Jane's 21st

Tonight was Jane's 21st birthday held in a function room above a bar in Mt Eden.

My parents dropped me off and I caught up with some of my high school friends. We've all been in the same class together as Jane since year 9, so we've known her for a long time!

There was some food there for people to make burgers and some drinks, so I made myself a burger!

I also managed to catch up with some old friends I hadn't seen in ages, like Sam who I knew way back from intermediate school. It was great catching up with him again!

For a while I hung out with Micaela, an old friend from Rutherford. We just sat there talking about our hopes and dreams. It was quite interesting! We just stared into space and talked about all sorts of things!

 It was finally time for the speeches. Some of Jane's relatives gave a speech about Jane, which were quite humorous. Ms Edwards, our old English teacher at Rutherford also gave a speech about Jane, as they are quite close with each other I think. They also played a short movie Jane made years ago in high school. It's unbelievable how much people have grown!

After the speeches, I hung out with my Rutherford friends outside on the balcony which had a nice, fancy fireplace to keep us warm. Actually I was quite hot. I had no idea how to dress smart casual, and so I think I wore too much!

My parents soon came to pick me up. It was a pretty good night celebrating Jane's 21st and catching up with all my friends again.

HAPPY 21ST BIRTHDAY JANE!

A Whole Lot of Pies

Tonight was the Dessert Club's Pie Eating Competition, and even though it was on a Friday night and I had youth group, I decided I'd try to make it to both!

I arrived early to help carry some of the giant tins of canned fruit from the Student Central office where it was kept to the Cap n' Gown Lounge, where we would be holding the event.

Once everything was shifted, we started going about making the pies! We had all these crusts, and had to cover them with pieces of tinned apricot, apple and pineapple in about an hour! We came up with various methods of draining all the syrup from the cans so we wouldn't soak the crusts. Probably the best idea was to make holes in the lid and just pour all the syrup out. We poured it into the drain, which to me seemed like a bit of a waste, so I drank some but I think it was a bit too much!

It was finally time to open the doors at 6.30pm and after quite a long time of sorting people into teams and ensuring they didn't quietly switch teams (they were randomised for a reason!), we got things going with the first round - designing your own pie! We gave them certain ingredients such as jam, chocolate chip, cut up easter eggs and cream and teams had to come up with a theme and create their own pies accordingly. We had teams design pies based on volcanoes, Pokemon, and even male genitalia! I don't know who won that...

While the final round of pie-eating was set up, we played a bit of play dough Chinese Whispers (see if you can picture that?) with the teams which was quite amusing!

I soon had to leave to catch my bus so I didn't get to watch the final pie-eating round, but the even turned out to be a successful!

Singing for the Mothers

Today was Mother's Day, and our youth group thought we'd make it extra special for them today!

We had our usual service, with the children performing a song for the mothers. All mothers were also asked to stand and were presented with a small present.

Our string group also performed some music as a slideshow of church members and their parents appeared on the the projector. We had only practised the music a few times, and not exactly with the slideshow, so we were quite surprised that we were able to finish in time with it! Others were amazed at how we achieved that as well! (We hadn't actually noticed till others pointed it out to us!)

After the service and Sunday School (which most of us in our youth group skipped as we had to prepare for this), it was time for our youth group to put on a show! We were going to perform 'Ting Ma Ma De Hua' by Jay Chou, which means 'Listen to mother's words' in Chinese.

There was a bit of drama before our performance was to take place, as we didn't have the right cables to connect the iPod to the PA system, and so I had to make a quick dash back home to look for one. I couldn't find one, so I ended up just returning and we had to put the microphone to some computer speakers. It wasn't the best but we had to make do with what we had.

Everyone filled the gym and took their seats. There were a bit of speeches and other presentations before our youth group came up to perform. James, Jireh, Phillip and Andrew rapped most of the verses with Jenny also leading while the rest of us joined in the for the chorus.

I also had my own little solo towards the end when I sang the chorus! I had been practising hard for it, and almost screwed up the timing as I couldn't hear the music properly and almost skipped a beat! Fortunately I was able to slow down and end it well, to heaps of cheers by surprised people!

We were a little afraid the performance would be too much for the older people to take, especially since there was a bit of rapping and everything, but it was quite well received! This is the first time our youth group has done something like this. I say it's onwards and upwards from here!

Graduation Day! (For Some...)

Today was my friend Ji Eun's graduation! I had promised her at the end of last year that I would get her a graduation teddy after discovering she had never heard of such a thing!

I had the day off but I thought I'd go in and get a photo taken with her in her gown as well as give her the teddy, and then visit the careers office to get them to check my CV since several hospital intern job applications were closing later that day.

I stopped by one of those Asian gift stores to check out the graduation teddies, and ended up choosing this purple graduation bear/monkey!

I met up with Ji Eun and a couple of her classmates by the fountain at Albert Park and surprised her with the teddy. I think she was a bit surprised by the colour of it. It stands out quite a bit!

Afterwards, I went to get my CV checked and got the thumbs up! Time for application submission!

Pizza Fun

Tonight was our 4th year pharmacy class dinner at La Porchetta once again! We had it at Turkish Cafe last year, but that place didn't get such rave reviews from most people, so I guess we went back to the pizza place which wasn't too bad!

I had class in the morning and stayed at Grafton till afternoon and was originally going to walk back to the city with my pharmacy friend Natalie for the class dinner, when our other friend Ai Ping offered to drive us there! Wow she had a flash car! Her music taste is pretty good - Dvorak, Rossini...nice!

At the dinner we were all allowed to order anything on the set menu up to a total of $15. I was originally going to order a pizza for myself, but I happened to be sitting next to all the girls who were going to order together, so I thought I'd throw my contribution in and we'd all share. It turned out to be a good idea since we all got to have some pasta as well as pizza!

Surprisingly a few of the guys were quite full and couldn't finish! I managed to finish but I have to admit that I was a little full myself by the end of the night! It was fun talking to the others, as I haven't talked to them in a while! I also heard quite a few interesting conversations as well...

Fortunately Belinda, another pharmacy friend was kind enough to offer me a ride home! She's another Westie! We're all just one big pharmily!

Jenny's Surprise 18th

It was Jenny's 18th birthday today, and because we didn't think she would be doing anything special, Aonghas, Jireh and I decided to skip church service to buy a birthday cake for her.

We arrived back at church just in time after the service, and managed to surprise her!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JENNY!

More and More Kids!

Today I taught my new class of beginners for the first time! Originally I was expecting only two new students (twin brothers), but in the end I got four! That brings the total number of students I have this year to 19 students! That's the most I've ever taught in one year! 17 of the 19 are beginners too!

The even cooler thing is that four of them are Eurasian! Go Eurasians!