Some New Year Thoughts

The new year is always in some ways a hard time. Although some may be super excited to set new goals and start a new year, I get a little sad that the holidays are over and that school is starting back up... but on the bright side, this is the last semester of classwork I have left--FOREVER! :)

I've been thinking a lot about what kinds of new year resolutions I want to set for this year. And you know what's really awesome? lds.org. Really. They have all of these super cool articles that help you set goals and make the new year seem not so bad. I think I'm going to try out this #52Stories thing that they talk about on lds.org about "defining your dash."

Last month when I was working a shift at the Columbus LDS temple, I came across this book about the history of the saints in Ohio and how the temple was built there. It was so cool seeing all these old pictures and reading excerpts from people's journal entries about when President Hinckley visited and announced the building of the temple. It really made me recognize the importance of journaling, documenting, and reflecting. There's a lot of weaknesses I've recognized in myself this last year, and I really want to change. Change is always hard, and I know it sounds corny but I'm so grateful that we really can change through the enabling power of the atonement.

So here are some of my goals for this year:
1. Do the #52Stories challenge each week
2. Run a half marathon
3. Read a non-school book
4. Take a name to the temple
5. Make a photo book of 2016
6. Stay up to date on organizing photos (within 1 month)
7. Read the Book of Mormon

I hope that I can really accomplish all of these goals! Some things I'm excited about for this coming year are finishing my last semester of classwork, starting my pharmacy school rotations, and just enjoying the last full year we'll be students!

Happy New Year y'all! :)

Self Advocacy

This semester--which is my second to last semester of classes at pharmacy school :D --I'm taking an elective called Humanistic Pharmacy. Originally, I signed up for it because it's an easy A elective and I still needed elective credits. It's a little inconvenient because the class meets from 6:30-8:30pm on Wednesday nights. Before each class I think to myself, "man, I don't want to be here on campus until 8:30pm :(." But as soon as I get to class I'm grateful that I'm there because we do a lot of reflecting and thinking and even though it's not a religious class I really feel the spirit a lot in that class. More than learning how to incorporate humanism in pharmacy, I feel like I've been learning a lot on how I can improve as an individual.

One thing that really struck me this week was our discussion about advocacy. Now, in pharmacy school advocacy usually means writing letters to senators, going to capitol hill, meeting legislative officers and advocating for pharmacists to be reimbursed and recognized as healthcare professionals. And that's exactly what my mind when to when my teacher said the word "advocacy." But then she said she was actually talking about SELF Advocacy. She said, "What is it going to take for you to take care of yourself? Why do we have to feel guilty about every moment we spend on ourselves?" And it's true. Even if I do something like spend time with family or de-stress by watching a movie, I still end up feeling stressed and guilty the night before exams and think to myself, "I shouldn't have wasted so much time..." I think I've definitely gotten better at living a balanced life especially since being in pharmacy school--doing fun things while managing school and work--but I've decided to more fully follow the wise words of Tom Haverford: "Treat YO Self!"--well...in moderation of course :D

I think a lot of the time I waste time on facebook or instagram and it's not even that fun or much of a stress relief to me, but I do it because I don't feel like studying. I think I'm going to try to cut down on that kind of wasted time and instead set goals to what I want to treat myself to. Like taking photos, going on picnics with Max, pinterest crafting, or going on a road trip! 

The end of summer is always hard and bittersweet. It's not that I hate school, but at the same time I sometimes hate school :P I miss the carefree days of summer when I could come home from work and watch a movie (or two) after dinner while crafting or just be lazy because I wanted to. Max always laughs at how sad I get when school starts and I get the "back to school blues." It's also the worst because grocery stores no longer carry cherries and all the fruit prices sky rocket and I'm left to eating just apples and bananas instead of all the summer fruits I love so much.And I get all sad for like two weeks and eat lots of Rita's, junk food, and chocolate. But in the end I know why I'm doing what I'm doing and I know it's good for me. So time to stop ranting and get back to work (while still fitting in some guilt-free self advocacy along the way of course) :D

Plus, now that I'm done with my back to school blues it's basically autumn, which is my favorite time of year. I'm so excited for the cool morning air, crunchy leaves, apple picking, and Halloween candy. And Christmas is 109 days! God is so good to us. :)

August 2016. Columbus, OH.

