grades and impossible problem sets. In the end I still learned a few things: the value of friendship, to truly believe in the power of my little hands, how to accept defeat gracefully. You know. The important stuff.

It's like freshman year all over again

My absolute worst grades by a longshot in college came my second semester freshman year. It was a difficult pill to swallow, especially being an overachieving 4.0 student in high school (like every other Georgetown kid), and somehow managing to pull the same my first semester in college (those days are long gone). I do have an excuse. A feeble one, maybe, but one I will stand by to the grave.

I got the swine flu.

No, seriously. May 2009, when swine flu was still mostly just a huge internet joke and didn't actually happen in the US, I came down with it, right during finals week. I refused to go to the doctor, partly because I'm awful about going to the doctor but mostly because Georgetown's student health center is absolutely garbage. I waited until I was safe at home in Seattle, feverish, and too weak to walk unaided until finally agreeing to let my mom haul my sorry ass to the hospital, where I found out that not only did I have swine flu, I also contracted a healthy case of pneumonia on top of that.

I could have died. You would think I learned my lesson. Google sure did:

(I wish this picture were a joke. It's not. Try it in your own google browser!)

I didn't learn my lesson. Just this past semester, I got a sinus infection, and instead of going to the doctor to get a simple round of antibiotics (been there, done that, many times), I thought this time I'd "tough it out". Unfortunately things never work out as planned. I got bronchitis, on top of my severe sinus infection, and couldn't leave my bed for a good ten days. How I did not fail out of college in the process is still mystery to me.

Today is July 18th, 2011. It is not second-semester freshman year. It is also not second-semester junior year. It's "you're about to be a senior in college and people are going to start expecting you to act like an adult" year. Oops.

I'm pretty sick. I started getting really sharp pain in my abdomen area on Tuesday and thought I'd just tough it out (though I have good reason this time--I am constantly plagued with stomach aches of all kinds due to a poor digestive system). It got worse. I reluctantly went to go see my doctor. Appendicitis, he said, and sent me to the hospital to get a CT scan. Drank an ocean's worth of godawful contrast fluid. Got hooked up to an IV. Results: the area where my lower and upper intestine meet (aka where my appendix is) was inflamed, but they couldn't see my actual appendix on the scan. According to my doctor it's rare for someone to have appendicitis without the appendix showing up as inflamed on the scan, no matter how small. Apparently I have a very small appendix (or an appendix on hiatus... where to, no one knows). So the radiologist literally shoo-d me out of his office, and I went home.

Home is where I am now. If I don't get better, I'm going to have to get another CT, and then maybe even a colonoscopy. In light of that, I'm forcing myself to feel better. For now, at least, I'm going to take advantage of this opportunity to curl up in bed with some decaffeinated tea and inhale the rest of George R.R. Martin's epic "A Dance with Dragons." I've learned rather personally this summer that life is always better when you make happiness a choice, rather than a result of circumstance.

And, hey. There are much worst things in life than my current deal. GRRM could've hit a severe writer's block and published the 5th book in his series next year. That would have been real pain. Not this silly mummer's farce of a sick girl.

grass does not exist on the other side

Okay I suck. I got back to Seattle midday Sunday after driving non-stop from Arches National Park for a good part of the night. I realize it's Sunday. I've decided this writer's block is from my inability to describe how awesome and incredible my roadtrip was, so I'll just say this.

The best part of the trip may have been waking up Sunday morning, just hours away from home, to see evergreen trees, rushing, clear rivers, beautiful deep brown soil heavily littered with sinuously soft green, GREEN--did I mention green?--grass. None of that coarse, painful yellow-brown stuff they call grass in the SW, or dusty, red-dirt that gets caught in your nose, your ears, and eyelashes, even. Or those prickly angry little shrubs people who live down there like to call "trees".

Just kidding.

The southwest was amazing. I got to watch the sun set in the Grand Canyon, hike down into the canyon, and almost die of dehydration on the way back up (note to self: you can never have too much water). I saw unbelievable Navajo pueblos at Navajo National Monument--how they're still preserved to this day is a beautiful mystery. I was smitten with flirty National Monument, so easy to love, so hard to part with. And at Arches, I had the opportunity to stand beneath the shade of Delicate Arch and wonder at its beautiful majesty.

Do yourself a favor and go visit the SW if you ever get the chance (only after you've visited the NW, obviously). I know I'll be back soon. Interested in hiking the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim? Let me know, I want to make a trip of it within the next year.

WA-OR-CA-NV-AZ-UT-ID-WA

Welcome to the next two weeks of my life. We Le's don't mess around.

