BACKTRACKING: Oklahoma City
So... I've finally gotten down to uploading, resizing and collaging the remaining photos of the days spent in Okla :) Sigh, Looking through all the albums makes me miss the place a lot. Many beautiful memories, beautiful moments, and beautiful friendships forged in this quaint little town of the U.S.A.
Chilly wintery nights that had us huddling together, drinking hot chocolate, hot green tea, cooking warm drinking water, having big pots of home cooked chicken soup for dinner... :) And of course, listening to the crazy howling wind blow against our room door as our goosebumps gave way.
I actually repeated a couple of the photos from the previous other posts. But i'm sure you guys wouldn't mind looking over them again right? :D I've many photos from joyce & mw, from kaykay, from tilam, from jojo.. But then i think you guys will drown in all the photos shared. Hahaha.
I didn't realise that i had that many goofy and unglam shots from the others' cameras.. -___-
Anyway, everything else below in the cut ;)
Anyways, without further ado... Let's begin the recap.
I really love the school's campus. It's so big, spacious, pretty. Red-bricked buildings all over. The heater that warmed the school which had us all running madly into the buildings during cold mornings.. Alvin's cafe where we had our "cheaper" school lunches.. The exorbitantly priced school cafeteria despite the free-flow buffet we had (our tiny stomachs aren't able to justify the amount of money we fork out :D)..
And who can forget the awesome snacks provided by the Mass Comm department? Hot apple cider tea, hot chocolate, warm nachos with aplenty of cheese, GOURMET BISCUITS (HAHA), brownies, cakes, cupcakes, cookies.. :9 Guhhhh. They fed us well right? And the pretty pretty computer room filled with tons of Macs :] The comfy sofas placed at the mass comm dept ♥ I miss i miss!
We jump and jump and jump.
Almost successful jump shot :p It was hard to get everyone to coordinate.
It's been awhile since we last took jump shots and i kinda miss them. Haha.
That weekend, we went to the Devon ice-skating rink for some fun and sunshine. It was warmer than usual, we didn't need our heavy jackets or warm clothing surprisingly. Little did we know a cold front would be coming our way during the late afternoon. We walked to Bricktown after having enough of skating and midway there, the weather suddenly got colder than usual, and most of us weren't dressed for it. And, it was a 45-minute walk to Bricktown.
The girls at the ice-skating rink. We were excited, so excited.
Too bad it was so warm earlier that the ice started to melt and got watery which made it a pain to skate around T__T
When we arrived, all of us made a beeline to Starbucks to grab a hot hot cuppa drink. One of my favourite things of winter would be to have a hot drink that warmed the insides of the body :D Feels so nice to hold a hot cup of drink in my hands too (; All those hot chocolate, frappes, mochas, tea... hehehe.
The wind was blowing so strong, it explained for the hoods, the mufflers, the gloves, zipping up our jackets.. :O
But of course, cold weather is not a deterrence to camwhoring. Hahahah.
After that weekend of skating and shopping. We started our last class of environmental science held in the labs. It was fun, though plenty of theory based lectures that had me falling asleep more than 1/2 the time. Haha. It was bad. When i was studying for the ES paper, i couldn't decipher my handwriting in the notes. They don't make sense o_o They are like a bunch of worms. Sleeping mode handwriting.. Hahaha.
Despite having no snacks & food outside the labs. Our Prof's a really nice guy. He brought in a tub of popcorn for us to snack over.. :DDD It snowed a lot and was much colder than usual due to the onset of the cold front. Temperatures dropped to -12degrees. HOLY MAMA. Makes me wonder how did we survive those crazy cold days -_- Plus those piercing winds that killed us all. The moment we walked out, our nose turn red and our cheeks flush from the piercing cold weather + winds.
Flushed shan & i after we returned from our coffee trip
LET IT SNOW LET IT SNOW LET IT SNOW.
That picture above by the way, was taken during our walk out to the Walmart located 15 minutes away from school. We were so sick of expensive + sandwiches school food and decided to trudge out in the cold weather to grab some hot bites from the wonderful walmart.
