The End of A Much Needed Vacation

Image via IMP Awards

To all of my faithful readers, thank you for inudating me eith emails and comments about the recent lack of posting. I took a much needed vacation, from work, from blogging, and only slightly from cooking. School begins tomorrow, and with that my regular schedule commences. And on that note, here are some posts to look forward to:

New York Restaurant Week: Review of Arabelle at the Hotel Plaza Athenee
Homemade Vegetable Stock: A Healthier Base for Your Fall Soups and Dishes
Is It Possible to be a College Student and a Foodie: A Lesson in Trite Food Writing

...and more!!!

Back from Hiatus

After a trip to the Chinese-North Korean border, a two week vacation due to the 60th Anniversary of the PRC/Mid-Autumn Festival/Preventing-the-Spread-of-Swine-Flu Measures, and after getting fed up with free proxies not working buying a VPN (Strong VPN has saved my Chinese internet experience), I'm back to blogging.

Unfortunately a 60th Anniversary/Mid-Autumn Festival/Swine Flu 2 week vacation/cancellation of classes isn't the most inspired time for blogging and next week I have midterms so my time is also somewhat limited. But I plan to get back to my regularly scheduled blogging as soon as my regularly scheduled life resumes.

We did take a trip to Lafashan (Lafa Mountain) and Hongyegu (Red Leaf Valley) over the weekend so I'll attach some pictures from that.



The Chinese guy who tried to kidnap me at Lafashan. No, I'm not kidding. And might I add that this picture severely over-represents his height.



View from the top of Lafashan (which took us about 3 1/2 hours to climb, might I add)



Red-leafed Tree in the Red Leaf Valley



Jarrett and I (check out Jarrett's Blog!!!)

Reflections on New Milford

I just came back from a 4 1/2 day trip to New Milford, Connecticut, my boyfriend's (Twin #2 on Twins on Twins) hometown. My first trip to Connecticut was in late December 2008 to watch the UConn-Georgetown Men's basketball game, an epic event, as the mediocre and, later in the season, disappointing Hoyas dominated the Huskies from the beginning to the end of the game and we were graced with the presence of The Red Panda Acrobat. We had to drive about an hour and a half to get to UConn and because it was dark and Connecticut is very hill-y and rural, which made me feel like I was in the middle of a Freddy Kruger movie. I warmed up to the place toward the end of the trip but I felt as though I had to commit to the idea of just being frightened of the place so that my boyfriend would not have the satisfaction of knowing that I actually liked his town.

This second trip, on the other hand, was great. New Milford is a quaint, pretty town, actually the largest town in terms of area in Connecticut. It is about 30 minutes outside of Danbury and 90 minutes outside of New York City, which allows it to be isolated from the city but close enough that you can take advantage of what the city has to offer. And it is a little less than 2 1/2 hours from my house which makes it a reasonable trip for me. Overall, I really grew to love the town and the rolling green hills that lined every horizon in every direction. I'm looking forward to my boyfriend's trip to Princeton Junction but I can't wait to plan my next trip to New Milford.

I'll have some pictures from the trip up within the next couple of days.