In the beginning of 2012, I had set myself a few goals which I called New Year’s Resolutions. I’ve talked about this in a previous post but now, let me show you month by month, what’s worth remembering, also giving me a look at what makes up my 2012 and appreciate it all over again with all of you!
JANUARY
Chinese New Year’s celebration marking the beginning of the Year of the Dragon was the main focus.
We celebrate it with the normal traditions. Its to wish everyone a prosperous and happy new year with banners of wishes. We decorate with flowers to signify life. These yellow ones have the name of “String of Gold” to wish for fortune and Lilies translates to togetherness. My mom always makes a lot of food and she is the absolute best at it. Here you see the Turnip Cake , however she also makes Taro Cake, which are both for meals and are not sweet as what you’d expect in a cake. This year she tried out Sweet Potato cake and it turned out very delicious.
FEBRUARY
One Ottawa trip with friends led me to a small discovery in the most unexpected place: A perfume box for a line called Amazing Grace. The philosophy quote they had was this: “how you climb up the mountain is just as important as how you get down the mountain, and, so it is with life, which for many of us becomes one big gigantic test followed by one gigantic lesson…. Its how you accept winning and losing, good luck and bad luck, the darkness and the light.”
MARCH
The 4th anniversary with my boyfriend, my 26th birthday celebrated with friends.
APRIL
I went on Toronto road trip during Easter with one of my best travel companions and best high school friend. We go to explore every time and this year, it was to the Toronto Zoo, where we saw a cute baby polar bear and his mother next door. We also had awesome Chinese food, to us the best at Asian Legend. At the end of the month, my boyfriend took me to see Beauty and the Beast Broadway and we both had lots of fun however, there were no pictures.
MAY
My boyfriend and I have a growing love of hiking and exploring new places. We finally made it on Victoria Day (Canada holiday in May) to go to visit Ausable Chasm in New York. A quick one day trip that was really fun. We found amazing scenery, beautiful walk and if you’re into video games, even found an area that was like the one in Uncharted and took funny photos.
JUNE
This marked my friends and I bringing in Summer with crazy amount of activities. A lot of first time and some long time revisiting activities. First time experienced doing the Tree Adventure, which I fell in love with. Although I was screaming at the top of my lungs when I did my first zip-lining. Note that I am VERY scared of heights. Also, went to the beach with friends (hadn’t done that since 2007 in Taiwan) so it was super fun.
JULY
Fun times yet again with friends: went to Train Concert, went a water park and did lots of water slides, went to a friend’s wedding, won my first and second Dragonboat medals and the best of all was vacation to Saguenay with my boyfriend and hiking up to sit at the foot of a gigantic waterfalls. Wait one more thing, I had a stare down with a wolverine at the zoo also.
AUGUST
The best part was one of my greatest friends who lives in NYC visiting me in Montreal with her friend. Its always fun to make new friends. We all merged into a Star Wars Identity at the Star Wars exhibit. We visited the Biodome and saw a baby lynx, a very rare sight as Canadian Lynx are endangered species. I also went with my best friend to celebrate her birthday seeing an awesome broadway show, Wicked! ONE MORE THING: as a Star Wars Identity, Dreams, I rejected the offer to join the Dark Side!
And if you missed my full description of the Star Wars Exhibit and my Star Wars Identity, you can visit it HERE!
SEPTEMBER
This year we managed to successfully complete the St-Bruno lakes trail and saw a chipmunk and had a wonderful walk. Its more of a crowded trail so it was hard to get a moment but I took my boyfriend helped me take my first levitation photo. Very fun stuff!
OCTOBER
Halloween and this blog got me back into watching horror movies, giving me many many sleepless nights. I also visited Lantern Festival and the Japanese Garden at Botanical Gardens. Then took another night to drive up to Upper Canada Village to see Pumpkin Inferno. By the end of the month, I transformed myself into Alice from Resident Evil based on her Apocalypse look for Halloween.
NOVEMBER
This was possibly the BIGGEST month of the year. I spent my two weeks vacation in Hong Kong and met up with lots of fantastic friends and family. Spent a lot of time with my grandmothers and saw a lot of wonderful things. I came back and gave a last minute week long effort writing like crazy and won the NaNoWriMo.
DECEMBER
Christmas with family and friend, the biggest winter storm in Montreal since forever, I have no pictures but helping with surprises always make me happy as well.
Its been a fantastic year in 2012. I’ve had great moments with family and friends, experienced new things, conquered some fears and had so much fun on the blogosphere. Some bloggers here I’m happy to call my friends and some have given me the most unexpected gifts on Christmas and New Year’s. Not to mention all those comments and likes. All your support has been incredibly important to me and means everything to me.
Lets welcome 2013 and I promise you that I’ll step up my game! I’ll have a few posts coming up within today and tomorrow updating everyone.
Have a awesome weekend everyone!
Tranquil Dreams 