On our way there, we bumped into one of our fellow schoolmate. He was amazed that we actually walked to walmart in the crazy weather.. LOL. It was hilarious. He had this look of disbelief written all over his face. Honestly though, the walmart isn't that _very_ far o_o It wasn't hard to get to. The only bad thing was the cold weather.. (He drove btw) :p
One of the days during ES classes, we had a faculty dinner with our other classmates and the professors. Our class, as usual, went trigger happy again (what's new?) :p Everyone was in high spirits and snapping non-stop. I think the other classes were staring at us wide-eyed in amazement.. Hahaha.
We had yumemh food. The spaghetti~ Pork chop~ Salad and omg, the large array of cakes.. Hahahaha. Carrot cake, chocolate cake.. It was nice, a very small and nice session :]
Seeing how we had to study the ecosystems of different habitats for ES. We took a field trip to the Wichita Mountains. The weather was very very very unforgiving that day. The fog & weather was so bad we couldn't see anything. Visibility was horrible and we couldn't drive further up to look at the Bisons & other animals. We only managed to spot 2 prairie dogs and maybe a few bisons on our way back down the mountain when the weather cleared a bit more.
See that fog behind me? It was that bad.. :/
We went up the prairie dog town to check out the lovable animals :D There weren't many around cos of bad weather, again. There was quite a lot of precipitation as we were on higher grounds. Our hair got quite damp and wet. Visibility was equally bad there too :| I bummed we didn't to see more animals apart from those waxed ones in the museum. Hahaha. But i guess lunch at MEERS made up for all that disappointment (;
Lunch @ Meers.
Don't you just miss that place already? Hahaha. The servings were really HUGEEEEEE. 2 of us shared a meal each and we were stuffed to the brim. The hot wings were finger lickin' good! So was the cheeeese fries. The ham&cheese grilled sandwiches were humongous it's crazy -_- All the ham stuffing kept falling out, one way or another. Satisfied troopers with lunch at meers. The weather started to clear up when we headed back down the mountain. Talk about shit luck.
That very evening, my roomies and i trooped down to the Mac's across the road for some good apple pieeeees & dinner. Oh man. The apple pies are dirt cheap and super duper duper yummy. I don't eat apple pies here cos they are so... (insert negative descriptive word pls). But the ones in the U.S. are grilled and so much more delicious! 2 @ USD$1.
I LOVE THE DOLLAR MENU IN AMERICA'S McDonald's. DOLLAR MENU!
We had a very crazy walk to the McDonald's btw. Try crossing the road with endless cars streaming by, with no pedestrian crossing or traffic lights whatsoever. Hahaha. It was.. insane. And there were so many crows, birds, pigeons (whatever), standing on the telephone cables o_o We were so afraid of the bird droppings we took a detour just to get to the Mac's -_-
When we got to McDonald's, the restaurant was closed due to renovation works.. Luckily the drive-thru took orders still. So we walked in to the drive-thru and had our orders taken. LOL. It was quite an experience.. We had cars lining up behind us even :D Gah, i miss my american apple pies already :(((( gimme my dollar menu with the hot spicy chicken burger!
Apple pies the night before, presentation the next day, and then graduation...
Pre-Graduation photos.
We were all prepped and primed in our very best. Making sure we look good for our grad photos. Buzzing with excitement, we camwhored and camwhored non-stop. From the bus, to the school, the wearing of our robes, to queueing up, to sitting down, to the ceremony, to the post-ceremony, to spaghetti warehouse..
Spaghetti warehouse.. The place where my fateful camera was dropped by one of the waitresses. The lens suffered a bent from the impact and wouldn't retract :( What shit luck right? Nonetheless, i bought myself a new camera the next day :DDD A spankin' new awesome camera from fujifilm with wonderful specs that's like a pseudo-DSLR. Maybe, blessing in disguise?
Last picture the camera took before it died a sudden death.
MW says this picture has a lot of value and meaning. I think so too. Haha.
Anyways, that's about all that happened in my remaining Okla days. Lotsa incidents took place but it'll be too difficult to blog them all up. All those times spent with the roomies, every single memory, irreplaceable.
All those morning/evening bus rides to school that had us belting out song after song, as if we were in a karaoke lounge. Every lunch we ate together. Every walk we took together. Every photo we smiled, frowned, laughed at together. The darnedest and goofiest things/words said. All our late-nights spent chatting & slogging over homework.
The time spent at Okla was wonderful but the end of the journey in Okla also meant post-grad trip to LA/LV with 13 other classmates :DD Which would be continued in another entry :x