politics

Terror

11:23 PM

Writing has always been cathartic for me. I’ve always believed in the power of getting words down on paper and letting the emotions out. Blogging and sharing my thoughts helped me with my anxieties, and I hoped that my anxiety-induced writing would put another voice on the table in regards to the MIT experience.

I took a long hiatus.

Today, I am blogging again. After all, I am now more anxious than ever, and I have a voice that begs to be heard.

On Monday night, my 7 year old sister called me and told me about how she “cannot wait for Hillary to win.”

On Tuesday night, amidst a bar filled with New Yorkers, I watched as my sister’s hopes were shattered. I watched as the states were called. I watched as sexism and racism won out, again. I watched as half the country told me and my friends and many of the people around me that we did not matter to them.

I spent the entirety of Wednesday crying. My hands didn’t stop shaking all day. I got drunk with my company as they attempted to console me at our happy hour in Manhattan. If I hadn’t had to get back to Crown Heights on my own, I would’ve probably tried to drown myself in tequila. 

I am still scared to call my family because I don’t want to have to help rationalize what happened to my baby sister. I don’t know if I can.

The thing is, I lived in China during some of my most formative years. I was a resident in a country that still has a repressive regime. My parents shielded me from most realities when I was little, but as I grew older and distanced myself from China, my dad began to tell me more and more about the country.

As a child, I didn’t really notice many differences between life in America and life in China. When I moved back to the States at 13, I wasn’t taking advantage of American healthcare; I didn’t understand the realities of women’s rights and the hurdles Americans had overcome; I didn’t know how valuable it was to be able to speak your thoughts without fear. 

Life didn’t seem that different.

I take advantage now. I understand now. I know now.

Life seems very different now.

I am a woman. I am ethnically Chinese. I am an alien resident of Brooklyn, New York. I am a user experience designer in Manhattan. Being all those things in a city like New York, as of right now, isn’t too bad.

But I’ve had traumatic experiences here regardless. 

A few years ago, I was given death threats on the subway at 11 pm by a white man. He told me that “my people” were taking jobs away from people like him. He told me he had a knife in his jacket. He rambled a lot under his breath so I couldn’t understand everything he said, but I assume it was in the same vein. 

At the time, I was not alone - I was with a friend, who happens to be a white woman. Her whiteness did not shield me. We got off the train as soon as we could.

A few months ago, I was on the train home from work. It was maybe 7 pm at night, because I worked late that day. A black man jacked off under his shorts while standing next to me, continuously attempting to push his crotch towards my face.

I hyperventilated on my walk home.

A few weeks ago, also on the train home, I accidentally got in the way of a black woman around my age while attempting to take my seat. She stuck her phone in my face so her white boyfriend could see what I looked like, while complaining about Asians. She used her elbows to push me against the edge of the seat.

Instead of fighting back, I made myself as small as possible. She texted her friend saying I was being aggressive.

I get catcalled on a near-weekly basis, by men of all colors and all ages. It never fails to make me feel nauseous and dirty. 

This is my reality. This is my reality under one of the most progressive presidencies America has known. This is my reality in a world that is theoretically more open and accepting than America has ever been before. 

Right now, this reality is about as safe as I can be.

This is why I am scared.

I’m not necessarily scared of Donald Trump himself. I have to recognize that on his own, despite being President-elect, he does not wield that much power. While I do not have that much faith in our Republican-majority Senate and House, I must force myself to believe that they will keep him in check. I know that I live in a blue state, and that in itself is already a safety net that many other people do not have.

I recognize that even if he repeals NAFTA, the trade treaty that I am legally here on, my company will help me obtain the appropriate paperwork to stay here. I recognize that even if he forces women to start paying for their contraception again, I make enough that I am able to pay for it. I am very, very lucky in that regard.

But I am scared of the rhetoric that has followed his campaign, and the extreme sexism and racism that has made itself known in these past two days. You know what my current reality is. I am now being forced to prepare myself for it to get much, much worse.

Growing up in China, I have seen what happens to people when your government doesn’t care for you. I have seen what happens when you are afraid of your neighbors. I have seen what happens when you are too scared to talk openly about the government, and I have seen what happens when you overstep your bounds. There is no unity - it becomes every man and woman for himself. I know of people who embezzled money from their classmates. I know of family members who have embezzled money from other family members.

It’s not pretty.

And that’s in a country that’s only Chinese.

So I am scared. I am scared that people will not be able to unite. I am scared that people will begin to be scared of their neighbors, the ones with different levels of melanin in their skin, the ones who might have a slightly different opinion from themselves.

On Tuesday night, at 10:30 pm, when nothing was definite yet, my dad texted me to stay calm. He said, “It’s very strange that [Trump] could win (probably by quite a lot of votes). Also, I heard that the majority of old generation Chinese Americans voted for him, which is even more strange.”

I don’t find it strange.

That scares me too.

My parents told me when I was little that I could be whatever I wanted to be, as long as I worked hard. Many Chinese people, particularly ones that survived the past regimes of Mao and Deng Xiaoping, hold that same sentiment - after all, they all managed to survive and succeed and bring their children to a better place. 

But they survived and succeeded in a country that is only Chinese. When you don’t have systemic odds stacked against you based on the color of your skin, surviving and succeeding is easier.

Chinese people have feared for their lives in China. But they know how to avoid getting into trouble.

In America, people of color can’t avoid getting into trouble. Trouble comes and finds them, and that’s the difference.

But that’s not something that a lot of people understand. I have had many an argument with my mother about this very topic, because she has trouble understanding why in general, people of color are lower income.

She voiced racist notions to explain it. I disagreed. I still disagree, and I hope that she has reformed her opinions. But I am compassionate in a way that she is not - compassionate because I grew up comfortably and because I know and love people who are of different colors from me. She fought tooth and nail for everything she has, and she might have lost much of her compassion on the way.

Plus, as Asians, we have the luxury of being the “model minority”. I’m on the receiving end of micro-aggressions regularly, sure, but I still have it a lot better than thousands of people. 

At the very least, the worst that happens to me more often than not is getting my accomplishments erased because I’m Asian, so of course I must be doing well.

So older Chinese Americans, voting for Trump? Sure. They see a guy who seems successful and has made quite a bit of money - sounds good for the country.

What’s ironic to me, though, is that the anti-immigrant rhetoric Trump and many of his supporters spout has happened very specifically to us before. 

It was called the Chinese Exclusion Act. It was passed in 1882, and wasn’t repealed until 1943. Asians - not just Chinese Americans - still deal with those repercussions today.

