Christmas + Thanksgiving Wrap Up

So I'm still fairly behind with blogging since I did such a crummy job at it for a good six weeks, so here's a bit of a quick update of what's been going on lately.

First off, our family once again did a lot of pies on Thanksgiving. It was amazingly delicious. We usually get tiny slices of each pie so we can sample them all. In the future, we may have to vomit the pies halfway through so that we have enough stomach space for all of them. Sort of like the spitting up whine thing you do when you go whine testing.

Also, my grades just came back, and I received my all time lowest grades ever in all of history. A C+ and a B-. And you know what? I don't even care anymore. I graduate in four months, I have a job offer, and I don't have to worry about keeping my GPA up for scholarship anymore. So why worry, right?

In related news, my brother who just returned from a mission in Japan has informed me that I'm taking a giant dump on every last vestige of Asian left in my blood. I should note that my other younger brother, who I've been living with for the last semester, has just barely received his mission call to Japan. For those keeping score at home, here's where we stand:

• Dad: served in Hokkaido, Japan
• Mom: from Tokyo, Japan
• Younger brother 1: served in Kobe, Japan
• Younger brother 2: going to serve in Fukuoka, Japan
• Younger brothers 3 & 4: almost certainly going to serve in Japan. Probably the Nagoya and Sedai missions, so that we end up covering the whole country with Low family shenanigans.
• Me: Little Rock, Arkansas.

Am I ashamed? Of course not. I learned how to deep fry stuff. And as any stateside missionary will tell you, "stateside is the best side."

Now, for Christmas, I got a graphics tablet. I'm really excited about it, but I'm still learning how to draw things. You might think that art skills would translate to drawing on a tablet super quick, but it doesn't. You have to look at a computer screen instead of your hand, and you still have to learn how to do Photoshop and stuff. I'll probably be illustrating this blog using the tablet from here on out. Even though I'm fairly slow with it, it's still faster than MS Paint or using the sketch app on the iPad. Hey, here's a picture I drew earlier for practice!

"I AM ZIIIMMMM!!!"

As you can see, my drawing on the left is kinda sloppy when compared to the source material on the right. So we'll see what happens from here on out.

Finally, I think I would be remiss if I didn't put up a list of what I was grateful for this last Thanksgiving. I've done it for the last two Thanksgivings, and I feel like it's a good tradition. I know it's super late, so maybe we'll just call it a Christmas List of Thankfulness. A Christfulness? Thankmas?

I'll figure it out. It will be its own post though.

Christmas Break

This post talks about what I've done on my Christmas break. It's the product of boredom and is pretty scatterbrained. I know I've been really bad at updating the blog as of late, so we'll see if I can get things going better in 2012.

Because Salt Lake International Airport is between my parents' house and my apartment, this is how my vacation weekends can sometimes feel:

Thanks to Hyperbole and a Half for the image.

When I come home after for the holidays, my first thought is usually this:

And then I go to the home computer and find that the only web browser installed is Internet Explorer, and I think in my head "what year is it?"

The only computer game installed on the computer at home is Age of Mythology. Man, I forgot how much fun that game was. My favorite moment is when you finally crack your opponent's military and take down their settlement. The battle is over but you still have to destroy the town to win. You see about twenty little villagers pour out of the town center and start running for their lives in every direction. Perhaps they have some small hope that if they can escape; then maybe - just maybe - they might be able to start over. Build a refugee camp. Live a quiet life for a while. Then train their kids to be soldiers and avenge their fathers' deaths in a violent final battle that will take place ten minutes later.

But I am not going to allow that to happen.

At least, that's how I envision it in my mind. In reality, it's probably more like this:

People who've played an Age of Empires game before will understand.

While we're on the topic of video games, we went to my aunt's house for our extended family Christmas party. While there, my aunt broke out one of their Christmas presents, Dance Central 2, and challenged my little brother and me to a dance off.  Keep in mind that my aunt is relatively young and teaches dance.

