what happened was...

amazing!

Rye Dances this year is over and I can't say that I'm happy about it. Yes, I am relieved that I no longer have long ass rehearsals every day and I actually have little more time to relax, but I feel sad that this experience, which has been more of a journey to me, is over. It seems so long ago when we all first gathered with our designated choreographers anxious to know who was in the same piece as us and what the piece would be about. But it went by so fast.

The performances went very well and the pieces grew with every show. I learned more about dance and also myself along the way. I'm thankful for all my friends who came out to watch and share this experience with me. I'm also thankful to those who couldn't make it, but tried their best! All the support really means a lot to me because dance is really a huge part of my life.

Of course an after party is needed.
Partying with a huge group of dancers is sooo much fun :D

I really do wish for an upcoming relaxing week, but it's not even close. Dance assessments, acting presentations, singing presentations, anatomy papers, and creative performance pieces all within 5 days. Did I forget to mention exams the week after? Joy.

until next time.

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twitter?

I got a new budgie yesterday. Well, it's not really mine o_o

I'm just taking care of it for my cousin Nicki who received it for her "moves on it's own and musical" gift in last week's Kris Kringle game within my cousins. She has two cats at home so it's not exactly safe for the budgie to live with them. Not only because the cats will want to hunt it, but also because there's bacteria in a cat's saliva that can cause an infection to birds. I remember reading that when I researched on taking care of birds when I first got Tweety. Luckily, we have Tweety's carrying cage for the budgie to stay in.

Nicki named him/ her Twitter! Cute name =] Its middle name is Tweety's minion.

I have no idea if this budgie is a guy or a girl and I probably won't really find out any time soon.

I was a lil worried that the first encounter of Twitter and Tweety would go completely wrong and that Tweety would get territorial and jealous. It also doesn't help that Twitter is TINY and Tweety is like twice his/her size. But it seemed like Tweety was slightly scared of Twitter and tried to avoid contact. Haha! There was a point where Twitter was trying to talk to Tweety and they had a bit of a conversation. But it stopped before I could get my camera and film it =(

Tweety and Twitter's first encounter

Nicki calling the budgie Twitter sorta reminded me of my neglected Twitter account that I made just to occasionally follow certain people I am subscribed to on youtube. Other than that I've always found Twitter a bit pointless since I could do the same thing on facebook. However, I'm debating whether I should jump on the bandwagon and actually use my Twitter.

I just might because my bird is named Twitter =]

@chanteechu

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a talking t-rex!

My cousin posted some comics that his Korean students added their own English captions to.

These are my favs...

Koreans are hilarious =]

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memories.

the only warmth we have in the end.

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"Hahahaha! I'm feeling giddy!"

It's been a while... lulz.

I'm taking a break from those Day Challenges as you can probably tell already. If I find one that's interesting enough, I'll do it. Now about my life?

School wise. I've been swamped with rehearsals for my show coming up end of November! Not so much assignments anymore. But when I get home, all I want to do is sleep right away because I'm so exhausted. Our rehearsals lately have been going up to 5 hours long and we still have dance classes in the morning before. What also sucks is that between class and rehearsal I've only been getting like a 15min - 30min break and that's it. So I've literally been dancing the whole day, especially for the past three days! I got SO sore this week and I'm still sore especially in my arms and hips. My body is pretty beat up too from doing dive rolls T_T. This week coming up will be our tech week so it's just going to get worse for me. Yayyyy.... I'm still excited for the show. Just getting through these rehearsals is hell!

One of the many bruises from doing dive rolls. Yayyy.

I really love how my crappy web cam just washes out the true darkness of this bruise T_T

I never read the newspaper on my way to school or back home even though it's always available for me. Don't know why really. I guess I'm not that interested? The most I look at in the newspaper is the horoscopes and Sudoku. However, I recently have been getting into this one particular section of t.o.night that I heard about from one of my fellow commuting friends. There is a shout out section where basically people write shout outs to other strangers they notice in their commuting experience. It's pretty funny. Ahaha. I want to start collecting them and maybe keep the ones I like in my art journal (which I haven't really touched in a long time). We'll see. I'll be sure to share =]

Social wise. Unnecessary drama here and there. People seriously need to grow up, get over themselves, and not act as if the pain they are inflicting on others don't exist because they don't see it or feel it. I'd rather not deal with such heartless people no matter how much I've been through with them especially if they don't care about anything in the world, even about the people that care about them. If they cannot even feel the slightest bit of sadness when they lose their close ones one by one, then power to them. Really.