I'm leaving Monday morning around 8am for Lake Tahoe. My family has been on countless road trips through all parts of WA, OR, and northern CA, so we're breezing through those states and going straight for the gold. Our tentative schedule looks something like this:

6/27: Leave Bellevue
6/28-29: Lake Tahoe
6/29-30: Greater SF area/Napa Valley
7/1: Malibu
7/1-4: Santa Ana
7/4-5: Las Vegas, NV
7/5-7: Grand Canyon (!!!)
7/7-10: Utah, various (Lake Powell, Arches National Park, etc)
7/11: Home

The reason why I say tentative is because my family fails at making plans.  In my father's words: "it's not our style." The advent of the internet (and my father's subsequent recognition of the internet as a necessary evil, decades after its invention) has helped planning somewhat, but we remain people of our roots. The last Epic Road Trip my family took was in 2002, when we took three weeks to scour every major city from here to Phoenix, AZ. My father did not print out directions or make reservations. Nope. We had a US map, more detailed state maps, and my 12-year-old self as front-seat navigator (I thank my dad for my great sense of direction despite being an Asian female). Where did we sleep at night? We camped where we could. And if we had to stay somewhere more people-friendly, we just drove along the highway until we found suitable accomodations. Now that's adventure.

This time around, though, we have a plan. Sort of. Knowing us, two-days into the trip we're going to see a sign pointing left to some cave, and my father won't be able to say no. We'll swerve off the highway, follow some dusty, overgrown road, and take a locally-guided tour down into a damp, dark, cave that will turn out to be incredible and the highlight of our trip.

Case in point: Lake Shasta Caverns on Lake Shasta, CA. Never heard of it? We hadn't either until we drove past it on our way back from Yosemite National Park in 2008. These caves remain the highlight of that trip.

Hopefully we'll make it to the Grand Canyon. And, after that, Utah. Oh, Utah. This has been on my dad's "To-visit" list for years and years now, but he's never wanted to do it without the kids, and I've been an awful daughter in that since leaving for college I've never been home long enough to go on a proper road trip with my daddy. Well, we're changing that this summer. We're going to spend four days in Utah, which, for a Le family roadtrip, is pretty much a lifetime.

You may be wondering, then, why we're spending 4 whole days in Santa Ana. Good question. The real reason why we're going on this road trip is for a Vietnamese Christian Conference in Santa Ana. This month (June) marks 100 years of Evangelical Christianity in Vietnam which is a Big Deal for my family and for the Vietnamese Christian community worldwide. Thousands of Vietnamese Christians from all denominations will gather in Santa Ana from July 1-4 in celebration. Sound terrifying? It will be. Exciting? Even more so!

So there you have it. My itinerary for June 27th-July 11th. Blog updates will likely be rare, but I promise a good one upon my return.

LE is not only my last name

Everyone knows more or less that I work for a non-profit. For the most part, when people catch me freaking out on the second floor of our library ("Nhaca, you live here," I'm often told. True--it's a sad, windowless existence), it's because of something work-related and not school related. I joke with my friends that the reason why I don't panic about exams and school in general (although, as an IPEC major, I have many things I should be panicking about--another post for another day) is because I use up all my stress/panic buttons on LE. Even my darling dean and employer, Dean Kaneda, cautioned me at the beginning of the school year not to "overexert myself with extracurriculars", because my academics would surely suffer.

To that I can only say one thing: oops?

You may be wondering, "What is LE?" The easy answer: my last name. The not-so-easy answer: the acronym for the best non-profit ever, Learning Enterprises.

I applied to teach English in Thailand as a wee little freshman nearly four years ago with LE. Back then, Learning Enterprises was a fee-free opportunity to leave the country for the first time since I was brought to these shores as an infant and engage in meaningful service. I lived with a host family, gained weight on authentic Thai food, and taught English at a tiny rural school in Sanamklee, Phitsanulok, Thailand. The experience, to this day, remains one of my best and most-cherished (you can read about my experience on change.org, where I served as a guest blogger for the summer, here).

 Everyone, in unison: "awwwww!"

 My sophomore year I served as LE's Georgetown Campus Director, where I recruited, interviewed, selected, and trained volunteers for service. It was a difficult and frustrating experience, for sure, but definitely, in the end, worthwhile. In summer 2010, I directed LE's program in China, and also spent 4 weeks with LE's Cambodia program.

At Nanjing Train Station with my good lookin' bunch of kittens

And, this past school year, I served as the Executive Managing Director of Learning Enterprises. Aka I don't sleep and run shit.

