jchu.

I had a pretty busy Easter weekend. My parents are in Florida visiting my grandmother so there was no trip to Ottawa, and therefore no big Easter dinner! But oh well, I found other things to eat, and in large quantities.

Friday Geoff and Christine had Dave, Heather and me over for brunch and it was quite delish.

Then I headed over to Ian’s. We moved some of his furniture around and then shot a bunch of zombies on his Wii. I biked around that day and it was pretty cold biking home late at night, but still felt great.

On Saturday I played squash with Guillermo, then headed home to get ready for Spring Awakening with Justin, Tom and Michael. We had seats on the stage and it was a pretty awesome and unique way to experience the performance. That was my second time seeing it and I’m down for a third if I have the change before it closes this weekend. Then we went out to Woody’s and Crews, met up with Erica and Guillermo and Brian, ran into Matt and Steve, and ended the night with a big 3am meal at Fran’s (big = chicken fingers & fries plus half of Guillermo’s chicken fingers… yikes!).

Sunday was brunch with Seana and her mom at Insomnia, grocery shopping with Eddy at T&T and then hanging out with Brixton for a few hours in the evening. I love long weekends!

French class last week was really fun and I think I’m going to enjoy the remaining 7 weeks. I understood everything the teacher but I realized that my accent is only good when i’m exaggerating it; i.e., making fun of it. So I guess now I have a good reason to be sarcastic!

Cousin Geoffrey turned 31 yesterday so we had a little get-together at his and Katie’s place on Saturday. My sister surprised him by driving 3 hours to be there. It was fun, especially playing video games and watching movies on my other cousin Ronnie’s 50″ plasma TV. Now I know with no uncertainty that I NEED ONE OF THOSE. Johnny’s sister was there and she is in the pastry chef program at George Brown… so we called her a master baker. Gosh, did I have fun with that one…

I had dinner with Lora last night. We went to “the place with bad service”… which is what we call this place on Yonge between the two Spring Rolls. I don’t know why we keep going there as the food really isn’t that great, it isn’t super cheap, and also because of the reason why we nicknamed it as such. Then we went to Starbucks where there is usually a really cute employee who actually gets Lora’s and my weird way of interacting with service staff. (He’d get one of the “You Get It!” cards that we have yet to make.) Anyway, he wasn’t there but in his place was another cute one who is at least 10 years younger than me… which is fine, right?

Ce soir je commence mes classes de la langue Francais. I’m hoping to become actually bilingual and improve upon my extended-French high school diploma to the point where I can actually speak it. It’s at a high school near where I live. I’m taking the intermediate level and even though I think I’m beyond that, it will be a good starting point.

Last weekend I was in NYC visiting Keith and sooner than later, I hope, I’ll post some pics and videos.

A couple of weeks ago i started going to spinning class with Lora. She has a favourite instructor and goes every week at the same time. It almost killed me. Sure that may sound like an exaggeration but damn, it is tough! When I was done, my shirt looked like I’d just jumped into a pool with it. A pool of sweat, mind you. I went again last week and it was a different lady as the fave is on vacation. This lady was weird… she kept singing along with the (bad) music and also stared at herself in the mirror for almost the entire session.

Anyway, it’s fun to go to the gym with Lora and hopefully I’ll keep it up, unlike the three previous gym memberships I have had in the past four years…

I was in Ottawa this past weekend to visit my parents with my sister and her boyfriend. The idea was to spend some time out in the city for Winterlude, but we ended up doing nothing of the sort! It was a great weekend nonetheless. Spent some good times with the family and also with my good friend Daryl who moved back to Ottawa almost a year ago. I flew there on Friday afternoon and then my sister drove me home.

Now it’s Monday and it’s a day off for Family Day or something. I’m planning on seeing a movie - maybe Doubt - with G today.

I can’t believe I’m actually awake before noon on a day off. What’s happening to me???

what’s happened lately? Hmm, let me think. Oh, yes. Keith was here for about a week. He stayed with me for a bit and stayed in a couple of hotels, too. While he was here we went out a few times, it was pretty fun. We also went with Guillermo and Lora to see Jersey Boys. I thought it was pretty good, and also really cool that I ended up knowing the guy who was playing the lead role.

my sister and her bf were here on Saturday - that was fun. Spent the day with them and my cousin Geoff, then they went home and Ronnie joined his brother and I and we watched a movie.

Oh yeah, and I joined a gym again. Trying goodlife this time! Lora said I could go with her - she goes pretty often - and so far I’ve gone more times (four) in the past 2 weeks than I did in like 6 months the last time I joined a gym. I did a spinning class yesterday (my first) and i thought I was going to die. it was fun though! and felt great afterwards!

Tonight colin and i are going to DD and BR’s place to have our second ninja night. actually it’s not really ninja night… but DD, Colin and I are really into martial arts films so we decided over a year ago to get together once in a while to watch them. we’ve done that once and it was a really long time ago. DD banished Barb for the night.

We’re either going to watch Old Boy (doesn’t really fit the bill but is kick-ass/violent enough to squeeze in), Red Belt or The Protector. And we are ordering sushi as we need to eat something asian.

Hopefully I will get to see Barb! I haven’t seen her since her last day as my boss here on 9 January and I am having withdrawals.

i went to DC with justin for obama’s inauguration ceremony and it was crazy! an amazing experience to be part of such a monumental event. i went with democrats abroad. there were 3 buses. we left at 8pm on monday night and arrived in DC at around 8:30am.

the day was insane - so many people. we were in the mall almost as far back as we could get - right by the washington memorial. it was an unforgettable experience. it was also very, very cold. we were outside for about 5 or 6 hours, and ended up watching the parade from a warm and cozy cafe. we were watching just as they got out and walked, so it was good timing!

on the way back, we ran out of gas. ridiculous! it took about 15 hours to get home. apparently the driver was fired.

full gallery is here.

and here is the video I took:

Ok so clearly I did not continue posting here during the trip. Things got busy and then in Barcelona we ended up not having internet access. in summary, the trip was amazing (good summary, yeah?). Spain is beautiful and Barcelona blew me away.

I’ve started to go through my photos and will be posting them as they’re done. Here is the link, enjoy!

daryl and maureen’s wedding was great. so much fun. flew back to toronto at 2:30, went home, started packing and then Lora came by to hang out for a bit.

Guillermo and Sergei met me on a subway platform and we took the ttc to the airport. we had a very smooth trip from toronto to jfk and then from jfk to madrid. the flight was an hour quicker and i was able to sleep a little bit. we were in madrid at around 8:30am (2:30am home time!) and then we took the metro to the city centre. our hotel is so central, it’s awesome.

since we were early we couldn’t check in but they did allow us to leave our bags while we started walking. we saw a bunch of stuff, took some pictures, had a starbucks, then went back to the hotel, but they still weren’t ready for us.

anyway now we’re in the hotel room and it’s so tiny! but it’s cool, we are only here for 3 nights and we’ll do fine. gonna relax for a bit now before going out tonight.