In Case You Were Wondering...

i'm alive.

can't believe that i have been so busy since i came back to melbourne.

awesome 5 days ski trip up in falls creek, first week of school madness, yummy korean dinner at 7&7, late nights due to korean drama IRIS, regular weekly revision of lectures and tutorials, sunday brunch with the clique, first ever footy match, job/intern applications, etc.

to add to the list, i'm going to Murray Regions tomorrow. oh wait, in 7 hours time! just a night stay, but we'll be kayaking/canoeing, cycling and having a good old aussie BBQ!

Negative 15 Degrees

we all want a white christmas, don't we? merry christmas everyone!!

club med, hokkaido was one of the best family holiday trip. 6 days and 5 nights of pure relaxation- no stress, no pressure, just nature. club med is the perfect place for a good break from the city. activities for the hotel guests are organized from 8am to 11pm. you do not need your phone or internet, my bb was only used as an alarm clock. i love club med. so much so that i'm considering working in club med for a short 6 months after graduation. my 6 months will just be filled with fun, laughter, peace, and joy. nothing else.

so, there wasn't enough snow on the first 2 days of my trip. spent 2 full days in that club. i guess it is a blessing in disguise, since we were forced to participate in the activities organised for us. such as, magic shows, trekking, baking, ping pong, swimming, and playing jenga. i made plenty of friends during the stay, from the young to the old.

i was always looking forward for the night time programme. i love their 8pm shows put up by the G.O-s in the theatre, always so entertaining. from the mini club performances, to comedies, circuses and michael jackson performances. every night, it is full house.

right after the show, there would be games and dancing sessions at the bar, an open one. a perfect place for chilling out after a day of skiing. the games are not only for children, they have games specially designed for adults as well. dancing for 2 hours isn't easy, especially when you have to follow their moves. i had to get drinks from the bar to take a break. i love how everyone there is so friendly.

thank god for the heavy snowfall. for the next 4 days, we skied every single day. in the morning from 9.30 to 12, and in the afternoon from 1.30 to 4. no opportunity wasted. we had the choice of skiing on ourselves or taking up lessons. i like how they have ski and snowboard lessons provided for everyone, from beginner to advance. plus, the ski instructors are people from Whistler, and the Canadian Ski Team. oh, the snow there is so soft, it instantly melts on your fingers or when it touches your tongue. if we had one more day, i would have gone to explore more courses. gives me another reason to fly back.

only complain? the food there wasn't as good as club med, cherating's. yes, we did have sashimi, ramen, udon, tempura, japanese curry. but the food was more or less the same for those 6 days. sadly, we missed out on the hokkaido crab buffet. yet again, IF we stayed for another day.

alls not that bad, since i managed to eat 2 huge bowls of awesome ramen at the japan airport. that is the best ramen i have ever eaten in the entire world and life. nothing else beats it. my whole mind was filled with japan airport's ramen on the flight there. plus, hokkaido's white chocolate biscuits and ROYCE chocolate makes me a happier girl. :)

Sliding Down Snow

finally back to this page after a very long time. have been rather occupied with school- tutorials, assignments and mid-semester tests. can't wait for the upcoming week to end, cause it will be our 2 weeks mid-semster break. lots of activities planned, and i'm going to GOLD COAST. :)

here's some pictures of my trip to falls creek with the gang. much much more up on facebook, so go check it out. it has been exactly one month since we were there, but we still can't forget how much we enjoyed ourselves up there. it was a 3D2N stay, took the 5 hours coach up on friday 9am and took it down on sunday 5pm.

we didn't manage to do any skiing on the first day, since the ski lifts closes at 5pm. so we spent our afternoon touring falls creek, looking for food places, and enquiring about the day passes, ski lessons and skiing routes. night came really fast, and we had our dinner at a japanese restaurant. i swear, we had so much fun and trouble walking through the snow in the freezing weather at night. it was so tiring and cold that my chest hurt so much and i felt that i couldn't breathe. on the other hand, jonny was doing some stunts by walking in that crazy weather topless! our nights always end with cranium board game, girls vs guys. laughter-filled room.

we started day 2 with lessons! :) kimmy, rachel and i went for ski lessons for 1.5 hours, while jonny and merrie did snow boarding lessons. skiing is actually very easy to pick up, especially if you start young. there were so many 2-3 year olds learning how to ski, and some even did skiing and snowboarding stunts, like jumping off slopes, so crazy man. i was in utter shock!

so cute how there's a mini stall selling hot dogs and snacks on the ski routes. so we skied down half way, took a break and had our lunch there. our instructor said that the basic ski routes are not easy, and suggested that we take another lesson before trying them. despite that, we still went ahead to drovers range. true enough, the slope was really steep and i had my first fall there, it was quite painful.

i really love the view up there. everything's so white and wide, really beautiful. our favourite ski route was wombat's ramble, and i love that so much. really had lots of fun once i started to get the hang of it. doing the big and small S really helps a lot. :)

ski lifts were great. especially when we just finished a long and tiring route, it was always nice to sit down and admire the view from above. we all had thoughts of the cable snapping, but none of us dare to talk about it. cause if it ever broke, we wouldn't be able to stop ourselves from sliding down the slopes since we had our skis on. we would die.

whenever we're doing wombat's ramble, we would all wait at the bottom for everyone to arrive. i think we were waiting for merrie, when kimmy and i decided to make a snowman. jonny and rachel was too tired and uninterested to help us out. anyways, the snowman turned out fine. any cooler snowman than this?

day 2 in falls creek ended with jonny breaking his wrist while snowboarding. the snow 'ambulance' found jonny lying in the snow and sent him straight to the medical center. we all got changed out of our so-hard-to-walk-in ski boots and met him there. spent like 2 hours waiting for him to have his cast put on. poor jonny, he enjoyed snow boarding so much. had dinner in our lodge and played usual cranium to end the night.

oh, and they had night skiing on saturdays. but we were too tired to try it. if not i bet it'll be loads of fun.

on day 3, only rachel, kimmy and i skied. the snowboarders were all so tired and un-fit to continue. the 3 of us had lots of fun, we tried out new routes and we skied over and over again. i challenged myself to go for one intermediate course, and i did it! no falls or anything. lots of concentration involved though, and without kimmy's guidance i guess i wouldn't be able to make it to the bottom. :)

we stopped skiing at 3pm as we had to catch our coach back to the city. we would love to continue skiing and extend out stay. but for obvious reasons (school), we couldn't. by the way, our lodge was bad. please don't ever stay at snowdrif lodge, there's plenty out there which are much better. we can only blame ourselves for not doing our bookings earlier, beggars can't be choosers.

okay, i'm going to enjoy my chicken herbal soup and sambal fish for dinner now. dinners won't be boring anymore, cause JUNIOR MASTERCHEF is back tonight! yes, it is. :)