Running a non-profit has been the single-most worthwhile, rewarding, and painful experience I've had in college. On lucky days I wake up thinking "Wow, I'm the shit!" Most of the time, however, I wake up with a panicked stone lodged deep in my chest, thinking "Whose awful idea was it to put me in charge of this crazy thing?"

This "crazy thing" being an entirely student-run US-registered 501(c)3 education-based non-profit that sends 100+ college-aged students annually to 10+ developing communities to teach English for 6-8 weeks abroad. We charge our volunteers no program fees, and our entire organization is run on the generous donation of family and friends. It sounds crazy and impossible, but it is possible. So possible that it has totally changed my life

LE has given me the opportunity to push myself beyond anything I knew was possible, make a difference in the lives of children thousands of miles away, and create real, lasting relationships with people who do not speak the same language as I do. My goal as a silly little freshman embarking on her first real adventure was to empower and inspire a small group of children in rural Thailand. In the end, I was the one who was empowered and inspired to believe in myself and believe in the power of these little midget hands creating change.

Now that's something money can't buy.

But money can help! I turn the big TWO-OH (21) this Saturday and the best thing you could possibly do for my birthday is consider donating $21 to LE. Within the next couple of weeks over 100 volunteers will be going into close to a dozen countries to touch the lives of over 5,000 children, and countless others. As Managing Director, I am directly responsible for ensuring that these programs have the necessary funding. 21 dollars goes a long way in a small non-profit like LE. In giving, you do not only make my 21st birthday the best ever (undoubtedly it will be), but you also ensure that we, humankind, are taking the right steps towards a future where children worldwide are afforded the same opportunities to access quality education.

=)

Mount Si + Lake Serene

My dad is my outdoors inspiration. When I was younger, he'd take me and my siblings on camping trips and hiking trips and beach trips. I'm honestly not sure if he knows what a hotel is. Whenever we'd travel somewhere far away enough to need overnight lodging, we always pitched a tent. In a camp ground, in the middle of freaking nowhere. Whatever. If there was a patch of dirt big enough for our tent, we would pitch it. My mom constantly bemoaned, "Why do we drive miles to sleep on rocky ground when we have perfectly comfortable accommodations back home?"

Why, indeed. My mother raised me to be a fashion-savvy, modern, capable-in-the-home city gal. My father raised me as a rugged, mountain-climbing, tent-pitching, outdoorsy tomboy. Typical. My mother was born and raised in a modest town with comfortable amenities in Vietnam, whereas my father was born and raised among rice paddies.

In anycase, this is the first time since I graduated from high school where I've had enough time at home to really get back in touch with my more rustic roots. In DC, mommy's influence easily won. Here in the Pacific NW, daddy definitely takes the cake.

I've been on two incredible hikes since returning.
1. Mount Si:

2. Lake Serene:

It really doesn't get better than this.

Mount Si is a hike I know rather intimately. It's about a 25 minute drive east of Bellevue, and my daddy took me and my siblings up this mountain many times in the past. I even went up it once with my best friend and hiking partner-in-crime, Kayla. Every time I've been it's been very crowded, which can be a little annoying when you run into rude hikers. According to the WTA, land managers estimate that Si draws between thirty thousand and fifty thousand visitors a year, making it the most heavily used trail in the state.  It's a long, totally uphill hike, with not much to see or do until you get to the very top. But the top is so worth the 2 hours of trees and trail. There are views of the Upper Snoqualmie Valley, the Puget Sound basin, and far beyond. The WTA cautions not to try to climb the haystack for obvious safety reasons, but my baby sister is a nimble little adventurer and forced me to climb climb climb. Well worth it in the end.

Lake Serene is new to me. Kayla found it on the Washington Trails Association (www.wta.org). We hiked it on a Thursday morning, so the hikers we ran into were few and far between. The hike to Bridal Veils Falls was comfortable enough, and well worth the work. The falls were absolutely deafening and incredibly beautiful. But they were nothing compared to Lake Serene, nestled in a deep basin beneath the spires of Mount Index. Jeez. I could've built a house and lived the rest of my years up there. It was awe inspiring, majestic, beautiful.

Up there, I couldn't imagine living my life comfortable in some city and be content in never venturing out into the natural wilderness that is so available to us. It's funny how living and loving DC almost tricked me into forgetting how much more formidable and magical God-created landscapes are than man-made ones.

So maybe I'm not traveling thousands of miles away from home this summer to scale the walls of Angkor Wat or run my feet through the blinding white-sand in Pattaya. There's beauty everywhere. You just gotta remember to look.