loving each day

Hi there, from NYC! :) A week has gone by already and gosh what a week it has been. I'll be in NYC attending a summer program at Parsons for the month and ahhhh what an experience this has been so far! =) If you haven't heard of it, Parsons has what they call 'Summer Intensive Studies' every year during the summer holidays (basically summer school) and the variety of courses they have on offer is really incredible! They run the gamut from your awesome design courses such as interior design (which I really do want to take one day XD), industrial design, fashion design (of course), graphic design... to the more esoteric ones such as footwear design and I think they offer stuff like art history as well. :) The one I'm taking is Graphic Design. I was sooo happy when I randomly googled a few months back and realized that the time frame for the course fit exactly into my summer vacation. It's something I've always been interested in so I figured, why not give it a try now? When I'm young and malleable. And my mama was so understanding about it. Couldn't be more grateful to her for letting me experience this whole other incredible field.

So I'll be chronically my time here in bits and bobs.

This is what my dorm room looked like when I first arrived just a little over a week ago:

I was sooo excited! :) After all, I've never stayed away from home for an extended period of time by myself (since I have never even stayed at the university dorm back at home) and was really looking forward to experiencing life away from... overly concerned *coughnaggycough* parents. I'll probably take a photo again soon, maybe at the 2 week mark, just to see how my room has evolved. Mind you, now it looks... VERY LIVED IN. (My roomie's side, on the other hand, is still incredibly clean. How do people do it, honestly?)

When I first got to NY, I stayed with my mum's friend's place in Brooklyn and she was such an incredible help (she and her mum brought me to Marshall's and helped me through the maze of bed linen and pillows). I don't know what I would have done without all the help settling in (of course, the extra hands with the luggage was fantastic ;p). After checking in at the dorm, she brought me to this great Italian restaurant in Soho, called Il Corallo.

Il Corallo Trattoria

176 Prince Street

New York

NY 10012

I wish I could give a really nice caption of the dishes above as they were written out on the menu but I was too busy eating to remember to take note of the descriptions.

Honestly, that ravioli was one of the BEST mushroom ravioli I've had EVER. I don't even like creamy pasta usually because I've got mixed responses to cheese heh, but this one was simply DIVINE. I mean it. Every bit was a perfect blend of not-too-cheesy-yet-rich cream sauce and mushroom with chewy slices of ravioli. MMMM. I'm definitely going back there to have this dish at least once or twice more if I can. :D

(Soho is just full of quaint little boutiques like this.)

And here are my roomies! :)

(Sisi and Sabrina)

So in the dorm, I stay in well, I guess you could call it a suite, with two bedrooms and two people stay in each bedroom. Sabrina is my roomie while Sisi stays in the room next door. For some reason the other bed in her room never got occupied so it's just the 3 of us for now. Given that this is the first time I'm staying in a dorm with others and how I've heard of some horror roommate stories, I'm so glad they're such lovely roommates to live with. :D They're both doing the Photography course (Sabrina's taking digital photography and Sisi's taking film photography) and the stuff they get to do sounds sooo fun. Plus, they have hardly any coursework compared to me. -__-

Isn't she gorgeous? :) Sabrina's actually a fashion photographer from Uruguay! Check out her website HERE. Her work is really professional and she is such a nice roommate to have. For one, we love the same sort of music so she's introduced me to a couple of bands (some Spanish ones), we both love Urban Outfitters (anyone who's an Urbie fan is a woman after my own heart) and among other things...she doesn't complain about the mess on my side of the room. ;)

Here's Sisi. She's from China and is currently doing her masters in engineering in Boston. Pretty awesome, no? :) That day, she had to retake photos for her class because of some little accident in the dark room. Since it had to be portrait shots, Sabrina was her model and we all went to the nearby park for an afternoon of photos and fun. :D I loooove spending time with people who are into photography. No one finds it weird when you stoop down in awkward positions to capture a shot or break off from a conversation halfway to capture something you've just seen... and no one says no when you point the camera at them. :)

top: Fancy French Cologne (check out their website! lots and lots of pretty stuff and great service. The owner, Carly is really friendly and gets back to your queries about items really quickly. Obviously I've bought quite a few items from them already), jeans: Urban Outfitters, shoes: Aldo (recent buy in NY and soooo comfy), hat: Brixton

So this hat is appearing again, but I do love it. :D I'm too lazy to learn how to do my hair into some funky style so this will have to do for now.

(Stuyvesant Park, May 2011)

Ok, I'm so tired now. The one thing I still can't get used to is waking up for 9 am classes every day so I'm really looking forward to the weekend at the moment. Lots more to come soon!

Have a great week, guys. <3