People have short memories.

What I’m scared of is that if older Chinese Americans couldn’t come out for other people of color, who’s to say the rest of us will stay united? I hope that we will. I saw the protests across America happening last night, that I’m sure will continue to happen in following weeks. Despite the circumstances, it warms my heart to see such unity among people of different colors, different genders, different sexualities. 

I stand with you all.

At a time like this, when people are scared because their basic human rights are being threatened, when this country seems more divided than ever, your coming together gives me hope. I am scared, but your protests give me courage to hope for a better future.

I hope that we can come together and heal. I hope that, despite the atrocity that will be happening in the American government starting on January 20, 2017, we can come together and listen to each other and try to see how we can make it better for everyone.

I cannot let myself believe that everyone who voted for Trump was a bigot. So, I want to understand. 


If you voted for him but you don’t believe yourself to be racist or sexist, I want to know what you think it is you traded my safety and my friends’ safeties for.

art

Tattoos #3 and #4: Eternity and Creativity

10:00 AM

For a few years now, I've been wanting a paintbrush tattoo somewhere on my right arm as a reminder for myself to never stop creating. I knew it was the next tattoo I was going to get after my lotus flower (Read about it here), and I was just waiting for the time (and funds) to get it.

When my grandpa passed away suddenly a couple weeks ago, I knew I wanted to commemorate him the same way I had commemorated my grandma with my first tattoo. It didn't take very long to decide what I wanted to get for him - the Chinese character for Eternity. It's the first character in his first name, and it's a nice reminder that he and my family will always be there for me. Even though at one point I thought I'd never get a Chinese character tattooed on myself, I thought it was so fitting - my grandpa has always been good with the language. He's named every new baby (except funnily enough, Hera) that's come into the family with beautiful, meaningful words despite his lack of schooling.

Since I knew I wanted to get the character for my grandpa, I decided to just take the plunge and get both at the same time. I visited Chameleon this past Saturday with my roommate, Emma, after we got brunch at Shake Shack (I highly recommend the SmokeShack because bacon, and also, the guy making the burgers behind the counter was mad cute), and we spent less than an hour in there getting them. Shout out to the tattoo artist that saw me, Jorge Seested!

Just in case you were wondering, no, these two images are not to scale to each
other. The Chinese character tattoo is actually quite a bit larger than that,
although it's not as tall as the paintbrush.

The Chinese character is on my left forearm. I wanted it to be near the same area as the one I got for my grandma, but I didn't want them to be next to each other - they weren't from the same side of the family and it didn't feel right to not give them an ample amount of "real estate" each. I found out that getting this area of the arm tattooed was actually a really bizarre sensation - you know that game where you walk your fingers up someone's arm and see if they can figure out exactly where their elbow crease was? This was kind of like that, because I kept misplacing where the feeling of the tattoo needle actually was. It didn't particularly hurt more than my other tattoos, although it stung for a really long time afterwards, probably because of the coloring. Also, the skin around it is still a bit red, so it's probably a tad bruised.

The paintbrush is on my right outer wrist. It's pointing towards my fingers, because my fingers are what allows me to create, and it's maybe two inches long and so cute. This one also hurt just as much as the other tattoos (so, not that much) except for the paintbrush tip, which hurt just a smidge more probably because it was a lot closer to the bones in the wrist. However, unlike the character tattoo, this one barely stung afterwards.

All in all, I'm super happy with both tattoos - I think they're both really beautiful and they represent two more important parts of my life.

Will I eventually get more ink? Probably. I've been considering getting a tiny robot because Hera likes to call me her robot, since I do and make everything she asks me to. Is that weird? Maybe I spoil her too much.

I know tattoos are kind of a controversial topic, but these are quite small and fairly easy to cover up with sleeves once they're fully healed if I need them to be hidden. I think they're just another fun way to express myself, and besides, live a little!

How do you feel about tattoos? Would you ever get one - let alone two at the same time?

art

Library Desk Worker Life

10:00 AM

I've been trying to draw more from life now, to get back into that sketching habit that I, truth be told, never really had.

I was much more of a set up in front of a nice landscape and sit there for hours kind of girl. Once I drew a mansion with gel pens and sat in the sun for 6 hours. My dad got sunburnt waiting for me. Another time my family went on a hike around a lake and I sat and painted the lake.

I work in the Rotch library at MIT, and I thought it might be fun to start documenting all the things behind the desk. Not that there's really anything super interesting, but I do sit at that desk for many hours per week, so why not?

This is one of our trusty bar code scanners. Sometimes it fails at its job. We love it anyways.

A photo posted by Cecile Lu (@cissyartcafe) on

art

On Drawing and Mental Health

10:00 AM

I have been a painter and an artist my entire life.

Okay, maybe when I was like four, I couldn't really call myself an artist, although my mom is very adamant that my drawing level was much higher than an average four year old. Something about being able to draw more than just stick figures and smiley faces on butterflies apparently, in mom's eyes, made me a better drawer than my peers. I think it's the mom-ness talking.

However, I never put down my brush after I picked it up for the first time. When I moved to China, my dad found me a weekly art class, where my passion for drawing really began to flourish under a man who was possibly the most caring and invested art teacher I will ever meet. He trained me in traditional fine arts, with still lives and sculptures and art retreats into the more beautiful suburbs of Shanghai, through what began as a rather impossible language barrier. He spoke Chinese, and I spoke almost none of it; he would spend so much time on me, explaining the finer details, only for me to ask him at the very end, "What do you mean?". Once, when we went on a trip to some suburb area to draw from life, he was telling me to add texture to the tree bark in Chinese and I asked him jokingly, "What's tree bark?"

Instead of giving up on me, he actually stood there and spent a while racking his brain trying to come up with a different way to describe tree bark for me because he really thought I didn't understand him.

That's the kind of teacher he was, and this is a story that he still likes to tell his students that end up under his wing.

After a few years under his tutelage he asked me to join his Saturday art classes that he held for a few students. I promptly quit my ballet classes to join the class.

That's how much I loved drawing. I spent almost 10 hours weekly with this teacher, just painting. My mom once said that I spent more time painting per week than I did doing anything for any other class.

When I went to boarding school in Connecticut, I was put into the pre-AP Painting and Drawing class with the art teacher, JP, there. His teaching style was so different, and he taught me to loosen up with my artwork and be less technical.

I learned my foundation in China and I learned to be colorful in the US.

After doing the AP my sophomore year, I opted to take a break from the Painting and Drawing class for the next year. I managed one semester out of three before I was almost literally crawling back to the studio asking JP to let me into his year-long pre-AP class again.