We did a dance off to Lady Gaga's Bad Romance. You can see the choreography below:



I pretty much rocked it (I'm pretty good at doing the Fierce Kitten), which was probably a little disturbing to the rest of the family. But hey, that's how I roll. My aunt best be bringin' her A-game the next time we meet.

Other than that, I've done pretty much nothing all Christmas break, and it was everything I could have hoped it to be.

EpicStudyTime

So this is how my finals week went, starting with the Saturday before finals:

I listened to the rest of the message, packed up my stuff, and left the building - feeling totally unprepared for the rest of the week.

The library was closed on Sunday, it being the Sabbath and all. But on Monday, the library started staying open until 2:00 AM. I knew that I would be spending quite a bit of time there on that day.

I got a lot done and was pleased with my efforts that night, but I still had four more tests to go, so I needed to study a lot more on Tuesday.

I wasn't as successful on Tuesday, and knew that I would have to be in the library late again on Wednesday.

At the end of this night, I had what has got to be one of the stupidest thoughts I've ever had, which I can only attribute to lack of sleep and a diet of Dr. Pepper and Gummi Bears:

"Hey, I've been in the library every night at closing time this week. Wouldn't it be cool to say I was here at closing every night of finals week? There's only one more night left."

Well, on Thursday, I still had only taken two of my five finals. I had several review sessions and group study periods scheduled, and some other errands that needed to run. By 9:00 PM, I had been on campus for ten hours and still had two more finals to go. 

I trudged up the steps to my usual spot on the fifth floor to start my final cramming session. My friend urged me to go home - I didn't look like I was up for another five-hour study session. I declined. I was one day away from meeting my goal of being in the library every day of finals week, and nothing - not friends, not girls, not offers of free tacos - were going to keep me from it. Gosh dangit.

Approximately four and a half hours later:

P.S. My final grades were A, A-minus, and three B-pluses - which is the Asian equivalent of a D, but still good enough for me to keep my GPA within scholarship range.

Merry Christmas!

A beautiful musical number courtesy The Mormon Tabernacle Choir.






Children often put us educated people to shame with their wisdom.






The story of a group of people who gave up their Christmas on hold to serve others in the Lord's vineyard.






My personal favorite:   A small girl teaches us what the spirit of Christmas is.



A special thanks to Mormon Messages for putting all these videos together.

Now, go have yourself a Merry Christmas!  Enjoy some family time, eat some holiday treats, and spread the Christmas Spirit.   

A Christmas Story

There's nothing quite like writing on the laptop while sitting next to a warm fireplace.  I do love being home for the holidays.  Because of the mission, I haven't been home for Christmas since 2007.  I remember I got a couple of pretty cool presents that year, but my most memorable one from recent memory came last year.

As a missionary, Christmas can be kind of hard.  You're away from home, friends and family.  You'll spend it with your companion and any local church members kind enough to have you come over for the holidays.  The bright spot is that it is one of two days a year that you're allowed to call your family.

Anyway, I was serving in Jonesboro, Arkansas at the time.   I had been a missionary for around 15 months and had actually spent more time in Jonesboro than all my other areas combined, so I knew the members of the church there pretty well and was looking forward to having a good Christmas with them.  I really hadn't told my parents what I wanted for Christmas since there wasn't really anything a missionary really needs or is able to use (nearly all electronics are banned for us).  Besides, I think my parents already knew what to get me...

.......ties....

Ties are like the only part of a missionary's wardrobe that they get to switch up, so collecting ties became a fetish for me.   In fact, by the end of my mission, I had earned a reputation for having one of the best tie collections of any person in the field (I think I maxed out at 130 ties.  I've since cut back to around 80 right now).

This is a portion of my collection midway through the mission.  I always had the people who gave me ties sign the back of them, so they've become a wearable scrapbook of sorts.

These are two ties that I actually made myself with the help of a local ward member in Jonesboro.