On a brighter note, I still have my "drama free" friends and have gone on a couple of adventures with them within the past few weeks. I finally went to pmall after over a year! And guess what I stocked up on? Film for my Fujifilm camera! :D Yayyyy... Actually Bryan was the one that bought a couple of packs for me and also threw in a pack of the Hello Kitty film for me as well when I was initially planning to buy the film myself. But I'm very very thankful as always! He's super awesome! I can't wait to try the Hello Kitty film out :D but I do want to think of some sort of theme for it before I dive into it since it is quite special and cute film. Hmmm...

You can't leave pmall without doing...

I also got everyone into Pokemon Puzzle League. It's still one of my favourite N64 games! I've had some intense battles with Quan at Lizzeh's house and then at Bryan's house later on (cuz they borrowed it from her lolololol). Our longest match lasted 7 mins I believe? However, I am still undefeated :D Muahaha!

I like playing it in 3D better :D

The character and pokemon you choose really don't matter, but I love using the characters with the most annoying voices to distract my opponent when I get combos and such. Team Rocket all the way!!! XD
N64 games are still awesome =]

My cousin, Dion, is teaching English in Korea and has been gone for a few months already. I'm not gonna see him for another year I believe! Craaazy. Anyways, a lil fun thing he did with his students is make them write letters to us! I think he advertised all of his cousins and showed them our pictures. And then they just decided who they wanted to write to. He did mail out these letters, but he also took pictures of each one and posted them on facebook. I got one!

Dear Chantelle
Hello
Nice to meet you
My name is Da Bin! I'm 18 years old. You like dancing? Me too!
I like dancing and very well.
um. You are good at stretching. Your very flexible
Here very cold. I have a cold. I'm sick.
I want you to come to Gyeongju in Korea!
Treat you^^
Your smile is pretty! I envy you
I have a boyfriend
I want to invite you to my wedding in the future.
See you again. Bye!

Cuuuute =] This letter was one of the only ones that actually made sense. Ahah. I'm going to a wedding! Yayyyy!
My cousins got some pretty hilarious things written to them.

• "I'm so sorry, but I love you... I know you, but you don't know me. But I love you, love love love you."
• "I like english. But I can't english. Sorry."
  

Until next time.
Peace, love and lol.

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interruption.

I felt that things would only get better and that nothing could possibly go wrong. That was until I found out for a month secretly --- Everything completely turned upside down --- I did not see it coming at all. I did fight. I did learn… after months and months.

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blue mind.

Day 07 – A song that reminds you of a certain event

Hana Yori Dango - Blue Mind

I love this song. It's also probably the only song I can play on the piano at the moment because it's pretty simple.

No one, but us will know.

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3 years in heaven.

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just a moment please...

I felt the need to update a bit since quite a lot has been happening recently.

So last week, I came home late from school on a rainy day. I didn't realize how hard it was raining since I was pretty much indoors for the whole day besides commuting. I was very exhausted and was about to get started on assignment until I noticed all this white stuff on my bed and the floor. It looked like something broke and shattered for a second, but there was nothing in that particular area of my room that could even do that. So I look up and there's this massive wet spot on my ceiling! The white stuff was parts of my ceiling dripping onto my bed and floor. I pretty much freaked and told my parents. So now, I am currently in the process of moving into my brother's room because he's always in the basement anyway and it's a lot bigger than mine. Being the youngest, I always got the smaller room... yayyyy. I was supposed to switch rooms with my brother months ago anyway. I'm very happy with the amount of space I have now. If I were to have a video tour of my old room, all I would have to do is sit in my bed and just turn around in a slow circle because my room was a sqaure and everything was that close.

In my new room... thinking about Bryan =]
This picture was made quickly by Quan when we were webcaming the other day. Oh and I'm wearing a bajillion layers because it's starting to get REALLY cold now.

I've been playing around with my new Fujifilm Instax =] I'm making sure I don't go so picture taking happy like I would with a digital camera because I only have two packs of film at the moment... though I have already taken a few accidental shots that thankfully don't look too horrible and pointless. Note to self: Do not try and attempt close up shots. You will miss your subject matter and it will not be clear.

a couple of my favs so far: one is with me, lizzeh and chantal,
a bunch of my favourite stuffed animals, and tweety.