I realized that painting and drawing did wonders for my mental health, even though at the time I didn't think of it as mental health - drawing was just a part of me and it felt like I had tried to rip it out of me for that semester. When I took my break from it, I literally didn't know what to do with myself - I had all this specific energy and concentration that wasn't going anywhere and I needed an outlet for the stress from my APs, but I didn't have one.

I didn't think much of it at the time. I just felt better after I went back to the studio and started drawing again.

At MIT, I didn't have time to draw. I painted for my friends, on their birthdays and Christmas, but I wasn't drawing every day like I had been in high school. I wasn't going out on walks and drawing the landscape despite how beautiful Boston is. I was socializing, making friends, stressing out over psets, not getting much sun, and pursuing other creative things that were more mindless, like crochet and knitting. (Not that there's anything wrong with crochet and knitting, I still love my hobbies. It's just not the same for me.)

As my semesters have finally mellowed out (because I'm not taking studio anymore) I wanted to get back into drawing but the activation energy I needed to begin was enormous. I would sketch things out on canvas and then just leave it for months without going back to work on it, because I preferred lying in bed watching TV - it was less energy, more mindless. Somehow over the course of MIT I began preferring activities where thinking wasn't required.

I had become so burnt out, I forgot what I was passionate about.

When my grandpa passed away two weeks ago, I didn't know what to do. I wanted to be able to say goodbye, but he's in China, and I'm in Boston. I wanted to see him again, so I asked my dad for pictures, and I naturally gravitated towards painting to work through my sorrow.

I had painted my grandmother, my mom's mother, when she passed away, and it only seemed right to paint my grandpa as well.

It took me a week to complete it and it was a horrible painting - the photo I was working off of was pixelated and unclear so I had a poor reference, and my skills are still so rusty, but the painting did what I wanted it to do. It helped me work through my sadness. Studying his face, despite the graininess of the photo, really helped with my mental health.

What a classic Grandpa Lu thing to do, to help me rekindle my love for drawing - rekindle my love for the act of drawing - even as he passes away. He always did try to help me when he could.

Since then, I've been making a true effort to draw more regularly. I mean, when the semester began I told myself I wanted to draw more, but I never really acted upon it. Now I'm actually putting into my planner a reminder for something I should do every day. I'm bringing around my sketchbook and when I have nothing to do - which is surprisingly frequent nowadays because I'm trying to take a chill final semester - I turn to a fresh page and draw something in my field of view.

I forget how nice it is to lose myself in my pen and concentrate on drawing what I see.

I'm still rusty, of course. I'll probably be rusty for a very long time, and even when I get back to the level I was at before, I'll still feel like I'm not good enough. That has always been my constant state when it comes to drawing, and it has always pushed me to improve more and practice more.

Drawing has always been there to help me be happy. I just forgot that it was still an option.



What passions do you have that help you work through your problems?

art

Have Courage, Be Kind.... and Eat Lychee

12:26 PM

Recently I've been on a handlettering kick. I've always looked at beautiful brush calligraphy and lusted over the skill, and I've finally decided to kick myself in the butt and start trying to learn the skill as well. I found some Instagram handlettering + doodling challenges and I picked two to combine (just to see how creative I could get, I guess?). The challenges are #hobonichichallenge by @penguincreative and #surelysimplelettering / #surelysimpleart by @surelysimpleblog.

The prompts for this one are favorite fruit (#hobonichichallenge) and Cinderella (#surelysimplelettering).

I just started out so my strokes are still pretty unsure and a bit wobbly. Hopefully this will improve as I continue to practice! Also, I want to try doing different fonts - my writing tends to be commanded by the pen in general anyway (my handwriting changes wildly from pen to pen, and I don't really know why) so that'll be a challenge in itself.


A photo posted by Cecile Lu (@cissyartcafe) on

college

On Reading

10:00 AM

One of the saddest things about college is that you stop reading.

At least, I did.

I used to be a voracious reader. I was the kid that had a flashlight hidden under her pillow and piles of books hidden under her bed, until one day she upgraded to a bed that had a hidden compartment in the headboard (I know, I was so cool) so her current books hid there instead. I was the kid that would have her textbook on the table and a book in her lap and end up getting spanked because of it. I was the kid that had so many books her bookcase couldn't hold them, so she took up the shelves in the DVD cases and in her parents' office. I loved reading. I loved fantastical stories where I could escape and go on adventures with other people; I loved traveling through history on the magic tree house and solving mysteries with the Boxcar Children and fighting the Yeerks with the Animorphs and learning magic spells with Harry Potter.

I still read in high school, but my focus was forced to shift and I read classic literature with my English classes and SAT prep books (I know, how sad) in my sophomore and junior years. I remember loving Brave New World especially, even though I hated it when I had read it a few years prior, and I painted a scene from The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, the beautiful scene on the ocean when he's looking at a girl who has seaweed tangled on her leg, and I enjoyed them but I could never read them as passionately as I had read young adult fiction before because the language never flowed as easily for me. When I could I stole time to read books like The Other Boleyn Girl and Harry Potter (for the millionth time) and at some point I read all of Twilight once and decided it wasn't worth picking up ever again. I fell in love and then out of love with John Green's work. I read The Art of Racing in the Rain and fell in love with the idea of dogs even though at the time I was still scared of them. I read Go Ask Alice and became even more vehemently against drugs.

Books had always been my solace.

When I got to MIT, I stopped reading. I can probably count the number of books I've read out of class on one hand, and even for class I only read a few - the study of architecture is so much more about being hands on than reading literature about other people's works, so the only books I read were for the random humanities classes that I undertook for fun.

And I forgot how to read for fun. I felt so obligated to read books that were "for adults", books that were classic literature and books that were self-help and books that were not categorized as "young adult" because those books were for high schoolers and I was going to be an adult. I felt like I had to be reading short poems and stories with some kind of hidden deeper meaning that I had to figure out and biographies and nonfiction books and all these books that I didn't find interesting because ultimately I have always been a child at heart and I will always want to lose myself in fantastical worlds.

Whenever I go to a bookstore I look at everything that I want to buy and then walk away because I feel like I should be reading something of more importance, but really, what is of more importance anyway? Every well written fiction book has some kind of moral of the story, some kind of reflection on today's society, some hidden thoughts and ideas that only the most committed readers will go and parse through to find. Just look at the huge Harry Potter community - the book series that was written for children and yet somehow, nine years later, adults and children alike are still reading and finding details that Jo hid in her words and recognizing parallels between the Wizarding world and our own boring Muggle world.