Life & The Lion King

The Lion King is hands down my favorite movie ever. I remember watching it over and over again as a little girl and singing and dancing to all of the fun songs. And last night, Max decided we should watching it for our Sunday movie night! I can't even remember the last time I watched it and so it was even more fun to watch it again! Surprisingly I remembered most of the lyrics and had no problem belting all of the songs at the top of my lungs (which is pretty impressive because I usually can't for the life of me memorize song lyrics).

It was fun to reminisce about our childhood as we watched the movie too. I also thought about all the things I didn't quite understand when I watched the movie as a 6-year old Korean-American girl who was just learning English. Like I remember the first few times I watched the movie I didn't catch onto the fact that the reason why no one liked Pumba was because he had a lot of bad gas. They never say the word fart so it was kind of hard to catch onto just through a song bahaha. And then there's also that part in the song "Can you feel the love tonight" where it says vagabond and I clearly remember just making up a word and singing that part because I didn't know what they were saying :P And Sonhee and I would also always say "halmoni" (the Korean word for grandma) when they would say "in perfect harmony" in that same song as well. Man, we thought we were so funny and clever haha. [The whole English as a second language thing was real guys! #firstgenerationamericanproblems #thestrugglewasreal ;)] And I always thought the Pride lands were barren because Scar was evil and evil made everything die, but now it makes sense that with the coyotes there disrupting the food chain, how it would cause an imbalance in different animal populations. And then there are those little jokes here and there that I never caught onto as well, like "Mufasa? Que, pasa?" bahaha.

I always cried when Mufasa died every time I watched it when I was little, and without fail I teared up watching it last night as well. And then teared up again when Mufasa's spirit comes back to talk to Simba. And then for the first time I realized how many life lessons are taught in that movie. I mean, I always knew it was a good movie and taught good messages but it really hit me watching that part where Simba is talking to Mufasa's cloud spirit.

Mufasa: Simba, you have forgotten me.
Simba: No, how could I?
Mufasa: You have forgotten who you are and so have forgotten me. Look inside yourself Simba. You are more than what you have become. You must take your place in the Circle of life.
Simba: How can I go back? I'm not who I used to be.
Mufasa: Remember who you are. You are my son and the one true king. Remember who you are. Remember. 

I mean come on--can it get anymore churchy/spiritual than that?! The creators of the Lion King have to have been religious. But it's so true. When we forget who we are--that we are children of God, a king--we thereby have forgotten our Father in Heaven. And no matter how many mistakes we have made or how long it has been since we've made those mistakes, we can always go back to our place on the path to eternal life, thanks to our Savior and the atonement.

It's been my New Years Resolution to read the Book of Mormon for 15 minutes every day, and although it hasn't always been a perfect 15 minutes, it's really made a difference in my days. I'm also loving my calling as a Young Women's Leader. I've really tried to make it a goal to magnify my calling this year and giving more time to preparing for my lessons. Preparing lessons has been so great for my personal growth and learning this past year. The best way to learn is really to teach :)

Anyways, back to studying for my TBL quiz tomorrow... >.< oh the joy....

Loving love :)

I'm all about love. Like I love watching chick flicks and hearing about people dating and getting married and being in love and all that jazz. Basically I love love. And I just hope everyone can find love and get married because it's pretty much the best thing ever. Max think it's funny that I'm such a hopeless romantic and that my eyes light up when I hear people are getting married or falling in love or just being cute and in love, regardless of if those people are real or just fictional characters. (Like I cried tears of joy when Jim and Pam got married. It may or may not also have been the time of the month though. Those hormones..)

