2010년 3월 31일 수요일

At BEIMUN: Beijing Kaoya


A couple weeks ago, I was at Beijing for BEIMUN.
It was fun of course, but for me the best part was the food.
Of all the food I had, my favorite was definitely the Beijing Kaoya, also known as the Pecking Duck by Westerners.

Beijing Kaoya has been one of my favorite dishes since I first tasted in third grade in a restaurant in Virginia. Since then, I've begged my parents every weekend to go there for dinner. Good times... However, my joyful days of eating Beijing Kaoya came to an end when I moved back to Korea in fifth grade:( There are no decent Kaoya restaurants in Korea! So... I hadn't had it for three years... I had missed it... But then I got a chance to eat it again in Beijing! Actually, I had two chances! Once in Dadong Restaurant and once in this restaurant which I don't remember the name of.....................

I'll show you a couple pictures of my delicious meal at Dadong restaurant!

We started the meal with two dishes of fried rice. This one above was the duck liver fried rice. We were a little doubtful when we ordered the dish, seeing the word "duck-liver" in the description. However, it turned out to be delicious!


This was our other fried rice. It tasted okay, but I found the duck liver one more appetizing. This one had a peculiar spice in it that I didn't really like.

Now for the moment you've all been waiting for, I present to you the Beijing Kaoya!!!!!!

Wow, very beautiful! LOL
The duck skin is on top with the meat on the bottom. We ate the skin with sugar and the meat with a brown sauce and pancakes and sesame bread.

I wanted to show you another picture of the Kaoya so that you can fully appreciate the beauty of the glossy duck!

After we were done with our duck, we were served some duck soup. I didn't like the soup very much; it was a little too greasy for me.

This black sesame soup was served as dessert. I loved it! It tasted exactly like the black sesame spread that comes with Market O's water crackers.

We were also served some fruit and gum after, but unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of them:(

Haha, our masterpiece! My friends and I did this while we were waiting for our food. One of my friends protested against it saying that we were acting like a bunch of kindergardeners, but we did it anyway! I guess we did look a little odd, setting our ducks into a circle and taking pictures of it. LOL

Me satisfied with my meal and playing around:)

Well, that's how my first meal in Beijing went. If you have never had any Beijing Kaoya, I highly recommend that you try it! It's REALLY good!

2010년 3월 19일 금요일

Picking Classes

This week was quite different from those other weeks.
Instead of having club after second block, we attended different informational sessions on different courses, clubs, and electives.
I had absolutely NO IDEA about what courses I wanted to take next year.
I mean I had a vague idea of what courses I should take, but there were some courses that sounded fun but I wasn't sure if I should take it or not.
Most of the courses - AP Biology, AP World History, Digital Journalism, Yearbook, Economics - seemed interesting to me.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend the AP Biology session on Monday because I was at BEIMUN...
I really wanted to go to that session, because it was one of the courses I was interested in...
So I ended up going to the AP World History session on Tuesday and the Digital Journalism session on Thursday. (I also went to Key Club and Art II, but they weren't as important. I mean there is NO WAY I'll ever take art. My art skills are quite... well... dismal.. LOL)

Anyways, from the session, I got the idea that AP World History would be more difficult for me, so I decided that next year, I would go with the easier one: AP Biology. If I had more space, if I had more time, if I was allowed, then I probably would have taken both APs.

I had originally intended to take PE and Asian Studies next year in my sophomore year, but I fell in love with Digital Journalism after attending the informational session. I had also thought that PTV was pretty cool, and I think that Digital Journalism will also be pretty neat. (And I may also get the chance to go to MUN conferences as press! That would be a very different experience from attending them as a delegate...) Therefore, I decided to push back Asian Studies until my senior year and try out Digital Journalism. I hope it's fun:)

Picking classes all week... It got me thinking... Is my freshman year already almost over? Am I becoming a sophomore? It was a weird thought. It seemed like yesterday that I entered high school as a nervous rising freshman. Now, I'm almost done with the year and am becoming a slightly more experienced sophomore. I guess that what the upperclassmen say about time flying in high school is true. My freshman year just flew by like that. I'm hoping that the rest of my years will last longer, especially next year, as I look forward to taking AP Biology and Digital Journalism next year!:)



2010년 3월 18일 목요일

Spring Break

Yay, it's almost spring break!!!!!!!
But during spring break...........................
I think I'm probably going to stay at home and do homework and stuff........
Pretty depressing........
Well, if anything interesting happens, I'll tell you!

2010년 3월 17일 수요일

BEIMUN

Yay, I'm back!
Actually, I was back on Monday...
Anyways, I had lots of fun and a bit of something else....
I'll tell you more about it later,
I'll also upload some pictures!
(Especially that picture of the Beijing Duck we ate :D)

2010년 3월 8일 월요일

Please visit my blog!

So today, I decided to add a cluster map to my blog; I wanted to see how many had people had visited my blog. I went to clustrmap.com, filled out the necessary information, logged into to get the url for my cluster map, and added the gadget to my sidebar. After I was done, I took a look at it and saw that there were no red dots anywhere.

