This & That

Lately I've been eating a lot of this:

Pumpkin Spice Smoothie

...and quite a bit of that:

Banana Pumpkin Oatmeal

I've been helping Him set up this:

Chuck's New Apartment!

But mostly I just drink waaaay too much of that:

Oh, Dutch Bros Coffee

He's such a beautiful man. He carved me this:

Our first pumpkin!

And cooked me that:

Vegetable Quinoa Omelette Scramble

But to be fair, I did introduce him to this:

MMM Sauce

Basically, we're pretty stoked on life right now.

My Week in Pictures

What I did instead of tackling the mountain of homework:

Smoothie in a bowl!

Portland Eastside waterfront

My first frozen yogurt!

I'm madly in love with this skyline

Chilled Quinoa Vegetable Salad with Lime Cumin Dressing

After a few oddly perfect days, I return to my mound of end of the year schoolwork:

• 12 page research paper and presentation on Korean Unification
• 30 page report on my African-based organization service project
• 5 page analyzation of the documentary "Deep Water"
• Political Science test
• Advanced Spanish grammar test
• Portfolio of all my work in Asian Studies Class 

All done within the next 2 weeks... Sounds bad right?

This brightened my day: The national flower of North Korea is the Kimilsungia Begonia. I shoulda known.

Camera Ready!

I have my camera again! Yay! A friend visiting from Alaska brought it down to me. Sexy post-8-mile-run-hair:

Gloriously warm Portland afternoons mean wandering around the city with my camera and an iced coffee in hand. 

Oh the things you can find:

This Kim Jong-il tongue scraper is from Cargo, one of me and Chuck's favorite Portland destinations. It's a quasi-antique-novelty-furniture-garden-andeverythingelseyoucanthinkof store with a heavily Asian influence. 

 The GIANT store is literally packed to the rafters with the most random stuff:

Including Chinese propaganda posters...

New purchase from American eagle. Bigger than a purse, smaller than a backpack, and it can carry my laptop. All for under $30:

Lunch = Chicken salad made with fat free greek yogurt, apples, grapes, pecans, dried pomegranates, and celery:

These warm summer nights make it seem like school is out. Alas, mega projects await. Sad face.

Easter Sabotage

I am so full. This whole Easter thing is killing my diet.
I love ice cream. I love dessert. I love pie.
I am an intelligent, rational, aware human being. I know that I should eat fewer sugars. I know it. But, without fail, the after dinner urge for a "little something sweet" always takes control of my brain.

So, in an attempt to be healthier (and to dull my addiction for dessert) I resolved to cut myself off from sweets of any kind for 7 whole days. I've read about other people trying to wean themselves off sugar completely (not possible for muah) and they all say the cravings in the first week or two are killer. Needless to say, I was going into this experiment with the expectation of torture.

I made it five whole days without eating any kind of dessert/refined sugar treat. Then my mom/church sent me a big box of easter candy. I gave most of it away to my dorm friends, promising to limit myself to one piece of candy a day for an after dinner treat.

This was all I kept for myself out of a big flat rate box:

Then my grandma sent me chocolate chip cookies. It's sabotage I tell you!

I should have thought about the Easter Holiday before I planned this little experiment. I fully intend to try it again because it (surprisingly) wasn't that bad. I thought that I was going to be having withdrawals after the first night, but that wasn't the case. Thinking that the "ritual" aspect of eating something sweet after dinner may have been partially to blame, I allowed myself to eat something after dinner, just not something processed or high in refined sugar; a piece of whole wheat toast with almond butter, yogurt, or fresh fruit. I also started drinking English Breakfast Tea at night, and it really seemed to curb my cravings.

...And the Livin' Easy

Summer is officially here in downtown Portland. It was warm by the PSU campus, but it is straight up HOT downtown. I'm sitting in Pioneer Square with just a tank top. I had to take off my shoes and roll my pant legs up! I'm from Alaska, I'm not acclimated to this heat! My free hot starbucks coffee in honor of Earth Day probably didn't help my internal temperature, but I'm fairly certain passing up free coffee is a sin. 

Pioneer Square, although one of Portland's best known tourist destinations is also one of the coolest places in downtown. It's a large open courtyard with free wifi (which I'm using now) food vendors, coffee, public transit and shopping surrounding it.

There is always something happening, and it's a pretty sure-fire place to get in some good people watching. 

On another note, I apologize for the somewhat crappy photos, these were taken with photobooth on my macbook. Currently, my camera is stuck in Alaska. Mega sadface. I promise my photography is much better than this! You can see some of my real photos under the "Portland" page.

Now, if you'll excuse me, some too-expensive-for-my-college-budget-but-I-don't-care clothing needs to get bought. Mommy sent me an easter basket and this was in it. <3 mamma.

La Primera Vez

So this is it.
My first blog post ever. 
It's after midnight and I have untouched Spanish homework. 
It's all about priorities right? 
Chuck and I are currently in different states. He's about a week away from graduating college, and I'm not quite half-way through the last term of my sophomore year at Portland State. All things considered, I'm super stoked because I will be flying up to Alaska for Chuck's graduation! Yay! It's only 2 1/2 days, but when you go for months without seeing the other person, you'll take what you can get!
It seems like EONS ago that I graduated high school. So precious!

I'm pretty sure my graduation stole is the only thing I've ever ironed...
I haven't seen Chucky in about a month. I saw him (briefly) in between flights to and from Alaska and Hawaii during spring break. That's right, I went to Hawaii! Sadly, Chuck wasn't invited. It was a purely family vacation. Here's my older brother, myself, and my Dad in Maui (Mom is snapping the pic) on my 20th birthday. 

Hawaii is everything people claim that it is. Really, it is that beautiful. 

My advanced Spanish grammar book is glaring at me; neglected. Once we figure out exactly what we're doing with this blog, things will be more organized. Until next time!