My holiday was actually less hectic than most people’s, but I still had a great time. ^_^I was going to split up this post into two different ones, but I realized that if I don’t write them both at once, I will end up being lazy and not post one of them…or both. lol. So I’m combining it into one post.

My 22nd birthday was on December 22nd (haha). Honestly, I don’t look forward to the numbers anymore, LOL. I think 21 is the last milestone age you will look forward to in life, hahah. After that you just start feeling old without any benefits. Anyway, the actual day of my birthday, my boyfriend took me out for something we saved up our stomachs for – all you can eat sushi! If you don’t know by now, I am IN LOVE with sushi. Anyway, I have eaten AYCE sushi before and I was on the verge of throwing up due to how full I was (I really wanted to get my money’s worth LOL). So this time I ate enough to feel really satisfied but not to tip over into sickeningly full. We ordered a ton of nigiri, which is the best deal you can get out of the AYCE price. We ordered one baked roll and it was just full of imitation crab and tons of rice…really filling and not worth it. Nigiri was the way to go so we stuck with that for the rest of the evening. We also had a few delicious appetizers, like edamame, fried calamari, baked mussels, and fried oysters. There was also green tea ice cream for dessert – which tasted like plain vanilla to me – except green, lol.

The experience I had at the restaurant was great, except for one incident with the waitress. First of all, we ordered a roll, but it didn’t seem to be coming for a long time, until she told me in really broken English (she didn’t seem to know much English) – which I barely understood – that our roll was sent to the wrong table. I smiled and said it was fine. It really was; we had plenty of food to keep us busy till they made us a new one, which we did get eventually.

Much later, one of the sushi chefs came to our table to deliver a different roll. We definitely did not order it because after eating the first roll, we decided no more tiring and filling rolls for us. So we told him we did not order it and he went back to behind the counter, confused. The waitress came back to us and said, “You order baked salmon roll?” I told her I did not. She asked again, as if asking again would suddenly change my mind. I told her, again, that we did not order it. Asked the boyfriend and confirmed that neither of us ordered it. With that she didn’t say anything more, but walked away with rolling eyes and disgust in her face. As if we were a bunch of hooligans who liked ordering things for fun and pretending like we did not order them. Ummm, yeah, excuse me lady, you just gave our order to the wrong table earlier, and you’re saying that there is no possibility that you made another mistake again? Mistakes are not a problem, but rolling your eyes and wrongly accusing your customers is really unacceptable. The really funny part? Maybe 5 minutes later, I heard someone deliver the very same “baked salmon roll” to the table right next to us. Ummm, yeah. I don’t think I need to say any more. Whatever, I had great sushi and filled up my belly – one lady with a sorry attitude isn’t going to ruin my birthday.

For Christmas Eve I spent the evening with my boyfriend going to neighborhoods along the beach. I wanted to go there because these beach houses are very expensive, so naturally, their inhabitants are well off and like to decorate their beautiful houses. It was the first time that I took notice of houses as big and nice as these. I didn’t take any pictures (should have!), but they were lovely. Sometimes I would yell at my boyfriend, “Look at that one!! IT’S HUGE!!! Is that one house or two???? Is that even a house, maybe it’s a community center???” haha.

It was rather late at night – around 9 or 10pm (and remember, this was Christmas Eve), so there were barely any people on the streets, but it was really fun getting out of the car and walking around for a bit. The air was crisp and chilly, so we walked hand in hand and shared my gloves. So our free hands each had my glove on it. We were very sickeningly cute, I’m sure. haha. After we were ready to head back home, we went to see if our favorite hole-in-the-wall donut shop was still open (normally they are open 24 hours). And they were! Aww. I hope they continue to have good business. There was a strange man sitting in the corner of their shop at a table with tons of books. I’m not sure if he was a hobo or not, but it was kind of interesting. Anyways, we went back to my house and had a Daria marathon while eating our sugary donuts.

On Christmas day, my family doesn’t really celebrate Christmas, but we had a Vietnamese memorial type thing for my deceased grandmother (on my mother’s side). Normally on Christmas day we usually don’t do anything (we don’t even have presents! lol. under our tree all the gifts belonged to my mom given to her from work), but I guess Christmas this year coincided with when the memorial was going to be. Some relatives came over, and it is our tradition that you eat only vegetarian food on that day (my brother dreads this tradition each year because he is a strict carnivore). In Vietnamese culture, the death anniversary is more like a celebration for family to get together, so don’t think that my Christmas was absolutely depressing, haha.

It was actually quite nice being able to see my two cousins – they are the closest to my age of all my relatives). The hilarious part was watching my female cousin try to play Left4Dead for the first time. I give her kudos, because I didn’t even give it a try. She was playing a dual screen team type thing with her brother (who is experienced with the game) and it was hilarious because her camera angle was either one of two things: the floor, or the ceiling. We had great laughs. We also played a few games of Little Big Planet. I love that game; it’s so family friendly and cute.

The following day after Christmas, my two cousins (one male, one female) I mentioned earlier, plus my brother and I, hung out for the entire day. My brother and her brother are the most indecisive and picky people in the world. Let me demonstrate. Original plans to go to one place after going through a list of restaurants we might dine at: rejected because they thought it would be boring with no stores that would interest them. Okay, fine. Went to a different mall that had a food court – variety of food is bound to make everyone happy. Come lunch time: rejected, they wanted AYCE Korean BBQ instead. Okay, so we went there. 1 hr and 30 min wait? Umm, we’re starving, no thanks. So we opted for Japanese food instead, and went to this restaurant, spending a few minutes looking over the menu outside. Wait, the restaurant is closed. Okay, let’s go somewhere else. Which also happens to be a Japanese restaurant. We drive there, look at the door. Restaurant is closed. LOL, OH MY GOODNESS. We were starving and grumpy people by then, so we decided to just go to the restaurant next door. FINALLY, we were able to eat. Hahaha. So, why do you think we had such bad luck at the Japanese restaurants? Because they all seem to close in between lunch and dinner hours, so they were closed from 2:30 until 5:00. Oh my gooooodness. It was just too sad and funny. Next time, we’re yelping the hours before we go.