1) Winning the best beef briyani againts hubs, though his chicken briyani was pretty impressive.
2) Getting a quick and helpful reply from the professor.
3) Having a lot of materials to read.
4) Wishing Happy New Year back to the pizzeria guy.
5) Chatting over pizza and my favourite Egyptian homemade rice dessert at a friend's house.
6) Blushing (which now I believe everyone is capable of after standing in the -15 Celsius for half an hour).
7) Getting dozens of free movies.
8) Opening the mailbox to find a letter from a good friend in Nancy, France with a lovely photo of her young family. Handwritten!
This photo was taken in January this year (wow, next year is only days away!). From left is Vesna who just had a gorgeous baby girl a few months ago so she's deferring her Master degree and currently staying in France with her scientist husband. She used to study and work as a journalist in the Big Apple, something that I used to wish upon a shooting star until one editor crushed my dream (story for another day). She took a few gap years to travel around the globe which not all of us dare to do. Oh, she was the one who sent me that mail today. Anyway, I was sitting on Gabrielle's lap as seen in the photo. She's from Canada and Trinidad & Tobago, what a nice combination. We've grown quite close over the years and she even knitted a scarf for me recently. I have a feeling that we will remain friends for a loooong time even after this program that brought us together. The Asian-looking people are from China and mostly South Korea. The Chinese girl Mina (fourth from right) is practically French now. She currently resides and works in Paris. I haven't heard from Yaping - the Chinese guy on the far right - since he last did his professional practice in Macau. He probably went back to China. The South Koreans were on an exchange program so they were only in Europe for six months. With the raging crisis between North Korea, I genuinely hope somehow they're still living their dreams. One of them told me that he was very grateful to get into the program in time as he was about to be drafted into the army. Count our blessings, sometimes we forget how good we have it.
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