man i haven't updated in this thing for SUCH a long time...anyways, i've decided that from now on, everything that i blog about it going to be about nice, fun, positive stuff, and it's going to be solely so that ten years from now i can look back and have a nice stash of memories here...yea, a private journal would be better, but just having it online is easier..and i'm too lazy to do actually go and do private entries on a xanga, so it's just gonna be public...lol...feel free to read if you want, if anything offends you, let me know, and i'll take it out immediately, ok? that sounds like a good deal to me....

anyways..i had such a blast yesterday.....first i went and visited my lab (I LOVE MY LAB!!!!!) at my dear dear dear South Campus Research Building (haha. i am such a nerd.) i brought bing and dou's present with me and also some cookies for the lab...maan, it was such a good feeling going in and seeeing all the lab equipment there, but Huang, the new postdoc from Baylor, had already taken over my bench (*tear*)....my membranes were still in the drawer though!!!..woohoo!!!!...(by the way, the antibodies that were supposed to be for my original project that would have used the membranes FINALLY came in - like a month too late!!!! >_<)..and then i ran into Morgan (morgan!!!!) in the hallway!...hahah morgan is this really really cool PhD student in Hector's lab who i go talk to all the time...he was in a different lab, in almost his last year of his PhD program, when suddenly his professor decided to leave research and take up a higher position somewhere else or somethign like that, and so everyone in his lab basically had to find new labs and start their PhD programs all over again..maan!!!,..that must have been terrible....anyways, chatted with him for a while, and then i sat down and had a nice long chat with valeria (the postdoc in my lab who was basically my mentor in all of july when bing and dou were in china) with our daily tradition of coffee (she let me make the coffee)...there was SOO much to talk about!!...maan i misss her soooooooooo much, she's gotta be the most awesome italian person ever....and then, even more unexpectedly, she gave me all these really cool gifts....that totally just took me by surprise - i had NEVER expected that!!...and from a mentor too....an ITALO CALVINO book ("If on a Winter's Night a Traveler"), a CDs full of modern italian music, a paper crane and a REALLY touching card *tear*....all those memories of everything in the lab...waaaah..i hope i find a mentor as awesome as she was (no, she's not just awesome for the gifts - she's awesome for all the stuff she taught me in the lab and all the patience she had with me too.....kinda reminds me of my mommy, maybe that's why i like her so much)..and then dou was giving everyone gifts that she had bought from china, and i got this really pretty stone bracelet...very awesome too...so our whole lab wanted to go out to lunch, which took about 9203439 hours to coordinate since every time we tried to discuss where to go to lunch, we'd get side-tracked and start discussing somethign else..haha...like we were all gathered on one side of the lab trying to figure out where to eat, and it turned out something like this, with their broken english and whatnot:

xiaofang: but i want to go bing's house to have barbecue
dou: no, our barbecue grill is broken! our dog chewed thru the pipe
kihwan: *joking*are you sure it was your dog? maybe xiaofang break it!
xiaofang: i no break it
valeria: just like you did not kill dou's plant?
xiaofang: what plant?
dou: we came back and that one plant in the kitchen by the dining table is completely dead! (xiaofang was the one who was supposed to water bing and dou's plants while they were on vacation)
xiaofang: there was a plant in the dining room?
dou: yes, you didn't see it?
xiaofang: no...well i still want to go to barbecue at bing's house

HAHAHA...so we finally decided to go eat at the Goode company, which was a pretty good barbecue place...i definitely recommend it, cuz it's self-servign and not too expensive either..went back to the lab, where we looked at all the pictures that Ling took on her digital camera...some of them were really hilarious, i'll post some when she emails them to me..and then kihwan, valeria, ling, xiaofang, and i talked some more about MIT's communal CO-ED bathrooms (yup, that's right, co-ed bathrooms - including showers and toilets and all )..kihwan didn't make me feel much safer about that:

kihwan: well, you need to be careful, because you don't want crazy boys openign the shower door
me: no, no, all the shower doors lock completely
kihwan: ok, well, maybe the crazy boys know how to pick locks

hahahhah thanks kihwan i feel so much secure now...lol..and during lunch dou was telling me about how one time there was a "psycho madman" (those were her exact words) running through her dorms, so all her dormmates took all their desks and pushed them all against the entrance doors...lol..then went back to the lab, cleaned up and talked to some more random people that i kept seeing (Ramon - researcher in Miles' lab, Morgan again, Cheryl - our super cool secretary department, Donna - the person at the front desk, Yasuko - jenna's mentor)...then my dad came and i showed him around, and then we had to leave for the UT med building, where i had to return my long overdue keys and textbook (that dr. dowhan had conveniently forgotten about anyways) back home, apoorva and i had decided earlier to meet up with thida and then darian for dinner cuz apoorva goes off to rice in about 2 days ( ..=(..the first college-bound person out of all of us!!)..but then thida and darian couldn't come or something, so i got miink to come with us, and steve (from memorial) joined us later at texadelphia....lol it took us forever to figure out where to eat too, ....while waiting for miink, we were gonna try to get some coupons out of apoorva's entertainment book, while i futilely tried to locate Westheimer on a houston map.. but while driving, we kept missing the streets that we wanted to get on so we ended up at rice village at texadelphia, where i had my first philly cheesesteak, which was prettty good...hahah i can see why houston is the fattest city now..it took steve a while to find us, but he eventually did with a couple of phone calls between him and miink and apoorva...we talked for the LONGEST time about the most random subjects!!!! this is my type of conversation, constant animated talking..(ok well it wasn't exactly a Martel-trampoline-worthy conversation, but those are only reserved for 4 am in the morning anyhow..hehe) .lol apoorva and all his political subjects....maan, the more i hear about rice the more i want to transfer!!..lol not as if that would be feasible, but apoorva has THE MOST AWESOME MAJOR IN THE WORLD - SPANISH!!...(well he's doing a double major in polisci as well)....if i could pick any major in the world, without regard to monetary issues, etc etc, i would pick SPANISH....gaaaah, yall cannot possibly fathom the PASSION i have for spanish....yea, anyways, we went to ben and jerry's and continued talking there until almost 10:45 i think....lol soooo much freakin fun, i hope i'll meet people remotely like them at MIT... we prolly woulda been able to stay later if the three of them didn't have to go home and start/finish packing..APOORVA AND MIINK, i will MISS YALL A LOT!!!...man apoorva's one of my longest friends (along with a handful of old-schoolers from 2nd grade, walker station! yea!), and i've known miink forever at ascension too...*tear*...


jenna's coming to houston today!!!!yay! i love that chick, she's another asian spanish-obsessed person, and she loves russian classical pianists too...michelle is driving down here today too, and i bet myers is also coming from beaumont today, cuz they all gotta move in on sunday...michelle and myers are two of my really good friends from md anderson too....haha , see i told you rice ppl are awesome...depending on when they come, i may or may not go to meet up with church ppl at jireh tonight...but i'll definitely be at jireh tomorrow !!!...gotta say bye to sid and steve before they leave for stanford, and bye to everyone else who will still be in houston...=(...everyone will already be at rice by sunday, and then UT ppl are leaving next wednesday....stanford ppl don't leave for like another month i think anyways...

i'll be in boston in less than two weeks!