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?

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

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...

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??

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 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 view from Empire State!

Before I begin, this is a disclaimer that this blog post will probably end up being more of a photo montage of all the things.

The next stop of the Lu family's Ecuador adventure was the Amazon - the whole reason we went on this trip in the first place! We stayed at Yarina Ecolodge for three days. It's a small lodge located in the Amazon rainforest that's only accessible by boat from the nearest town, Coca, and has no wifi and electricity during a few hours of the day. At first, I thought that having no internet and no phone connection and no electricity was going to be quite awful, but it turns out we were waking up so early and were all so tired from our activities during the day that when we weren't exploring the area, we were dead asleep.

Yarina Ecolodge - we stayed in those little cabins, 2 people per cabin!

Yarina Ecolodge - this is the welcoming center and also where we ate our catered meals every day

We had a nature guide, Wintel, who spoke no English and knew we understood nothing he was saying (we also had a translator) but was a sweetheart and was so excited about everything he showed us. His enthusiasm was infectious, and we definitely wouldn't have learned and seen as much in the rainforest and taken away so much if it hadn't been for him and his stories. If you ever get the chance to go to Yarina, definitely ask for him!

This is Wintel! He's making Hera a little crown out of leaves.

With Wintel, we went on a couple hikes into the rainforest to look for animals - we saw LOTS of bugs (which were rather gross), birds (one made a laughing sound, which was hilarious), and tiny monkeys (which were adorable!) - and to learn about the foliage. Cue the photos:

This is the "Tree of Rain", notable because the fruit grows on the trunk and not the branches. Apparently the indigenous people in the Amazon believe that if you run around one of these 3 times and, on the last rotation, pick one of the fruits and throw it behind you and run away quickly, it will ward away tumors. They rather do look like tumors.

This is a type of mushroom that you can write on! The indigenous people use it as markers in order to not get lost.

This is the tarantula flower, named because its hairy.

These trees had roots that grew out like ribbons, so we started calling it the ribbon tree. Here's one, with Hera for size (she's 6).

On our night hike, I managed to get some pretty clear photos of bugs!

More bugs. We also saw spiders, but I opted out of taking photos (I really, really, really dislike spiders.)

Aaaand a cute little frog! This was one of quite a few that we saw that night.

During one of our hikes, Wintel brought us to a vine that had been fashioned into a makeshift swing. Yes - you're thinking right: I, and my family (although we didn't get a video of my mom, just know that she basically screamed for her life because she was rather scared), literally swung from vines like Tarzan. I'm cool, I know.

I have no idea what this fruit is called, but the little "seeds" shown are crushed and used as war paint.

This is a tree with a hole in it (the tree is still alive, too) and it's used to crush sugarcane - the juices flow down into the metal plate and then collected with a cup!

In case you ever wondered what coffee flowers looked like - this is what they look like.

Wintel made my dad and Hera little crowns out of leaves! Apparently these leaves are generally used to make skirts and roofs, and can last more than a decade with proper treatment.

Cacao!

Sorry for disappearing for a month - it was finals season, and straight after I was whisked away to Ecuador and the Amazon, where the connection was either spotty or nonexistent. No matter, now I have photos upon photos upon photos (and videos!) of my vacation and stories to tell!

A little backstory on why my family decided to go to Ecuador: my dad has wanted to go to the Amazon ever since I can remember. After probably what's been years and years of begging my mom, we finally decided to book the trip to Ecuador, near the source of the great river itself! We had no idea of what to expect - we were so unprepared that no one bothered to look up the currency of Ecuador until we had landed and we were waiting for my mom to finish renting the car.

Ecuador uses the U.S. Dollar as their national currency, in case anyone was curious. To be honest, I don't quite understand how that works, but it was very convenient to not have to exchange currencies and to be able to withdraw money from the atms (which had no withdrawal fee!).

We spent our first day in Quito, the capital city of Ecuador, just exploring the city, trying out all of the exotic fruits, and eating chocolate. Since we didn't know where to go and how to get there, we asked our hotel for where to go and Google Maps for the way there. The drive there, while on rather bumpy and hilly roads, was breathtaking - the small, colorful Spanish-style houses, all huddled close together and climbing the hills, looked like layers and layers and layers of pixelated bright colors.

houses on houses on houses!

Our first stop was Mercado Artesanal La Mariscal, which was a large one-story complex of artisan stalls filled with woven fabrics and leather goods and weird foods and exotic fruits and beautiful white peasant blouses. We tried out a 65% mint chocolate that was mostly bitter - surprising to us, considering even a 75% in the US is fairly sweet - and a weird green candy that tasted a bit like sugary soap.

Mercado Artesanal La Mariscal

The weird green candy that none of us liked

We also tried a weird fruit that was about the size of a date but was reddish and tasted like a hybrid of a mango and a plum. It contained a large seed inside and it was really sweet and juicy and yummy, but we still don't know what it was.

The fruit we couldn't identify are under the mango slices

Our next stop was the Old Town near Santo Domingo, where there was another little market and we tried some fresh ice cream. We walked around the area and ended up happening upon a tiny, hole-in-the-wall chocolate and coffee shop called Chez Tiff Artisanal. The shop had two cases full of beautiful little truffles, and with the server's recommendation, we picked out four truffles: a passion fruit, a coffee, a blackberry, and a regular milk chocolate truffle. The truffles use fresh fruit, apparently, and the chocolate tasted richer and the truffles tasted better than anything I have had before - all for 80 cents each! Hera's favorite was the passion fruit truffle, which had fresh passion fruit juices inside.

Left to right: milk chocolate truffle, coffee truffle, passion fruit truffle, and blackberry truffle

We also got hot chocolates, which had no sugar in it and was just a combination of pure cacao with milk. It was tasty, but I added a bit of sugarcane sugar to make it sweeter - I think my sweet tooth has grown since living in the States for so long.

Incredible hot chocolates

The end the day resulted in us trying to get back to the hotel using Google Maps and us learning that Google Maps has trouble differentiating between pedestrian roads and car roads in Quito. It directed us down a ridiculously steep hill of a road (maybe even steeper than 30 degrees?) which was so narrow it barely fit the width of two cars and ended in stairs. Our pathetic little rental manual car had a lot of trouble backing back up - we all got out of the car, found rocks to block the wheels from rolling down more, and my mom had to carefully back the car up the hill and past the car that happened to be parked on the side. Pretty much all of us had multiple heart attacks during this time, and after my mom succeeded and we all got back into the car, the car smelled foul because we had been overworking the gears and the engine so much.

Thinking the worst was behind us, we got on the highway. Unfortunately, the highway also had a bit of an incline and the car wasn't a fan. We were on the right side of the highway, thankfully, when we heard a bang and pungent gas started to come out of the ventilation system. Long story short, we saw small pieces of the gears on the highway after we had gotten out and were sitting on the side and we had to get the car towed. It was quite an adventure, and I'm glad we were all safe - and that the car didn't blow up or waited to break down the next day when we would be on our way to the Amazon.

Say hi to mom carefully maneuvering the car onto the tow truck

Stay tuned for part 2 next week, where my family and I go explore the Amazon!

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