I like books that tell me stories and books that I want to go back to constantly so I can read between the lines, not books where I have to spend eons of time trying to understand what it is the author is even trying to say.

When I was in New York my friend Alyssa told me about her reading challenge, where she wanted to read 30 books in 2016. I was intrigued, but kind of scared because it's been so long since I've last picked up a book. I asked her what she thought a good number might be to pick up on, and she said to start with an easy number. We settled on 15.

15.

15 year old me would've scoffed at that number. 15 books in a whole year? 15 books in 366 days? That's about a book every 24 days. That's a pathetic number of books.

20 year old me is wondering if I will even have the time to read 15 books this year. I would love to be able to read 15 books. I would love to be able to read 20, 30, 40 books, but will I have the time? Will I have the energy?

The thing about college is that my brain is so tired from classes that I don't want to spend the brainpower digesting words on a page. It's why I started watching so much TV. Interpreting the body language and having people talk at me is so much easier.

Since I wanted to begin reading again, I decided to start tracking everything I was reading and watching. As in movies and tv shows. I have yet to begin tracking youtube videos because quite frankly, it would be rather embarrassing.

As of yet, I have finished two books (and many more tv episodes than that). If I can manage to read 2 or more books a month, I will be quite pleased, although I am currently working on a French Tintin book that is taking longer than expected because, well, it's in French. I plan on writing a recap blog post once a month or once every two months for what I've been reading and watching, and perhaps that will keep me more on track?

Cross your fingers for me.

Do you like to read in your free time, or are you mainly a tv/movie kind of person? Do you have any book recommendations you think I should read, given what I've said I enjoy reading? Let me know!

China

Grandpa Lu

10:00 AM

My grandfather passed away this morning. It's Monday, February 22, 2016. I don't even know how old he was.

Grandpa Lu was probably the most quintessentially stereotypical little old Chinese man. He was tiny and skinny, walked really slowly, slightly hunched over, was surprisingly soft-spoken considering how loud everyone else in the family is although when he raised his voice he still commanded everyone's attention.

He was smart, and kind, and caring, and ever since I can remember he has always looked the same. He was always a constant in my life - when I went back to the countryside, I could always count on seeing him and my grandma - also an adorable quintessentially stereotypical little old Chinese woman - waiting outside the door waiting for us to arrive, and waving us in, and trying to help us bring in the luggage, and bringing us fruit from his garden and eggs from his chickens.

He couldn't really speak Mandarin, and I can't speak a word of the dialect, but somehow we managed basic communications - with a lot of prodding and pointing and asking my dad to translate. He and Grandma figured out the things I liked to eat and whenever I was there, they would have it prepared and bring me a platter of the stuff to snack on. When they moved and got a larger table with a lazy susan, he would always rotate the lazy susan to place the best foods in front of me and motion for me to eat it.

I don't really know much about his life before I was born - we can't really communicate, and I only know things that my dad has told me, which has mostly been focused around my dad's youth. I know Grandpa was born sometime in the 30s because he's older than my Grandma and she's 81 this year; I know Grandpa was a child living through World War II and the Japanese massacre of the Chinese people; I know Grandpa lived through all of the horrors of Mao's reign over China; I know Grandpa was the father of 3 girls and one boy and had to work overtime in the fields all of the time in order to feed his family, because women weren't "paid" with the same amount of food as men were; I know Grandpa was a smoker but quit cold-turkey the minute he found out cigarettes were dangerous; I know Grandpa had many opinions about the Chinese government which would've gotten him thrown into jail if he ever voiced them to anyone other than his family. I don't know much about Grandpa, but I've always known he was a survivor.

For the past few years, he had a myriad of health issues. It seems like every time I went back to China - which was about once or twice a year, mind you - he was sick or had just finished battling another health problem. He was almost never eating or had some kind of weird diet because he was having stomach and intestine problems, and he was frailer than ever, but it seemed like he just kept surviving. I never really thought more about it - Grandpa was a constant. He could survive anything.

When my dad called me on Saturday to tell me that he had fallen down on Chinese New Year and gotten some kind of medicine that ended up attacking the wrong parts of his body, but had switched meds to something that was helping him get better, I just assumed he was going to be okay.

Obviously, I was wrong.

I don't know if I'll be able to go to China to say my goodbyes. Either way, Grandpa - I love you. You have always been kind and I know I was one of your favorite grandchildren, whether or not that may be because I'm the daughter of your only son. You stood up for me that time I got into a fight with dad and you put dad in his place (which was really entertaining to watch, actually). You always ate some of the cakes and pies and tarts that I baked even when you were having stomach issues and couldn't really eat anything, and you always made sure I had eaten enough even though I never eat much when I'm in the countryside, and you always tried to give me the best parts of the fish and the meat on the table. You and Grandma would always have that special pair of slippers laid out for me when I came to visit, which apparently only I could wear, and you were always there to greet us and help me bring in my suitcase even when I didn't need help, and you were always so excited to see Hera even when she was afraid to even wave to you.

I'm someone who's always entertained the idea of reincarnation - a life lost is a life gained somewhere else - and it was further reinforced when my grandma passed away on Hera's birthday. So Grandpa - I hope you come back where society is better, where the government is less crazy, where you'll have a family even larger than our ridiculously large family. I hope you have more children and they will have more children and maybe you'll have more boys in the family than ours to balance it out some. I hope you are loved more than you already are. I hope your next life will be better and you'll have to deal with less suffering and the people surrounding you will be kinder.

And I hope in the meantime, you'll watch over us like you always have.



expenses

New York City in Expenses

3:50 PM

This past long weekend I visited my friends in New York City, and we spent the weekend alternating between exploring (read: shopping) the city and hiding out in her apartment from the cold. As expected of being in NYC, I spent quite a bit of money. After all, is there anything else to do there?

Friday, February 12:

$22.50 Bus to New York City (purchased in January)
It was a long ride and the girl that sat next to me was Korean and had very long bleached hair. It was brassy. Brassy blonde is a pretty gross color, in my opinion. Also, it looked really unhealthy, as to be expected when you try to bleach black hair to blonde.

I took the BoltBus, which let me off on 1st Ave. "Basically on the moon", as Alyssa, my lovely friend who came to pick me up, said.

$20 MTA ticket refill
This money was spent much more quickly than I expected. The MTA is very expensive.

