family – Life @ U of T

Gifts for your loved ones

I’ve been missing my loved ones during these times so I wanted to dedicate a post on gifts you can make for your loved ones to show them that you’re thinking of them 🙂 Friendship bracelets: As a kid, I…

Francesca and her family having dinner on the CN Tower. They're all looking at the camera.

Balancing school, family, and friends: Family visits from far

Whenever my family asks me if I want to hang out with them, I immediately say yes. When my family visits me all the way from South America, and only stays for a week, I have to be careful when…

Best Tourist Activities in Buenos Aires

So your spending your semester and or year abroad in Buenos Aires, having a good time, when you get the call. Family (or friends) will be coming to visit. Here are the essential tourist activities I would take my loved…

Bon Voyage

Since this is my final blog, I want to change it up a bit. The setting is no longer in the United Kingdom but in Paris, France instead – well half of it. Last week, my mum and brother came…

In Which I Miss Warm Drinks and Warmer People

ALT="A photo of me standing with my family at my mom's mandolin recital." — My brother, mom, sister and I together at my mom's mandolin orchestra performance.

When I was younger, my parents used to make me a special Vietnamese warm drink any time in the winter. They would spoon sweetened condensed milk into a big mug, then pour hot water into it, stirring all the while. And after adding enough condensed milk as necessary to my preferred taste, they would finish it off by giving me bread to dip as I sipped my drink. While this was definitely before my university years, I still find myself unknowingly craving the drink then ultimately making it any time life (at U of T, especially) gets crazy, gets chaotic, gets stormy, gets sad. And, well, I also crave the drink when I miss my family.

Parental Adventures on Campus

I’m one of the many students who’s “lucky” enough to have family that lives close to the city. So around this time every year I start getting messages from my parents asking if they can come and visit. This year…

Necessary Evils

There's only a little over a month left before the 2013-2014 academic year begins, and it only just feels like summer is getting started - I have yet to make a dent in my annual summer bucket list (you know,…

Commuter Noob: A Cry for Help

From first year to third year, I lived beside the CN Tower and had a 20-minute to commute to campus. Life was soo good. But with a recent turn of events in my life, I’ve decided to move back to…

Pro bono publico: a phrase I have been mintranslating for the past two decades

As I sat at my table staring at the do-it-yourself will kit I had purchased at the bookstore, a thought went through my mind, “there has to be an easier way”. I don’t have the extra coin to pay a…

I might be a masochist…

masoch·ist n. A willingness or tendency to subject oneself to unpleasant or trying experiences. Exactly one year ago last Monday I embarked on what most of my friends and relatives believe is a mad journey. At the age of 31,…

Tag: family