The weekend was pretty eventful. Teaching has been getting easier and less nerve racking now, which is always a good thing. I did get my first drawing from one of my students who is five years old. Awwwww... I was very touched indeed =]

It's a brown sun, a brown girl, two trees, two flowers, and her name Addison (which you cannot see because it gets washed out)

Afterwards, I participated in another flash mob yayyy. The dance program was asked to create a performance for this Alumni banquet including a flash mob and a couple of old dance pieces that were performed last year in Dances and in Choreo. The flash mob was actually SO much fun! We all were dressed as waitresses and wore their uniforms at the Royal York Hotel. At first many guests asked us questions and we had to pretend to know what we were doing. If not, we would have to say "Just a moment please" ...and then get a real waitress to help. They filmed the entire performance, but surprisingly they have already gotten the flash mob on youtube! You can spot me numerous times in the video XD

Flash mobs are the best!

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simple and clean.

Day 01 – Your favorite song

Utada Hikaru - Simple and Clean/ Hikari

I remember listening to this song non stop in grade 9 when I first played Kingdom Hearts (my all time favourite RPG). I still haven't gotten sick of it yet after years and years of listening to it. It's such an easy song to listen to and has made me feel numerous emotions in the past. I still get depressed watching the ending of Kingdom Hearts 1 when this song is used =(

The lyrics in the english version aren't the exact translation of the words in Hikari unfortunately. I've looked them up and they are much more powerful to me. It's too bad they weren't used, but the song is still beautiful nonetheless.

The light known as "you" finds me,

In the middle of the night

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not that turning 20!

Now that I actually have time to write a full post....

It was my birthday on the 18th! I'm 20! I'm old! Yayyyyyy....

I had quite an eventful weekend.
Saturday, my actual birthday, started off with my first day teaching tap, ballet, and jazz at my dance studio. I was very nervous at first because it was my first time teaching ballet, but everything worked out in the end. Too lazy to go in more detail about it.

Later in the evening, my family came over and we had our usual "eating time", "cake time", and "present time". No pictures because the only one that took pictures was my brother with his SRL camera.... and anything that he takes on his SRL camera does not show up online until months and months later.

Sunday felt more like my birthday for some reason. I guess it took 24 hours more for it to really sink it. I obviously don't feel any different, but it's weird knowing that my age now starts with a 2! o___o

To celebrate with my friends, we had all you can eat sushi at Umi. Yummm... I very much appreciated everyone coming early and arriving there before I did myself! That was really unexpected, but made me very pleased! Ahaha. No, I was not late for my own celebration.

I was only able to take a limited amount of pictures because I was stupid and forgot to upload all my Europe pictures so the memory card was pretty much full... and I was also stupid enough to remember last minute that I had to charge my camera and only had it plugged in for about 15 mins. So there really wasn't much battery life for me to go and delete all the unnecessary pictures to make more space. Sad face.

Hmmm.... Well, we ate... a lot. We thought we ordered too much food (like always), but we succeeded in finishing everything because we're tanks! >=] ... or whales. lolololol.

I decided to just open some of the gifts I received then because some people had to leave after lunch. So this will sorta be my "birthday haul, friends edition" post within a post.

Firstly, Johnruss paid for my lunch! Thank youuuu!

Sick picture frame. My fav is the lil "LOL" at the bottom.
And my dream journal!! I can't wait to start writing in it!

Katherine thinks I smell bad... as you can see.
But now she won't be able to resist me. Muahahahahah

No waaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!! Thanks Bryan!! The white one is so awesome :D
(Yeah, I never told him I've been wanting this for like a year)

Yeah, I surprisingly got things from my wish list that I never expected to receive!

Fail attempt to take a group picture. Squinty eyes! XD

We all spontaneously went to Playdium afterwards because Johnruss had work anyway. Thanks to him and Bart most of us were able to get free time cards! :D

Thanks Johnruss!!!

I THINK he passed the height requiremets

Playdium moments...

• Killed at Tank Tank Tank with Andrew and Bryan
• Failed at the racing game with everyone. Kris won T_T
  
• Went on the Roller Coaster thing for the second time. (First time being when I was 12? 13?) ...and then lost one of my earrings in it. Sad face.
• Reunited with DDR once again. Didn't fail so miserably. But did break the bottom of my boots =( At least it's fixable.
• Saw the "bar" at Playdium that I never knew existed before.
  
• Watched Quan fail miserably at Deal or No Deal, but still earned enough points to get a small plastic ring for his girlfriend. Ahah.

asians and their pictures

asians and their DDR

asians and their ...shooting stuff

I had tons and tons of fun! However, I was not looking forward to having school the next morning T_T

One thing I told myself by the end of the day and I'll never forget.

You are loved.

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day one.