 $30 Dinner at Schiller's Liquor Bar

Amazing burger with amazing fries and a very bizarre pickle
Schiller's was recommended by Caitlin's Spotify coworkers, who I'm guessing are quite young and hipster because Schiller's was quite a lively hipster place. They said we wouldn't have to wait for a table.

We waited for an hour, so, apparently the Spotify workers are liars. Thanks, Spotify.

I ended up ordering the cheeseburger (medium rare, cheddar) with fries. It was very good and juicy, and the mustard was not Heinz mustard even though it was deceptively held in one of those cheap mustard squeeze bottles. It was spicy and very tasty and probably homemade, gauging the hipsterness of the bar.

The pickle, however, was not a pickle. Do not eat the pickle. It was bizarre.

We also got a sticky toffee pudding to share, which was very amazing, and thank you Foursquare people for recommending it. If I hadn't been so full from the burger and fries I probably would've ordered a second one for myself because it was that good.

Saturday, February 13:

$15.13 Brunch at The Grey Dog in Union Square

French Toast at The Grey Dog

We're silly.
Caitlin and I had very early brunch at 9:30am on Saturday (Alyssa stayed in bed like every other normal person on a Saturday morning). The Grey Dog is also very hipster and adorable. I got French Toast (it was huge and amazing) and a warm cider.

Caitlin opened up her care package and she got very excited about the owl washi tape I brought her. It's very cute.

$3 (probably) for Hot Chocolate with Marshmallows at Vineapple Cafe

Hot chocolate with giant marshmallows!
Alyssa had squash with one of her friends so I chilled in a coffeeshop on Pineapple Street. Brooklyn is weird. There's a Pineapple Street and Orange Street and Cranberry Street.

The marshmallows were huge except they got stuck to the cup and I had a hard time getting them out. I eventually asked for a spoon.

I didn't spend any more money on Saturday because Alyssa made me dinner. She made risotto and homemade bread and I ate my face off and then couldn't move for the rest of the day. My tummy was still hurting when we went to bed at midnight.

Alyssa's homemade bread is the best thing. 
Sunday, February 14:

$6.52 at Paper Presentation
Caitlin told me about this paper store which Alyssa then told me her friend is in love with. I was very adamant about going and then I had a hard time convincing myself to not buy out the store. It's very probably my new favorite place in New York.

I love paper.

I ended up buying a set of magnet bookmarks so that I would stop using paper clips, because warping the pages on my notebooks with paper clips is annoying to me. Plus, the magnets are very cute.

We went to Sephora where Alyssa used her gift cards and I vicariously lived through her makeup shopping.

We also went to MUJI where I convinced myself to not buy more pens because I need to use up the ones I already have, and then we went to Nordstrom Rack, Burlington Coat Factory, Forever 21 (where Alyssa scored two sweaters for less than 8 dollars - she's very proud) and DSW in search for a hat for my sad little cold ears. We didn't find anything and my ears continued to be sad and cold.

$5.80 at Whole Foods
Alyssa and I got hungry at some point so we decided to pop into the Whole Foods cafe to grab a snack - I got a chocolate croissant and a chai latte. When I asked how much switching to soy would be, the guy gave me a weird look and was like, it's free. The duh was implied.

Soy is never free anywhere else. I was very excited about my free soy upgrade. Usually I just get the milk because I'm too cheap to pay for the upgrade and deal with the tummy pains later.

We watched a couple get into a very loud argument, which was fairly entertaining and also probably very awkward for them because they were being very loud and it was Valentine's Day.

$14.95 at The Strand
The Strand is one of my favorite places in New York. There's nothing better than books on books on books - literally.

I finally found a hat at the Strand. It's grey and has a giant pom pom on the top and I feel like a total nerd when I wear it because it says Strand Books on it. I love it.

I also found a bunch of books which I photographed in order to find on Amazon Kindle later, because I didn't want to bring a bunch of books back to Boston with me. Also, because I already have too many books and moving out will be a pain. I've decided I want to try reading more instead of wasting all of my time on Youtube (not that there's anything wrong with that).

$11.25 at Bravo Pizza


A New York trip is never complete without pizza. I had a pepperoni and sausage slice, a tomato and broccoli slice, and a peach tea.

I love pizza. I love peach tea. What more could a girl want.

$15.60 at Regal Cinemas for SkullPoopL
Alyssa and I finished off our Valentine's day with Deadpool at Regal Cinemas. I thought the movie was very well done and hilarious - a lot of fourth-wall-breaking, a lot of crude humor, a lot of making fun of Marvel Studios and of MCU fans. It was great.

Although, we saw someone bring their 7-ish year old kid?? The movie is rated R. It is well deserving of its R rating. Someone is a very irresponsible parent. VERY irresponsible.

$10 MTA ticket refill
My MTA ticket ran out of money and it was sad. I consoled myself by making Alyssa take a selfie with me.
Subway selfie!
Monday, February 15:

I didn't spend any further money in the city itself on Monday. Alyssa bought me breakfast bagels and then I felt sick from too much cream cheese, and I visited The STUDIO which is a visual communications firm in Manhattan.

 $30.50 Bus to Boston (purchased in January)
I took the 7pm Greyhound back to Boston and we got caught in the snow, so I didn't get in until 12:45. When the T had already shut down. Which means I had to take an uber home.

I was not pleased with having to take an uber home.

$29.80 Uber
The Uber was the same price as my bus ticket. I feel somewhat cheated out of my money. If the Greyhound had arrived on time I wouldn't have had to spend this money. Sadface.

All in all, despite the rather horrid trip back to Boston because the weather sucked, the New York trip was very fun and a good break from.. well, from not very much considering the semester has barely started.

What's your favorite place to visit in NYC?

art

Lovebirds

10:00 AM

I'm a tad behind on this drawing thing, but I'll catch up over the weekend. Hopefully. For now - this is part of the #DNDChallenge that I found on Instagram! I wanted to try doing something really detailed, but I feel like this is a bit busy. Next time I might try to break things up with thicker lines and more white space.

A photo posted by Cecile Lu (@cissyartcafe) on

architecture

On Throwing Stuff Away

11:00 AM

Hey guys. I have a confession to make - I'm secretly a hoarder.

Well, not to the extent that I've seen some people be, but I've always collected things. I collected pens and notebooks as a kid (who am I kidding, I still do) and for a while during my pre-teen years I collected empty Kleenex boxes and toilet paper rolls with the intent that I'd make something out of them. I did, with a few of them, but the rate of my collecting was far greater than the rate of my making, so we had a cupboard full of random junk that I was very stubborn about not throwing away.

My dad eventually threw them away.

