ah! spring break! aaaaaaaaaaaahahhhhahahahahahaaaa!!!!! i'm free! free! freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!
oh - before i start - congratulations to jensen and vivian on their engagement! i knew jensen in high school waaaaaaay back when...i happened to run into him a few years later, after he had finished his undergrad at mcmaster, sometimes in the medical building, sometimes on the shuttle bus up to sunnybrook hospital, once at a TSO concert. during one hurried and brief chat in the medical science building at the U of T one day, where he had started meds, Jensen looked so snazzy! it was the first time i had seen him since woburn. one tends to always and perpetually remember your friends as they were in high school, down to the tee. so here was this unassuming brainy kid i knew back in high school, who was now standing before me in a sharp shirt, sharp glasses, sharp hair, sharp attitude (a tangible one at that)...and i exclaimed jensen! ya look so snazzy! and you know what he did? he leaned in as if to tell me a secret, took off his glasses, peered up at me and said that it was the same old him...congratulations!

i am at home now! yay! it was an interesting trek home - a hardcore workout in the morning, followed by a mad dash to pick up a magazine, a paper, and some real fruit for the bus ride, grab a shower and hurriedly decide what actually to wear and what to bring with me (i couldn't decide the night before and after travelling a lot now i can't STAND heavy luggage) a cab ride with porage to the bus depot with a female cab driver (the first i've ever had) who was quite interested in the concept of bubble tea, and wanted to know flavors and price and milk and ice cream addition, a bus ride which was essentially a "piggy and terminalis put gummy bears and capfuls of dasani water on a sleeping and unsuspecting porage" game all the way to t.o., and a quick call to my dad who didn't know i was coming ("i'm here. pick me up?"). i like coming home, but sometimes i dread and prepare myself to anticipate my mom cooking up a storm, my house filled with strange smells and humidity from the boiling heads of fish or pig or whatever, my house loud with the sound of my brother tooling around on his lavender barbie geetar or playing his latest shipment from CDHQ, my dad with the t.v. on louder than normal because his hearing isn't as acute anymore...all at the same time, mind you...it can make a grown woman cry and actually want the deafening silence of her pied-a-terre in london...

but instead, the house was quiet. there was wine on the table, polish pastries, strawberries, and my favorite korean dish of bi-bim bap just ready to be devoured. my mom was in the midst of calmly making these orange cookies from the famed "purity cookbook", my brother quietly studying, with a big bag of shrimp chips at his side. SO THIS IS HOW THEY LIVE WHEN I'M NOT AROUND!!!! hmmmm. i will remember to make all of my future visits home unannounced...