update

it's been 2 months since this blog has been updated (sorry, world!) and there are only 2 months left before 22 upland will cease to be 22 upland. :(  although the house will remain in porter square, the rest of us are leaving: eunice is moving toward harvard square at the end of june, cindy and i are moving out of massachusetts at the end of july, and peteky is moving to davis at some point in august.

that being said, hopefully we'll add a few more updates before all of us leave! the blog may still be around, but a more appropriate title might be "grad school adventures". speaking of grad school, congratulations on becoming a master, wallis! :D

anyway, here is a brief update from 2011:

january/february 2011: snowfort, version 2.0.

thanks to the generous amount of snow that we received this past winter (80.1 inches! see the shaq-o-meter here), matty and i built an even bigger and better snowfort than we did last year. the picture above is after we received another foot or so on top of our previously built snowfort before we re-dug out the entrance. this one could've seated 4 people comfortably inside!

march 2011: my 25th birthday!

my 25th birthday had 2 parts: a trip to treat cupcake bar with cindy, peteky, and liz to decorate our own cupcakes (thank you, groupon) and an iron chef-off in the evening with even more amazing friends. thanks to all for making it a fabulous quarter-century birthday (and especially peteky and matty for organizing it all)!

march 2011: st. patty's day celebration

to celebrate our irish heritage*, we celebrated st. patrick at home with irish car-bombs! this is where we learned that petek must have a bigger esophagus than cindy and me, because she totally demolished us.

*what, you didn't know that our last names are really o'altug, o'chen, and o'wang? :)

april 2011: spelling bee!

matty and i have been going to highland kitchen's spelling bee (1st tuesday of the month!) every month since march. cindy came along the 2nd time we went, which was my best outing yet! i think i've found my good luck charm because the next month, i went out much earlier! i got out in the 3rd round on the word "dipody" but that meant that i finished tied for 3rd. not too shabby, for someone who has trouble remembering how to spell "vacuum" and "niece". (how many c's and u's? is it an exception to i before e?) the guy in the background of the above picture came in 2nd place that month.

april 2011: eunice's birthday!

all four of us hung out and made a cheesecake (and ate it too!) for eunice's birthday. sadly, i didn't pull out my camera so i don't have pictures from it - hopefully someone else does. trust me when i say the cheesecake was delicious, and the hang out time was awesome. :)

may 2011: dinner at saray

petek, cindy, and i went out to saray to eat legit turkish food, which was exciting because peteky actually understands turkish food! i think she found saray "okay", but it tasted pretty good to me. above is what we ordered, and unfortunately, i don't remember the names of the dishes. we went to infusion tea spa afterward for delicious bubble tea (emphasis on tea) and crashed shoey's place for a little while as well.

may 2011: new york city!

cindy and i made a trip out to nyc since we both missed out on the trip in february that peteky went on. it was a throwback to our first new york trip (back in january 2006!) and even though 5 years had passed, our primary objective was still the same: FOOD! (the other goals on our 1st trip to nyc together was to find dumpling man (check!) and get on the today show (almost check! we got on to good morning america instead)).

cindy and bagel from ess-a-bagel (stuyvesant town)

shake shack!!! (madison square park)

matty also came down that weekend and to exercise off some of that food, and we took a frisbee to throw around in central park.

throwing? or being a mean face? :P

eunice was also down in new york that weekend, but sadly, we did not run into her randomly on the street. however, i ran into a friend when we were in line at magnolia's who i haven't seen since we graduated from high school. the world is seriously too small.

that's it for now! june updates will come soon. :)