- Run for class president.  Outcome: Fail.  I wasn’t bold enough.  Instead I ran for VP.
- Become class VP.  Outcome: Fail.  I was running for the wrong reasons anyway. 
- Study like crazy.  Outcome: Fail.  It’s only been a month but I’ve fallen behind.  I still need to buy one textbook, catch up on a few readings and review some lecture notes.  I’ll go out and buy binders tomorrow to organize my notes.
- Find my future wife/girlfriend.  Outcome: Fail, for now.  I heard at phrosh one guy was telling people he was looking for his future wife.  It wasn’t received very well.  Maybe I should have kept this goal to myself.

But the most important goal of all - to meet lots of new people.  Check and check. 

It’s actually felt like a pretty short month but there were so many (social) things going on and I feel drained.   Hurray for Wednesdays!

This weekend there’s another karate clinic with one of the Japanese instructors.  Then the weekend after that is Thanksgiving weekend and the ISKF Shotocup, which I’m hoping to watch.  Busy, busy.

So I’ve created my facebook group, my youtube channel for vlogging (hopefully), and this blog here that gets very little traffic. 

I’ve told myself that I’m not going to send out listserv e-mails because I don’t enjoy receiving them, so why would others… and I’m going to be eco-friendly and not waste paper on posters.  (Also because I’m lazy and don’t want to create a poster and have to pin it up somewhere). 

Tonight’s plan is to make a campaign video.  Might as well have fun with it right?

 Update: No video was done today.  Hopefully tomorrow as I’ll be away from tomorrow afternoon to Sunday and won’t really have a chance to do it.  Also, the day one vlog was weak so I didn’t upload it. 

Day 1 results:  Not favourable.

PS. get the ne-yo cd “Year of the Gentleman”… it’s good.  And what a coincidence… looks like it’s going to be my year.  :D  j/k

We left Pearson International at around 630am and got in and out of Punta Cana airport by 11am.  The plane had the personal touch screens and I watched Ironman, which was surprisingly good.  Arriving at the resort, we were greeted with these milky pink drinks while waiting to check-in.  After getting our rooms, we were told to give the bellboys our room number and they’d deliver the luggage to the rooms. 

The Rooms
I roomed with my cousin Anthony and we had the only 4th floor room out of our whole group.  Everyone else was on the ground floor.  It wasn’t that big of a deal, but it was inconvenience #1.  The rooms were actually really nice in comparison to the 2 other resorts I’ve been to (Decameron in Panama and Palladium in Mexico).  Very spacious, lots of marble and dark wood, it looked luxurious.  But in came annoyances/inconveniences #2 and 3.  There was only one king sized bed.  What the ef.  #3 was that there wasn’t a bathroom as such.  There was a toilet with a door and a shower with a door, with 2 sinks outside of that.  Not only that, the doors were made of frosted glass and you could basically see the outline of the person through the doors.  Gross.  But also kind of funny.  
As for the one bed, we ended up getting them to send up a single bed. 

The Grounds
The grounds were much cleaner than I expected and everything looked really nice.  I personally didn’t like the layout of the resort because it’s set up like a long rectangle with the lobby and restaurants on one end and the beach and the beach restaurant (which becomes the steak and seafood restaurants at night) on the other end.  Our room was 1401 which was pretty much the closest possible room to the lobby.  It was a long walk to the beach.  (Inconvenience #4).
There was one large pool in the middle of the rectangle, which was in between the two villas of rooms, that spanned the entire resort (I think).  I never swam in the pool but I heard from my cousins the water was super warm like pee-water.  

The Beach
The beach was pretty nice I guess.  I think it was a little small in comparison to the other resorts along the same stretch.  The one good thing is that there were a lot more palapas and shade along the beach than at the other resorts.  The water had some large rocks which ended up hurting a few toes and the sand was a little dirty.  I think both could be attributed to the hurricane that passed a few days before we arrived.  I overheard one of the other guests say that the last time she stayed at the resort there weren’t rocks in the water. 

The Food and Drinks
Not great.  It was edible but nothing great.  I found most of their foods rather salty.  At the breakfast buffet I stuck to the “fresh” omelets, “fresh” crepes (by fresh I mean they cook it in front of you), and the bacon.  Lunches were mostly eaten at the beach restaurant and consisted of “fresh” pasta, burgers and fries.  The fries were probably the best food at the resort (in terms of taste).  For dinner, we tried a couple times Dominican/Mexican which was like fajitas, burritos, etc. and it wasn’t bad.  The seafood place wasn’t good.  I had lobster and it was really salty.  The steak place was decent and we ate there a couple nights.  The best dinner was at Le Gourmet which was the only one we ate at that had dress code and required a reservation.  The food there was comparable to a real restaurant. 
The drinks were ok.  Their cokes were really watery.  Asking for an amaretto and coke usually got you a glass of amaretto.  Asking for an amaretto sour usually got you a lot of amaretto with a little sour, and sometimes even a glass of amaretto with a squirt of lime.  Not good.  The beer wasn’t bad.  Much better than Bud and Canadian in my opinion. 

The Entertainment
I didn’t like the shows all that much and think that the ones in Mexico are far better.  Also the animation team, with the exception of one guy, was much worse at this resort in comparison to Palladium.  Our family took home many bottles of rum for winning some of their games.  Just by sheer numbers our odds of winning were increased.  I took home 3, one for the volleyball tournament (in which my team of randoms beat my cousins + 2 randoms, ditchers!), one for being the top guy in the limbo contest (my cousin won one for top girl), and one for being the best MC (the winner was determined by the loudest applause and I came with the biggest group).  My cousins won bottles for egg toss and botchee ball as well. 

All in all, it was an awesome vacation but mainly because of the travel group rather than the resort. 

One week of summer to go before school starts.  It’s sad that I’m 24 and still feel the nervousness before the first day of school.  Will I make friends?  Will the new kids be nice?  I’m excited, though.  I hope I’ll be a more diligent student this time around. 

I got back from a week-long vacation in the Domincan Republic with my relatives and it was awesome.  We stayed at the Majestic Colonial Resort which was pretty nice I guess, but maybe not worth the money spent.  I guess I’ll do a review blog on it later when I’m bored. 

I need new music to listen to.  Any suggestions?