To make up for lost time, I present to you 2009 in picture form! (click the images to enlarge)

I went to London mid-March with my friend, where we ate lots of scones, Pret sandwiches, and Wagamama noodles. Since I had never been to the UK, I hit up all the usual tourist-y spots and museums. Suffice to say, it was a much-needed break from my midterms. And I still miss clotted cream.

The Green Tea Ginger Ale isn’t exactly a staple of my college diet, but the heap of papers and books in the background should give you an idea of the problem sets, papers, and midterms I had throughout the semester. Anyway, moving on to more pleasant things!

In late June, my friends and I took a roadtrip along the east coast of the US. Our itinerary included Virginia Beach/Norfolk (VA), Raleigh (NC), Charleston (SC), Asheville (NC), Washington (DC) and back to good ol’ NY. We clocked in enough mileage to make it to DC just in time for the 4th of July, which was spent at the National Mall.

Charleston, South Carolina: so many colorful houses, biscuits, and magnolias!

The Blue Ridge mountains near Asheville, North Carolina.

4th of July fireworks in Washington, DC.

When Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince premiered in New York, I stood in the crowds surrounding the red carpet and caught a couple Emma Watson photos (and some incredibly blurry ones of Alan Rickman, Bonnie Wright, Rupert Grint, Tom Felton, and Daniel Radcliffe).

In early August, I spent 10 days in Egypt (Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, Hurghada) and Turkey (Istanbul). Both countries were incredibly beautiful; the picture above is the desert at sunrise.

Hagia Sophia at Istanbul.

After three weeks back home in Shanghai, I arrived in New York jetlagged as ever, thus beginning the Semester from Hell. I either overslept or pulled an all-nighter, I got sick on four separate occasions (I hardly ever get sick, which says something.), and I pulled off my worst GPA ever. Whoo!

So I came back home in late December right after taking a brutal final exam, and the next day, I went to Thailand (Bangkok, Pattaya, and Phuket), where I snorkeled, ate Pad Thai, drank so much coconut juice, and rang in the new year.

So in the spirit of New Year’s and my embarrassment at last year’s pitiful attempt at blogging, I’ve made a resolution to keep a regularly updated blog here. So here’s hoping I don’t go MIA this year! This site has too many cobwebs already.

With that said, happy 2010. Here’s to something great.

• New layout: I wanted something illustrative but not so cluttered that it would detract from the photos in my blog posts, present and future.
• New location: Most people probably arrived here from the old URL blog.cindypepper.com, only to find a redirect to the actual domain! Why the change? Well, it didn’t really make sense for me to isolate the blog to a different subdomain, since it’s just as integral to my domain as all the other content. Plus, it was pretty easy to transfer everything, so why not take the inevitable move now? RIP old blog URL¹ — you were great while you lasted.
• New portfolio: I cleaned up and added new works to my portfolio, including a new webdesign section! Here’s hoping that there will be more portfolio content this year (!).
• Updated pages: I suppose that goes without saying, but I figured that with a new layout, I might as well spruce up whatever content I have. And as always, feedback is appreciated, especially since I plan on adding more.

Anyway, I am doing swimmingly myself. Busy, too. However, for the past two days, my nose has been grossly congested. (And I mean grossly.) This week was a bit light in terms of workload, but unfortunately, I can’t say the same about last and next week. I have many a paper, midterm, and problem set due next week that thinking about it puts me in a state of worry. I keep remembering that my spring break London vacation is in less than two weeks, but then reality hits me with another impending deadline.

Also, I can’t believe it is March already. Furthermore, New York got hit with heavy snowfall on the eve of March. The weather had been semi-decent for February; did the groundhog emerge from the burrow, only to see its shadow a few weeks late? The sudden cold weather is worsening my congestion, alas.

Well, seeing as my immune system isn’t so robust right now, I’m going to go to sleep and hope that I’ll be a little less congested in the morning.

—–
footnotes:
¹: Despite the redirect, I definitely recommend updating any blog.cindypepper.com links to this site at cindypepper.com, especially since I’m not planning to use that subdomain anytime soon.