Spotlight on my BFF

So one of my best friends here is "Vicky". She is sweet, outgoing, and pretty much the total opposite of me.

Anyways, some things I have learned from her:

-God gives us dreams for a reason, and we should always boldly follow those dreams, and work hard for them!

-It's always worth it to ask people for help/things that we want, the worst that can happen is they will say no.

-We should always count our blessings and let the little things go.

-Best friend earrings are cool. Yep, we bought two sets of earrings, and then each had one earring from each set.

A funny story: she came to stay at my hostel with me when I visited her in her hometown, because she wanted the experience. She made friends with everyone there almost immediately, she is so friendly (opposite of me, I am a people-watcher, not interacter right away typically).

Anyways, she is very much a go-getter. Anything I mention to her she makes happen. I mentioned I wanted to visit Jay Chou's new KTV. We were told it would be hard to find because they didn't want just anyone going there. I was like ok, no big deal. Not Vicky. She found it, then followed a group who had paid to be there and asked if we could go with them just to look around. Then she approached all the staff there and got them to take some awesome photos of us (I will have to share those later).

I mentioned to her that I thought the bartender at our hostel was cute. "You should talk to him." "No, I don't do that." (my version of flirting is just to stare someone down from afar, haha). So she marches up to him (he's in the middle of doing some accounting work) and starts talking. Soon she has found out the guy's life story, and talked me up as well in the process. "Have you met her? She is such an exceptional person." This conspiracy came to a head by her somehow discovering the guy was studying to go abroad to the U.S. and me helping him to study. "I'm an introvert." I said in way of explanation for why I hadn't introduced myself (I had already been acquainted with the other staff members). "Me too" He said grinning shyly. "But I could tell from watching you that you are really cool. Thanks for helping me." Vicky was practically beaming.

Anyways, I really enjoyed getting to visit her and meet her family... it's easy to understand why she is such a confident person, she has great parents! (That's Vicky, her mom, and I playing around in the photo below).

Xi'an

I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to visit a friend in her hometown, the ancient capital city of China, Xi'an.

Yes, Xi'an is famous for the Terracotta Warriors, and, in my opinion, this is THE must-see sight of China (more so than the Great Wall). I found it mind-blowing.

Each and every single one of these warriors has a different face, different details. Incredible. And also a slightly haunting reminder of the futility of trying to create for yourself a post-death kingdom.

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Aside from the Terracotta Warriors, I fell in love with Xi'an as a whole. So much history around, and amazzzziing local food! If I didn't love my local city so much, I would be happy to relocate there!

Post-Vacay

Vacation was quite the adventure...I thought I would do a few posts spotlighting different experiences.

One of my favorite parts was crossing off a certain item from my bucket list....staying at the Marina Bay Sands.

A while ago one of my fave Korean stars, Jung Ji Hoon, tweeted some pics of him and his backup dancers in an AMAZING pool..I knew I had to swim in it before I die.

While the skypark with the Infinity pool as it is called used to be open for the public to pay a fee and swim there, it is now open only to hotel guests...so, we had to stay there. It was quite the splurge, but, after staying in crappy hostels for the rest of the trip, it was worth it.

Ok, so it was cold, and my vampiric skin hadn't seen the light of day in a long time, so excuse the glowing whiteness.

Anyways, if you are ever in Singapore, it's worth skimping in other areas to splurge on this pool!