Now that I'm in college and living in my own space, I'm astounded at how I manage to find nooks and crannies to hide all my things when I really don't have very much storage space. Things just collect over time; random junk that you keep convincing yourself is important or has too much sentimental value to throw away.

On the other end of my hoarding tendencies is my anxiety over messy spaces. I don't mind other people being messy, but I can't really handle messiness in my own living space (this comes from my dad. You know, the guy that threw out all of my Kleenex boxes because he's like this too?) and so once in a while I'll go through my stuff to clean up and reorganize.

I love reorganizing. Nothing brings me more joy - well, except food, and sleep, and Hera, and... - than to find designated spaces for each and every thing and to keep them there. I am the kind of person that gets annoyed when the can opener turns up in a drawer different from the one it's always lived in. I am the kind of person that likes to have all my pens categorized and my wires and cables sorted into little zip lock baggies. I am... well you get it. I like things to be neat.

This past weekend I took on the task of reorganizing all of the junk I have in my room. I haven't tackled my closet yet (I did a couple months ago, and will probably do so again sometime in the next few weeks) but I did get rid of a garbage bag full of stuff, and a bit more. I got rid of so many papers (because why will I ever need my tests from freshman year again?) and pens that no longer write that it felt so liberating. I reorganized my bookshelves so that everything is more compact and now my collection of wrapping stuff - like boxes, and tissue paper, and other random knick knack that people need for christmas wrapping - is no longer homeless and strewn on the floor but actually part of my bookcases, with its own little section.

The hardest part of all of it was convincing myself to throw away some models and some modeling materials. While throwing out pens and papers had been easy, I have formed an emotional attachment to all of my architecture studio models and their associated things. It's not hard to be attached like that - after all, I did spend many hours building all of these models and all of them have very specific memories attached to them - mostly of being really tired, but also of those professors and experiences. Many of these models I look at and see the hours I put into it, and it always seems like such a waste to just... throw it away.

I threw away three models. I threw away three models that were associated with my last studio, a studio that thinking about still gives me headaches and makes me feel like a panic attack is coming. I threw away the last portion of the model that I had spent over 48 hours nonstop sitting and gluing and folding and crying over, and taking it out of its place to throw it away hurt because I still remember all of the pain from that class but throwing it away also felt so good. It felt like I was liberating myself from the demons of that class and I know I'm being totally over-dramatic but that class, god, that class really, really was awful. The final project was a good one - one that I'm almost proud of, maybe - but the journey there had been so awful. I suppose part of me will eventually be grateful because I learned to be stronger from it, but I don't think I've had enough time pass to look back and not have feelings of resentment rise up within me.

And after it was all gone - the trash taken out, permanently outside of my home - my room felt so nice and clean and good to be in - not that it hadn't been nice and clean and good to be in before, but it's better now - and I can look at that section in my bookcase that once housed three models which reminded me of a horrible experience and smile because it now houses wrapping paper, and paints, and canvases, and happy things still waiting for me to work on.

Plus, it's nice to know that I won't have as much to throw out when I eventually move out of this apartment.

Are you guys also hoarders / collectors of random things? Do you ever go through times of just wanting to clean stuff and throw stuff out? Let me know!

art

Les Fleurs Sont Protegés

9:41 PM

I've started trying to doodle and draw more often (mostly because I've realized that I don't draw anymore and that's sad), and I figured I'd start posting one every week.

A photo posted by Cecile Lu (@cissyartcafe) on

I know that the Paris attacks have been over for a while now, but we talked about them and the refugee crisis in my French class on Tuesday. Talking about it reminded me of the video where a reporter asked a little boy if he was scared, and when he said yes his dad made him feel feel better by telling him that the flowers would protect them. That memory inspired this doodle.

ADT

On Reflection

10:00 AM

Every January of a new year, I like to reflect on the past year. Especially now that I'm going into my last semester at MIT - yes guys, I'm graduating in June and I am all sorts of excited! - it seems like a very appropriate time to be reflecting on not just the last year but also my time here at MIT.

Is there anything I would've done differently?

1. Would I still have come to MIT?

Sometimes I feel really resentful of being at MIT, which I then follow up with feeling really ashamed for it - how many people dream about coming here? There have been multiple times where I have thought back to my senior year of high school and which colleges I could have gone to - I could've gone to McGill, probably still have had a good time without being as ridiculously stressed all the time and possibly had better job prospects just because the application pool in Canada is quite a bit smaller.

But would I have come out with as many stories and would I have been as strong and resilient as I am now? Probably not.

Was it worth it?

I don't know.

I tell myself the friends and the connections that I have now are certainly worth it, but frankly I don't quite know. I have endured the lowest moments of my life so far here, and it really sucked. On the other side of things, would I appreciate the sanity that my friends offered me as much had I not endured those moments?

2. Would I still have studied Architecture?

For the first three years at MIT, I never questioned my choice to study architecture. MIT has a wonderful architecture program. The majority of our professors really do care, our studios are interesting, we're required to take classes outside of architecture design in order to have a more well rounded education. I have learned so much about iterative design and about problem solving and I have exercised my spatial reasoning ability to the max. I have been praised for my work fairly consistently and been asked to be part of the archives every studio semester, without fail. I have a ridiculous work ethic - my professor for my last studio said that often I would make life harder for myself in order to create more beautiful work - and I am efficient and organized enough to do more complex work and be part of more clubs than many of my peers and still sleep.

And yet, this past semester, I began to question that choice.

Architecture at MIT doesn't seem very employable. Just go check out the career fair - every company is looking for course 2s (Mechanical Engineers) or course 6s (EECS). It's disheartening, although the types of companies that come to the career fair aren't necessarily the same as the ones I want to work for. At least, that's what I told myself, time and time again, until this year when I actually began to look for a job so that I could, well, be employed after graduation. Since I'm looking primarily in non-Architecture fields such as UI/UX design and product design, it feels like maybe I should've studied something different. When I first came to MIT, I truly believed that Architecture was the only major that fit my abilities and the only one I could've succeeded in, but now I have no doubt that I could've done well in other disciplines as well.

I suppose if anything, Architecture really helped hone my self-confidence.

I think if I could do it again, I might try to double major - I formed bonds with so many people and learned so much in Architecture that I can't imagine giving that up, but there's still so much that I'm curious about in other disciplines that I just didn't really have the time - or make the time - for.

I'm trying to do that now, since I'm done with studios, but I'm running out of time.