Anyway, when Christmas came, I found many thoughtful gifts for both me and my companion--CD's, pens, stamps, dollar store toys, cash.  In all seriousness, those really are good gifts for missionaries.  Music is awesome for study sessions and car trips.  A nice pen writes much smoother and neater than the cheap ones.  Stamps let missionaries write people at home, since we can't call them.  We don't really have time to use anything else.  Of course, I had a few ties as well.  One in particular really caught my eye.  It looked strangely familiar....

Flash back to October.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints just finished their semi-annual General Conference.  The leadership of the church addresses us with spiritual messages and counsel for our time.  Watching General Conference is one of the best ways for people to get to know what our church is all about, and as a missionary, it was kind of like our Superbowl. 

The following week, I was writing my weekly email to my family.  I was talking about some of my thoughts from General Conference.  "I really enjoyed Elder Holland's talk on the Book of Mormon,"  "Elder Packer sure is getting old,"  "the choir sang some really beautiful numbers."  And in a throwaway comment, I said, "and Elder Yoon Hwan Choi wore the best tie of the conference."  For real, though;  most of the leadership of the church wears very conservative ties.  President Utchdorf will frequently wear some nice ones, but Elder Choi's was probably the prettiest tie I had seen in General Conference--ever.



You probably can't tell from the picture, but his tie has got some really cool designs in the pink spaces.  The color scheme is works really well with the white shirt.

Flash forward back to Christmas morning.  I was looking at a red tie with pink and white stripes on it that had a striking resemblance to Elder Choi's.

I would later find out that my mom had searched just about every department store in Utah looking for Elder Choi's tie.  She couldn't find an exact match (after all, he is from Korea and probably gets his ties from Korea), but she came pretty darn close. 

Did I really need another tie?  No; you can tell that just from the first picture I shared in this post.  But my mom knew that I kind of had a weird tie fetish and she really wanted to make me happy.  I will never forget that gesture of kindness that she did for me.  That's what the Christmas spirit is all about--loving kindness.  I pray that I may always remember that. 

Anyway, I hope you don't mind the change of pace from my normally light hearted comments.  But hey, it is my blog and I have said from day one that religion plays a large role in my life and will play a large role in here. 

Here's a link to the most recent General Conference of the LDS church: http://bit.ly/fHxK7h

And here's a link to Elder Yoon Hwan Choi's October 2009 Conference talk--it's a real good one: http://bit.ly/i6qkML

Zany Christmas Presents that I Sort of Want

"My Other Ride is a Light Cycle" Hoodie
from: Threadless.com

I'd take anything from Threadless--the art they put on t-shirts is awesome.  But this hoodie is pretty tight.  It's based on the original 1982 Tron (see the trailer on YouTube for some laughs).  The real kicker is that it actually glows in the dark!  How obnoxiously awesome would that be to be wearing this while watching Tron: Legacy in theaters and have it glow in the dark the whole time?

Plush Sushi
from: ThinkGeek.com

I'm a little old for stuffed animals, but these are stuffed foods (and the fish is kinda like a stuffed animal, but much later, right?), but these are just so gosh darn cute.  To quote a recent movie: "It's so fluffy I'm gonna die!"

Taco Man Costume
from: buycostumes.com

Yes, Halloween has come and gone;  I'm aware of that.  But I have a secret desire to be a sign shaker for Taco Bell, and I think it would be totally awesome to do that while wearing this costume.  When you couple that with my awesome dance moves, I think you'd have an embarrassing YouTube hit on your hands.

Demonia Boxer 05
from: ShoeBuy.com

There are a lot of different shoes at ShoeBuy, but this one sticks out to me.  I'm only 5'7".  That was the average height for someone living during the Renaissance, but nowadays, that's kinda short.  With these shoes, I add an entire four inches to my height!  And that sole is so cleverly disguised that no one would ever know that I'm wearing platform shoes....right? 
(note: In all seriousness: do not buy these shoes for me.)