But I never really get all that mushy about Max (or at least I try not to). Because Max hates it when I get all mushy and profess my love for him all the time (especially on social media). He even gave me a specific birthday wish that I don't post anything about him that whole day and that I can't say anything about how great he is that day. That weirdo. But lucky for me he never reads my blog so I can write about it all I want without him even knowing! :D

Story time: Part of working at a hospital means you have terrible hours. (Terrible if, like me, you're not a morning person nor a night person and you like just being awake at normal hours of the day). My shifts start at 6:30am which means leaving our house by 6 to ensure enough time for parking and walking and such. Luckily I only have to work a few shifts a month but once a month I do have to work Sundays (which totally stinks). Usually Max sleeps in on the days I have to go to work and he doesn't have to go to school, but this past Sunday he actually work up with me. I thought he was just going to the bathroom or something but I found out he actually went out to the car and scrapped all the ice off the windows for me! How sweet is that? It's the little things that make me love him a lot and make me so grateful for marriage.

Like whenever I am having a bad day Max goes to this bakery/cafe in the hospital and buys me two red velvet cupcakes! I always have the intention of only eating one, and I always offer him the other one, but I usually just end up eating both cupcakes. bahaha. 

One thing I love about being in school with Max is that I really feel like a team. When I have exams he does most of the cooking and lunch packing, and when he has exams I pick up the slack and cook and pack lunches. I love that because we're both students, we can understand the other's successes and frustrations with school and we just get each other when we talk about nerdy things like bacteria and ACE inhibitors and weird diseases that are gross but kind of cool (diseases that I won't describe here, because really, some diseases are super gross). And I love that we have this time to get to know each other better. I think it's different for every couple, but for us I think it's been such a blessing to have these years to focus on us. Our marriage. Our likes and dislikes. And our quirks. Like the other week I found out that Max's favorite skittles are the purple wild berry skittles. When I realized this I asked him, "How is it that even after 3 years of marriage I had no idea you loved these?!" To which Max replied, "I didn't know I loved them until this year too!?" bahahaha. he cracks me up. 

Last weekend we were waiting to be seated at Red Robin (which, by the way, is one of my favorite restaurants--their sweet potato fries are to die for!), and Max turned to me and said, "I wonder how we have such a good marriage?" I hadn't thought about it much until then but it was true that we've been blessed to have a pretty good and easy marriage. (Mostly I think it's because Max is great and never gets mad and is super understanding even when I'm crazy and hormonal and emotional because I'm a girl). But I also think it also has to do with the fact that we always say our morning and evening family prayers, we read scriptures together each night, and we try our best to hold family home evening every week (although the FHE thing is still a work in progress). I'm grateful that Max, as a priesthood holder and the patriarch of our family, has taken the lead to set up these important family practices, even though our family is just me and him right now. I feel pretty lucky to have him (I still feel like I got the better end of the deal in our marriage. I still don't know why he picked me haha). And I am grateful to have the gospel in our life to make our marriage eternal. And to have that great foundation to build our family on. Basically the gospel is true. And I don't know where I'd be without it. 

On some farm near Cincinati, OH. July 2015.

On being nostalgic when saying goodbye to strangers

For the last 2 months I've been going to physical therapy twice a week for some minor knee and foot issues. I really only went because 1. it was covered by my insurance and 2. it helped my half marathon training be less painful. Today was my last session and for the most part my knee and feet are almost normal! But it was kind of sad that it was my last times going today--mostly because I love my physical therapist! I'm just a super sentimental and nostalgic person so any bit of change from the norm can make me sad. Like no matter how much I hate school sometimes, it always makes me a little sad when semester comes to a close. Or when TV shows end I get sad that they're over. Or when fictional characters in movies break up it also puts a little scratch on my heart. (It still kills me Peter Pan didn't get together with Wendy in the end...stupid long distance and the whole never growing up thing.) But on the bright side my knee and feet don't hurt as much anymore, and I have two more hours to my weeks.    