3. Would I have handled my social life differently?

To be completely honest, I don't really have much of a social life. I don't like to go out and I don't like to party because I prefer the comfort and the quietude of my room. Pretty much the extent of my socializing with my friends - who I love, by the way - includes eating things, making things to eat (and then eating those things), and watching something on Hulu or Netflix. Despite my reluctance to go out and party with them, I think they still love me and appreciate me - and certainly I would not have survived MIT without them. (Thanks guys. I love you and you mean the world to me.)

I do think that some extent of my reluctance to go out with my friends was financial - I just didn't want to spend the money - and I think if I went back I would be less hesitant to do things with them and more willing to spend the money for a nice meal or for drinks. I think I missed out on a lot of time because I was too much of a scrooge, and that's the main thing that I'm trying to improve on this year. I have to keep telling myself that it's okay to spend small change on small happinesses.

The other part of my social life comes from the groups I am part of on campus - my dance group, ADT, and Dramashop.

One thing for sure - I would've joined ADT much earlier instead of waiting until sophomore spring. I have always regretted not getting more time to spend with some of my choreographers - I have a massive girl crush on one of my choreographers my first semester, which was also the semester she graduated. It was very sad. I also have varying levels of girl crushes on most of my choreographers. I can't help it. They're all so cute and so talented.

Apart from that, ADT was also my solace away from the craziness of studios and Architecture. It was a place I could escape because literally no one else in ADT was Architecture Design and everyone was focused on learning the dances. There were some days at MIT where I got out of bed solely for ADT, and I couldn't be more grateful for having a group of people like that there for me, whether they know it or not.

4. Are there any resources I didn't take advantage of at MIT?

Yes. So many yes's. MIT has so many resources and cool things for students to do and I really didn't take advantage of any of it, and I regret it so much. The main resource that I should've taken advantage of - and didn't - is MIT's MISTI program.

MISTI is basically a program where you tell MIT where you want to go in the world and they find you an internship and pay for you to go there. It's a program where you travel abroad. For free.

I know. I know! Anyone who knows me knows that I love traveling - I've been to 18 countries and I want to go to more and also all of them again because there's so much more still to explore - and MISTI would've been perfect for me. The only problem is that, apart from Israel, I think, you have to know the language of the country, and at the time I didn't try hard enough to figure out how to take French with my schedule. I am taking French now, and I could theoretically still do MISTI for this coming summer... but I'm kind of planning a Europe backpacking trip anyway.

 5. Are there any ways you would've chosen to spend your free time differently?

I've always been a crafter and a maker. When I was little I used to collect our empty toilet paper rolls and kleenex boxes because I wanted to make things out of them - to the point where I had filled an entire cupboard with these useless boxes. My dad finally threw them out after I went to high school, and I'm pretty sure I threw a fit.

When I was in high school I picked up crocheting, and that really blossomed at MIT. Crocheting was an easy, mindless, fast project that I could do when I was too stressed out to focus, and I could make all these cute toys with them! It was a lot of fun, and I could do it in my bed. But when I spent all my free time crocheting and knitting - things I could do in my bed - I stopped painting.

I'm trying to pick it back up. I still see so many more colors in everything, and I still have an eye for color and design and layout. Skills like that, things you're born with, you don't lose. But I'm rusty. I'm less comfortable that I used to be with a brush and a canvas, and I'm less accurate in my sketches than I used to be. It's depressing! I used to be fairly good and now I'm not satisfied with almost everything I paint or draw.

There isn't really a good traditional arts program at MIT and without classes forcing me to exercise those abilities, I let them slide. Now I have to spend more time working to regain those abilities - I wish I hadn't stopped painting in the first place, but I think it'll be like riding a bike. A little rusty at first, but it'll come back with some practice.



Is there anything you would've done differently last year or in the past few years? Let me know!




animation

Character Hoodie: Baymax

12:00 PM

When I watched Big Hero 6 over Thanksgiving in 2014, I fell in love. It was a movie about design and engineering and robots and siblings, and there was great representation for Asians in Gogo Tamago - what was there not to love? The movie so clearly (to me) referenced MIT and the Media Lab, and all the total nerds that worked and studied there were so reminiscent to all of my nerd friends, except obviously we don't have crazy professors.

Well, that's actually pretty debatable.

We don't have any murderous professors set out to destroy fraudulent corporate businessmen, at least.

Plus, all the feels. I sobbed in the theater so many times when I watched it, and I sobbed again the second time I watched it at home. All the sobbing. All the feelings about Tadashi and Baymax and Hiro and my heart still can't handle it.

I've been pretty set on making a Big Hero 6 inspired something for a while now, but I never got around to it. I had it all imagined in my head - a Baymax onesie that was huge and cozy and warm.

The Baymax onesie never happened, and I kind of forgot about the project as I got caught up in the craziness of MIT and stress and work and life... until I came across Angela Clayton's videos on Youtube.

She's amazing and I'm constantly astounded at what she's able to make. I love watching her videos and her explanations of her creations, and she's got a really nice and soothing voice which makes her videos great for unwinding. A few months ago she made a How to Train Your Dragon inspired pyjama set - an elaborate hoodie complete with the spikes and patterns of Toothless, and a pair of shorts to go with it. It was one of her simpler projects - no boning and corsetry involved - and when I watched her vlogs about it, I remembered how I wanted to make a Baymax inspired project a while ago.

So, using her videos and blog posts as a sort of guide for how the pattern pieces should look like and a hoodie that I long-term borrowed (read: stole) from a friend, I drafted up a quick pattern for the base of the hoodie. I used a pair of Forever 21 shorts to draft the pattern for the pyjama shorts, leaving ample space around the sides so the shorts could be loose instead of form fitting.

This is a quick sketch of what the pattern pieces looked like. The hoodie
itself is a raglan sleeve, so when the body and sleeve pieces were attached
and the side seams hadn't been sewn up yet, it looked like a big
cross with a hole in it for the neck!

I cut the pattern pieces out of white fleece that I had picked up at my nearby fabric store earlier this week. The seams were really simple to do up - the four seams to attach the arm pieces to the body pieces, the two seams to sew up the sides, the hems, and the hood attachment.

Unfortunately, since I eyeballed everything and didn't think to measure anything out - I know, I'm so smart - the hood doesn't actually match up to the neckline, so I improv-fixed it by taking in the seams around the neckline and, after attaching the hood, hemmed the rest of the open neckline. I thought it would bother me that it's not like a real hoodie where the ends of the hood meet at the center neckline, but I actually think I like it better - regular hoodies tend to be a bit constricting on my neck, and leaving the neckline open like this counteracts that problem.