Day 01- A recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself

not super recent, but the most recent I have on my laptop before Europe.
haven't even uploaded Europe pics. whoops.

15 Facts (from the top of my head)

1. I love crispy spicy salmon rolls!!! (obviously the first thing I mention has to be food related. lulz~)
2. I've had 7 years of orthodontic work on my teeth. Yeah, my teeth were pretty messed up when I was a kid/ teen.
   
3. I'm a dancer, but I'm incredibly lazy and want to sleep ALL THE TIME D:
   
4. The only high end item I'll splurge a great amount on money on are Coach purses (when there is some sort of discount of course). I'd rather spend 100+ on a designer hand bag, which I'll use more often and take better care of than an expensive watch or sunglasses.
   
5. I have a shelf in my room dedicated to my collection of Beanie Babies that I used to collect when I was in elementary. There's actually A LOT of them.
   
6. I cut my own hair now. I haven't been to a hair dresser since last December.
   
7. I'm starting to become more of a ring collector. I like wearing two finger rings or wearing multiple rings on one hand.
   
8. A pet peeve of mine is when people walk slower than me right in front of me when I am in a rush... and when I'm not in a rush.
   
9. Another pet peeve is when people constantly publicize online how depressed they are so people can pity them. It's immature and I don't take those types of people seriously.
10. I love shopping in my own closet and finding clothes I forgot I had. Dressing up old clothes in a way that works makes me feel more accomplished when it comes to making use of everything I have.
11. I miss Tweety soooo much when I'm away on a trip for a couple of days! I'm always worried that he's not being taken care of well while I'm gone and get so lonely that he starts pulling his feathers out! ;___;
    
12. I have a second stomach for ice cream. No matter how full I am there's always room for ice cream. Green tea ice cream all the way! ^^
    
13. I'm generally a pretty forgiving person. It's not me being too nice - it's me not being stubborn or a bitch because I don't need to be.
14. I don't watch TV and don't follow any shows. Whatever I do want to see I just look for online later. Youtube = my TV.
    
15. A lot of people know me for having gigantic but super cute phone charms on my cell. It makes it a lot easier to find my phone in my bag =]
    

Thinking of 15 "interesting" facts about myself was a lot harder than I thought. I actually tried to not repeat myself from previous tags I've done in the past.

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Amelie

Amelie is not like the other girls. When she grows up she becomes a waitress in a Montmartre bar run by a former dancer. Amelie enjoys simple pleasures until she discovers that her goal in life is to help others. To that end, she invents all sorts of tricks that allow her to intervene incognito into other people’s lives, including an imbibing concierge and her hypochondriac neighbor. But Amelie’s most difficult case turns out to be Nino Quicampoix, a lonely sex shop employee who collects photos abandoned at coin-operated photobooths.

My sister made me watch this movie with her years and years ago. I don't even remember if I had watched the whole movie with my full attention at the time. I was still a kid. Ahah.

So when I rewatched it on my sister's laptop on the flight to Paris, it was like watching a whole new movie all over again. I only remembered a bit of the beginning. And I have to say, it is absolutely one of my favourite all time movies!

I adore this!

There are so many things about it that are so inspiring for me. The overall style, the characters, the music, etc. The actress who plays Amelie is so beautiful and she really suits the character. I recognized a lot of the music and I would like to get the whole soundtrack of the movie.

Watching this movie did make me more excited to go to Paris and actually see the certain places where the movie was filmed like the the restaurant that Amelie works at in the movie. It wasn't too far from the hotel we stayed at in Paris so we ended up having breakfast there every morning in Paris. The food was very good and affordable compared to most of the restaurants we came across.

I highly recommend this movie. It is in French so subtitles are needed... unless you're super awesome in French, which I am not.

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Dear jet lag,

You know you are around when I crash at 10pm and wake up very wide awake at 6am. That's not too bad considering school is coming up tomorrow and I'll have to start waking up that early anyway... Oh dear.

Chantee

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"Let's go shoot something!"

Playdium last Wednesday with Rheena! :D

It started off with an "i wanna go to playdium... wanna goo???" last week. Hahaha! And conveniently, Johnruss worked at Playdium and did offer me free time cards for playdium months ago that he gets every once in a while to give away to his friends. So, I thought why not?

Thank you Johnruss! You are so awesome!!!! XD

I hadn't been to Playdium in years! I cannot even remember the occasion when I was last there. The only games I do remember playing was the large racing game in the far end of the room.... and that's about it. I had been on the motion stimulator with Chantal back then in grade 7 or 8 I believe? And they just brought it back after I'm not sure how many years they had it off. Because it was new and our time cards were free, we weren't allowed to ride it or play any games that gave tickets, which was completely fine.