But you know when you meet those kinds of people who are just sincere and nice and wonderful and you think to yourself, "why are you not Mormon yet?" Yeah, my physical therapist was one of those people. He's so nice and real and not awkward like a lot of healthcare professionals sometimes are. And he's just a genuinely good person I think. It's hard to explain. Anyways, when I meet people like that I think, "Man, Heavenly Father is so great, putting nice people along my path like that." It makes my day when I go into a store and the people are always nice and happy, you know? (Like Target--they always have such nice workers, I love it!) But then it also make me sad I'll never see them again! Like this one time when I was at Harry Potter World over the summer with Sonhee, we met this British family on the Hogwarts Express. It was pretty much magical. We had a nice little chat with them and learned that they actually live right next to the actual Kings Cross Station in England. Although our encounter was short, you could just tell they were good people and such a good family! Sonhee and I get especially sad thinking about them because we completely forgot to take picture with them! Good thing the gospel is true and hopefully all these great people will join the church so that we can all have a big party in the Celestial Kingdom. 

On another <less random> note: Happy (almost) Thanksgiving! :)

That one time I ran a half marathon

So if you know me at all you may know that I love naps and lounging and my favorite kind of dates with Max are the ones where we watch movies at home and play board games while eating lots of popcorn and dessert. If you know me at all, you probably also know that I'm not that into sports or running or being all that active (mostly because I struggle with the whole hand-eye-coordination thing and my first instinct when flying objects come my way is not to catch them but to simply duck). If you know me at all, then you're probably just as shocked as I am that I actually ran a half marathon. Yes, all 13.1 miles if it.

Indeed it took me almost a million years (2 hours 20 minutes at a 10:46 pace to be precise), but I finished it nonetheless. And to be quite honest, I actually enjoyed it. (Well, all but the last thirty minutes of it, when I almost died). And I really want to run another one and just keep running on a regular basis in general. Shocking--I know.

So how did this happen? I ask myself that exact question every time I'm sweating and looking gross when I'm on a run too.

Basically this one time I fell head over heels for this boy named Max who loved running all sorts of distances, but especially long races like marathons. We started dating and he would go on runs all the time and then asked me if I liked running too. Obviously I answered that I enjoyed it even though I couldn't remember the last time I put on my tennis shoes. Then we started going on runs together in the evenings. (To be more accurate, Max would go on a 10 mile run and do at 2-3 mile cool down jog with me). So like any crazy love struck girl would do, when Max suggested we run a race together I agreed. We also got a bunch of our roommates to run with us and made a fun little road trip to Las Vegas out of it. Max signed up for the 50 miler and I signed up for the 10K and he made me a whole training schedule and everything. I even ran DURING Christmas break, which shows you just about how much I liked him. Come race day Max got sick and had a fever and didn't actually get to run his race. But I still ran the 10K and even though I thought I was going to die I still finished. After the race Max said I would be converted and would be addicted to running. But that never happened. And then we got married. So then I told him I didn't really like running, and then I stopped running all together. For a few years at least.

After a semester of pharmacy school I realized I should probably exercise so that I can be more healthy. Especially because I'm deathly afraid of getting osteoporosis (it runs in my family and it's not if, but when I'll get it...) and all the science suggests that you only build up your bone density until your 25 years old I decided to start exercising. I started out with just some yoga and zumba classes at the RPAC but then I started running because it gave me an hour or so of guilt-free tv watching!

Over Labor Day weekend this year, we drove up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to Marquette for Max to run another marathon. (Just a side note: The UP is one of the most beautiful places I've been to! It had such great views of the great lakes and cute little local restaurants and little boats and light houses. I definitely want to go back and visit again). On our way home, we stopped by to see Janine and Kevin (Max's cousin and her husband) in Detroit. It was then that we all decided it would be so fun if we ran a race together...and I hesitantly agreed. The Indianapolis Monumental Marathon was in just 8 weeks and luckily it was one of the flattest race courses (I probably wouldn't have agreed to run it if it wasn't).

On race day I ran with Allison, my SIL, and thank goodness she ran with me! It was so fun to run with her and the first 6 miles felt super easy and fast! (It also helped that the first couple miles I was distracted by trying to sprint to the the nearest portapotty--apparently I drank way too much water before the race started). The last few miles were hard but Allison kept me motivated and kept telling me the finish line was just around the block (she said this about five times before we actually got to the finish line :P). There was a point in the race that I looked around at all of the other runners and thought, "wow, everyone here actually paid money to be here to run 13.1 miles on a saturday morning?" haha. It was so fun to have Max's brothers and Mom there to support us all too. (I didn't take hardly any pictures because I didn't have my phone or camera after the race--sad, I know!)