So I guess my mishap ended up working in my favor?

The shorts were also really simple. I sewed up the pieces and inserted an elastic into the waistband, and that was that.

For Baymax's actual features, I cut the pieces out of black and gray felt that I had on hand. His face was two black circles and a rectangle for the mouth, and his crest (memory card inserting thing) was a gray circle that I cut apart. I was going to sew the appliques on with my machine, but I didn't have any corresponding bobbin colors and I didn't trust my minimal sewing machine abilities to be able to sew along all the pieces in perfect lines.

I hand stitched all of appliques on. It didn't take as long as I thought, or it didn't feel really long because I was also marathoning Pirates of the Caribbean at the same time. Jack Sparrow can get you through anything.

The shorts were going to stay white, but I decided last minute to cut out Baymax's helmet design out of some red felt and attach it to the corner of the shorts. The pop of red looks really cute, and I had some red thread to hand stitch it on.

Here's the final ensemble! The face is so cute and I'm really
happy with the helmet applique on the shorts - they turned
out a lot better than I expected they would!

Since the project is made out of fleece, the entire ensemble is ridiculously soft and warm. All in all, I think it was a pretty successful project!

Here's a selfie of me wearing it! I look so tired because it's
past midnight, but I feel like I'm wearing a cloud. It's great.

Have you ever tried to make a character hoodie? I've had a love affair with hoodies for pretty much forever even though I barely wear them, and now I think I want to make more. If I do, which character should I try next?

banos

Christmas, 2015: Ecuador, part 3 - Baños - and NYE in NYC!

9:05 PM

This is the last installment of my Christmas blog posts, with a grand finale in New York City!


Our original plan after the Amazon was to go back to Quito, but the night before leaving we asked for recommendations and our guide told us to go visit Baños (the place, not the bathroom - yes, we were confused too, because baños was pretty much the only Spanish word I knew). He said that the place was called Baños because it's beside a volcano which causes hot springs, and the hot springs there are pretty famous. 

We didn't end up going to a spa to enjoy the hot springs. I know, pity.

We drove from Coca to Baños, managed to not get lost, enjoyed the view during the drive (Ecuador is incredible!) and stopped from time to time to eat meals and also buy all the exotic fruit people were selling on the sides of the roads.

This is the view we had at the remote place we stopped at for lunch. This
is also pretty much the constant view on the road - green, hilly, incredible.

We got these weird grape-like fruits that Hera couldn't
stop eating! They were really good and sweet but
the skin was rough and Hera said the skin hurt her tongue...
We didn't do anything that night because we got to Baños pretty late and we spent some time trying to find a hotel (we didn't have a reservation since it was so last minute, and for a while we were wondering if we were going to have to sleep in the truck).

The next day we explored the area. Our first stop was La Casa del Arbol, which was essentially a treehouse near the top of one of the mountains around Baños. Apparently, we were supposed to be able to see all of Baños from the treehouse, but it was unfortunately very foggy. We did end up going on a giant swing, which was very exhilarating and also a bit terrifying.

This is the view from one of the tree houses! We couldn't see the city but
the greenery was very pretty.
Me on the big swing suspended in mid air! You can see the
fog in the back that hindered our view.
Aaaand Hera's turn! (Actually, she went first.) She looks
so tiny!
For lunch, we ended up going to a nearby hotel's cafe. The food was ridiculously overpriced even for American standards (let alone Ecuadorian standards) but the view was incredible. By this time the fog had cleared up, so the sun was shining and we could see the entire city in the valley below.

Ugh how can a place be so pretty??

We went and hiked a waterfall nearby after lunch and managed to somehow attract more bug bites (apparently Hera and I are very tasty, much to our chagrin).

More prettiness.
For the rest of the afternoon we ended up walking around the town and bought some candy and some fruit, as well as two bags of coffee beans (one for us, one for my friends). We noticed something interesting during our roaming - when we were buying fruit, one of the women at the stall was taking out the trash. Not five minutes later, the garbage truck had come and picked it up, and the woman was hauling the trash can back into the stall. This doesn't sound really notable, but we had noticed prior that all of the areas we had gone to - even the really poor areas in the Amazon - were really clean. That type of timing and on schedule-ness is pretty much nonexistent in America (yes, I'm thinking of you and your piled up garbage bags, New York City). I remember just feeling really impressed by it.

The next day, we spent the morning driving back to Quito because we were taking a red-eye flight that night to New York. After we had found a place to eat lunch and a park to eat our fruit, we decided to walk across Quito back to the chocolate shop that we had found the first day. Yes, the chocolate was that good.

The last picture I got of Quito - everything is so colorful!
Our first day in New York was the 30th, and we spent it napping and recovering from our red eyes. For New Year's Eve, however, we went out to Times Square in the early afternoon to catch the 1pm show of Aladdin, on Broadway!

The show was incredible. Obviously I didn't get any pictures, but all of the costumery and practical effects were dazzling - the sheer amount of swarovski crystals on a single costume! - and the singing and dancing was obviously really amazing. I got really emotional when Aladdin starting to sing "Proud of Your Boy" because it was a song that had been written for the original Disney movie, but had been cut after they decided to kill off Aladdin's mother. Aladdin's mother stayed dead for the Broadway adaptation, but they brought back the song, and I'm pretty sure I about died in the theatre out of excitement.

By the time we got out of the show, Times Square was already being closed up for the Ball Drop (this was at about 3:30-4), and people were already beginning to swarm in. We pretty much had to fight our way out, and I was amazed that people were willing to stand outside in the cold for more than 8 hours just to watch the ball drop in real life.

We decided to stop by the Empire State Building before getting our NYE dinner, and the view was - well, the view was New York City, at night, with a very bright spot near Times Square. We could see the tiny people just swarmed there and waiting to watch the ball drop, but we couldn't see the actual ball because the pesky skyscrapers were in the way. I did, however, get to drool over the Chrysler building multiple times. 

The view from Empire State!
Dinner was quite tasty (I got a very nice Bacon tapas which was crunchy and slathered in spicy barbeque sauce - what more could a girl want?), and when we got back to the hotel, Hera wanted to stay up to ring in the New Year. Hera and I ended up watching Chopped (Hera loves food and she wants to be a chef when she grows up!) while my parents both fell asleep, and then we caught the last of the countdown. 

All in all, Ecuador was an amazing experience - I want to go back, especially now that it's really cold in Boston again - and the whole trip was a great way to end 2015 and kick off 2016.

How did you spend your new year? Let me know!

Read about part one of this trip here.
Read about part two of this trip here.