I first thought that it was because the number of visitors were too small to show up on the map. I mean, it wasn't like no one had ever visited my blog right?




So I clicked on the map to see how many visitors I recently had and got this...




Pretty depressing right? 0 visits...

But I also think that something is wrong with the map, because I know SOME people came to my blog. My friends-Natalie, Rachel, Jane-came to my blog and commented on some posts. Their visits didn't show up on the map, so....... I'm crossing my fingers that that's what happened and that I didn't REALLY get 0 visits.

So I'm writing this post in hopes that more people will come to my blog and comment... Today, I spent nearly thirty minutes after correcting my Algebra II test going to other people's blogs and writing comments that say "Wow, this is really nice! Can you please come to my at http://christinek13.blogspot.com/?" I'm hoping that those people will reply. (Yeah, you can tell that I am pretty desperate...)

Anyways, I hope that more people visit my blog and if you are someone who is currently visiting my blog viewing this post, please comment on any one of my posts!:)

2010년 3월 5일 금요일

Winkieeeee:)

Now you may have wondered about why my blog is named "Winkie World."
Well, Winkie is the name of my white pomeranian!
Now you may ask why I named my blog after my blog.
Hmmm... Truthfully, I
don't really know...
But I do remember that back when I created my blog, I was obsessed with my dog and that may be why...

Anyways, in about 8 days, my dog will be 5 months old!
He has been through A LOT during the three months he's been with our family.

First, he broke his left hind leg just two weeks after he came to our house, because my mom accidentally stepped on him... As a result, he ended up being in a cast for about a month:( But he's fine now, so don't worry! (Almost TOO fine actually, he's too hyper!)

Second, he took his first walk
last week! It didn't last long though, because Winkie kept going somewhere else... But with lots of practice, Winkie will be able to do it!

Third, he ate a lot good food. I'm not
just talking about regular dog food and biscuits. He has had a lot of good human food too. Our family promised each other that we wouldn't give him any human food because he would end up not eating his dog food, but he stares at us with those cute puppy eyes under the kitchen table when we're eating something!

Speaking of food, Winkie is VERY protective of his food. Whenever we go near him when he has doggy biscuit
in his mouth, he runs away to one of his hiding places in fear of getting
the biscuit stolen. I hope he comes to trust us more...

Winkie also greets me when I come home from somewhere, wagging his tail and putting his ears back. (I knew that dogs wagged their tails when they were happy to see their owners, but I never knew that dogs put their ears back. I wonder why he does that. He looks like an earless puppy when he does that! LOL)

For now, I'll show you a couple photos of Winkie.

Winkie likes sitting on my sister's gigantic teddy bear for some unknown reason..












Haha Sometimes, Winkie just lies down on the floor like that.











I'm going to go and try to walk Winkie again.:)
So what's your dog like? Comment below!

2010년 3월 3일 수요일

Smile:)


Being a human being, I often come across situations when I become depressed or feel hopeless.
Whether it be related to family, friends, school...
During those moments, I did nothing but let myself feel down and hopeless.
Actually, now that I think about it, I even blamed myself for those situations.

During the summer before my first high school year, I had lots of doubts.
"Will I do well in high school? What if I mess up?"
I never felt relieved but rather stressed though it was summer break.

Then one day (I think it was about two weeks before school started), I discovered an audiobook in my dad's iPod. The book was called The Secret. For some unknown reason, I began to listen to the audiobook everywhere I went. When I went to the grocery store, when I went shopping... So I ended up finishing the book in about two days. (a record time for me LOL, and it was an audiobook so that's probably why too)

Basically, the book tells you that your thoughts shape who you are, so you should keep your thoughts positive and focus on the things you want. You shouldn't dwell on negative things about yourself because it will only bring about MORE negative things, but rather focus on the things you want because then it will come to you!:)

So I decided to try it out. I smiled everywhere I went, (well maybe except the times when I am sleepy LOL), I tried to stay positive no matter what happened, and most importantly, I believed in myself. For example, when I had a World History exam the next day, rather than writing "I AM SCREWED or WHAT AM I GOING TO DO" on my msn, I wrote positive messages such as "It's going to be fine:)" or in extreme cases, "I am going to write a FABULOUS essay tomorrow" LOL. Even now, though I am a bit worried about BEIMUN, I just wrote on my msn message, "i can do it, i can do it, i can do it :)"

Though some people have actually told me that my method of controlling myself is a little... well... weird, I know for a fact that it actually works! Whenever, I see my msn message, I feel much better and tend to perform better. Moreover, there is probably that stuff going on with the power of the universe that was mentioned in The Secret.

Now I've noticed these days that everyone is very stressed. In fact, a majority of students' msn messages or facebook statuses say "i wanna get out of this place", "ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ (the emoticon for crying), "i am screwed," or something along those lines. And I can just imagine the looks on their faces.

But I want to tell them, "SMILE!" I know for a fact that they'll feel much better that way, and worrying will do nothing to alleviate the situation. So why worry and stress when you can smile your way out of it?