I still can't believe I actually ran 13.1 miles but it feels good to run and exercise and be healthy. Yay for the word of wisdom. The gospel is true guys--being healthy is great! Plus I feel less bad when I get two servings of dessert!

So sign me up for the next race! :D

Of things that matter most

If life and its rushed pace and many stresses have made it difficult for you to feel like rejoicing, then perhaps now is a good time to refocus on what matters most. - President Uchtdorf

So I used to feel super overwhelmed when it came to blogging and my perfectionist inside of me wanted all my posts in chronological order, highlighting all the exciting things in our life, and organized perfectly with pictures and captions and what not. But since doing that is pretty much impossible to do on a regular basis (for me at least), I decided to just blog when I can and when I want about whatever I want, and keep it more like a journal. Just FYI for the three people who actually read my blog haha :D

Anyways, I've been thinking and reflecting a lot over the last few weeks. And I've realized that coming to pharmacy school has been such a great experience in so many ways, but not in the ways that I had expected before.

If you know me at all, you know that I love school and love learning! I love working hard and studying all night and taking a test and just knocking it out of the park and seeing my hard work pay off. Or at least I used to feel like this... :P

After getting married, for some reason school wasn't as fun and wasn't as fulfilling. I wouldn't want to study as much but still hoped for the same results. And it became more burdensome and stressful and less fun. But still, I thought "I still love school. I loved my years at BYU so 4 more years of pharmacy doesn't sound long at all! It'll be so great!" But my first year of pharmacy school made me feel like school might never end hahaha.

For the first time in 5 years, I had a whole summer to not work, not study, and just enjoy spending time with family and traveling, so going back to school was one of the hardest things ever. The excitement of starting a new adventure rubbed off quickly and the reality of taking 18 credits of pure science classes with two exams every week for a year hit me pretty hard (I'm not exaggerating. We literally had at 21 exams in 12 weeks, NOT including finals during winter semester P1 year). I kept telling myself, "I love this, right? This is interesting, right?" And although at times it really is interesting and in the long run finishing pharmacy school is really what I want to do, I wanted to develop other talents and hobbies and spend my time developing myself in nonacademic ways.

So over the last year I've set aside a lot of "me time" (mostly on Sundays before or after church) to do things that I like. Like photography, watercoloring, crafts, etc. And through all this (and other things like exercising, spending time with family, doing church callings, and studying the gospel), I've realized that life is so much more than school! Quite honestly, school has been my life for the last 20 years (yes, I know it's pretty sad) but I really did love school so much and I liked that it was a huge part of my life. Now though, I think there's so much more to life than straight A's and being at the top of a class (but don't get me wrong, I still try my best to still do well...it's stressful to balance at times but I'm working on it). And thinking about all this made me think of one of my favorite talks from Pres. Uchtdorf that you can read here.

During this school year, Sonhee and Max have said to me numerous times, "wow you seem a lot less stressed than you were last year," or "you seem a lot different than last year..." and such. And I'd say it's true. I enjoy things more. I [try to] stress less. I read a conference talk every morning (I'm still working on the whole ancient scriptures every day thing...but modern scriptures on a daily basis is a start, right? haha). And I've grown so much in ways that have made me a better person in general (I hope!)

So now, I'm okay missing some class to go on a trip with Max. I'm okay not studying as much if it means I can have some me time (for things like painting, photographing, watching election debates, eating ice cream sandwiches :D) and time for family. I'm okay not having as much time for assignments if it means I can go to yoga or go running so I can be healthy.

Although I don't remember all the receptors and chemical structures or the side effects and contraindications I've learned over the last year, pharmacy school has taught me what matters most. And ultimately, I think it's Heavenly Father's way of preparing me for motherhood. Can't wait! :D
#halvsiesarethecutest #curlyhairedasianbabies #crossyourfingers 

September 2015. Tecumseh Sunflower Field, OH