The first game we played was the huge ass racing game (don't know the real name obviously) that I remember always being last or close to last in the past. But to my surprise, I actually won first!!! XD As soon as I won, all these guys looked at me and had this look that pretty much said "Oh shit. I just got beaten by a girl."

I also played Dance Dance Revolution, which I actually haven't played since high school because someone stole borrowed my DDR mat. I played by myself because Rheena was too chicken to do beginner mode even though there were already two other asians on the other machine already making a fool of themselves doing beginner. LOLOLOLOL jksssss =] But yeah, as said by Johnruss, I totally sucked. I failed at my first attempt at my fav DDR song on Super Nova, True Love, which I had gotten perfect on in high school in Difficult mode.

The last game that is worth mentioning (mostly because I has awesome pictures >=]) is the Tank Tank Tank! It's actually SOOOOO much fun! It combined driving AND shooting, which were the types of games we mostly played throughout the two hours. We wouldn't have really seen it or played it if Johnruss hadn't mentioned it to us. The best part was that it takes your photo that ends up being your icon for that game!

Wasn't able to get a nicer pic of Rheena's picture because the screen would change quickly!

It's like Pmall photos.... minus Pmall... plus BLOWING EACH OTHER UP! So awesome.
The only reason we left is because there were two asians waiting behind us that we just noticed after our third game? They looked pretty impatient o_o Ahhh...

And since it was still pretty early after our two hours of racing and shooting things, we decided to loaft around Square One for another hour and a half. Taking more Mac pictures was a given. We took a lot of pictures with the "glowing" effect because it nicely hides all the obvious craters in our faces. Very obvious.

We probably would've taken more pictures if one of the older sales associated hadn't kicked like EVERYONE off the Macs who seemed to be just taking pictures or on the internet because apparently the store was "getting too full"... which it wasn't. I've seen it more packed, especially in the Eaton Center. Maybe she was just jealous just because she has no friends to take Mac pictures with and just bashes on everyone that does? lololololol. Jokes.

Good times.

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Good luck Christian!

I spent last weekend with my cousin Christian. It's really hard to believe, but he moved to LA! It was pretty sudden and I had only heard of it a week before. He moved to form a vocal group down there, so hopefully they'll make it big one day!

Saturday night was his "surprise" party thrown by Lylline at Dave and Busters, which ended up not being a surprise because he accidentally ran into one of his friends in the washroom while the rest of us were waiting in the dinning area. Oh well. Ahah.
It was my first time ever going to Dave and Busters and just knew it as the "Chucky Cheese for kids" which it really is actually. Ahah

The food was quite pricey, but it did it's job and filled me up for the rest of the night. One of the cheaper dishes besides salads (which don't fill me up) that I chose was the Goldenfingers (aka. chicken fingers and fries). The total came up to almost $18 and I only got water as a drink! Why? Because of HST ... AND the extra 16% added because we were a group over 8 people. Laaaaame. Sorry, no tip for you =]

Entering the game room was pretty overwhelming! There was soooo much to do and I hadn't been to any sort of arcade for a couple of years!

Based on my experience, the "must go to" games would have to be...

Skee Ball

Always been a favourite since my Chucky Cheese years =]

and

Jump Rope Jackpot

Definitely, the most played game for me and Jewel that night! We both were able to make it to the "T" when it was spelling JACKPOT... but we never were able to get the Jackpot though =(

I would've played DDR there IF they actually had it. They had this other thing almost like DDR but the arrows were diagonal. It was weird. I did not want to try it.

In the end, I did earn up enough points to get a decent prize =] I thought that maybe the best think I would've gotten was like.... candy... or a key chain. But no, I was able to get a VERY soft Curious George pillow case... that was a pillow case for a body pillow. So it is pretty big and works well as a blanket. I don't own a body pillow =(

The next day was his good bye party with the family. Basically, A LOT of people packed into one tiny room eating, talking, and watching TV. It was actually very hot on the main floor so all the cousins moved into the basement for a little while to witness Christian cutting my brother's hair.

I'm used to hearing friends and family going out to other countries for very long vacations that are weeks or months long. It's always okay, because you know they will come back home eventually with stories to tell and everything will be just as it was. But it's a very different feeling knowing that they won't come back home for a very long time. And if they do, it's too short.

Never take any of the time with your family or friends for granted. Cherish every moment!

I'm gonna miss you a lot cuz! Good luck!

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