Happy New Year everyone,

Sorry for my late greeting. Today is Monday January 9^th the very first day of my winter term. Hope it’s not too late.

I wish you all the best to come this year and the year after and after…

I was disappearing for the whole fall term. I didn’t mean to but I had to. You may wonder where on earth I had been. As many of you may have heard, I am studying really hard for $5000. It’s a reward for the best five MBA students in each year. In order to accomplish this, I have to sacrifice a lot of my personal happiness. To start with my time to do photography, time to chat, time to get online,  time to watch TV, time to go hang out and definitely my time to sleep. Basically, I study in the library for like 6 hours on a normal weekday, 8 to 10 hours a day over the weekends and during exams. I also work at the tutoring center 6 hours a week. Not to mention a lot of group assignments, meetings and company visit. I have never studied this hard in my life.

Long story short, I was so darn busy.  

As a result of my effort, I end up the sixth in class for the past fall term, a little bit disappointed but acceptable. To look on the bright side, considering all the well qualified classmates from exceptional schools like Harvard and Standford, sixth out of 36 is a pretty good ground for my first term. There’s two more terms for me to raise my GPA up and land myself in the top 5 by the end of the first year.

After 10 weeks of hard working, I had 4 solid weeks off for Winter break. That was when I had a chance to reunion with some good friends of mine, O and Nina. We had a fun road trip from Portland to Seattle then to Vancouver. Things are so ridiculously expensive in Canada; the food costs about 4 times as much of those fine meals in Seattle. As a result, I can’t afford any shopping but only a couple of fine Ice Wine. (Can’t help it, you know) However, British Columbia is definitely worth a visit, such a place with style and incredibly “hip.”  The whole city of Vancouver is like dominated by the Chinese. Especially Richmond, it is just like Hong Kong in the winter time.

Right after the Canada trip, I flew to New York and caught a bus to D.C. to celebrate the Holidays with another group of friends. My original plan was to count down at Time Square, NYC. Too bad, I got a flu, a really bad one. It’s strong enough to keep me in bed for 3 days straight. So I ended up count down in DC and spent only a couple of days in NY before I flew back to Oregon. And just for you know, if you can’t bear the cold weather, the best time to visit NY is either in spring or summer. The day will be longer and there won’t be a lot of rain. My case would probably be the worst. I was in NY on the New Year day. A whole lot of tourists and it was cold and showering all the time. Still, on the bright side, I’ve lost all my extra pounds gained from the Seattle-Vancouver trip. Now I’m back in a good shape again

Long story short, my holidays were not as good as I expected. But don’t worry; I am fully recovered now, just in time for the new school term.

I’d better get back to study now. It’s the first day of school yet a lot of assignments have already been given. Pray for me and my $5000, the same way I pray for you guys and your wonderful year of 2006.

Love you all,

Jinn