Hope you all had a great Christmas!!! I certainly did! Got to eat lots of delicious food, did lots of talking with my family, and even opened some presents! Also, an old friend of mine came over and hung out for a while…knew him since I was like 6 years old, so it was cool to finally do some catching up with him. Alright, I must return to the festivities. :)

First two days here have been awesome! Already been out to eat twice to get genuine chinese food…oh how I’ve been missing it!! Also did some last-minute Christmas shopping, which was fun. All in all the last few days have been quite relaxing, and it’s something I’ve really needed as this last semester has been somewhat stressful for me. Tomorrow I’m going to get back to work. There are quite a lot of things on my agenda, so some planning is in order first.

Finally, all exams are finished and the winter break can be enjoyed! Last Friday I finished my last exam, and right after I packed my bag and prepared for the flight to China, which left early the next morning. So, after a very long day of flights and only minor delays, I arrived at my destination…it was around 10:30PM on Sunday (local time). At that point, I was completely exhausted and crashed immediately, and for the first time in months, I got over ten hours of sleep!

Sorry for the complete lack of updates after promising them. Things suddenly got very crazy again. Next week I have my finals and then I’m done!! On Saturday of next week (17th), I fly back to China where I’ll be spending an entire month. Will be great! :) Very excited to be done with another semester. Anyways, this is just a short update, but after finals are over, I’ll definitely be back to regular updates.

Today I focused on Houdini and testing some effects. Houdini’s i3d was giving me a bit of grief as everything turned out really noisy…finally figured it out though. It looks decent, though, so that’s good. Hopefully, there’ll be more to talk about tomorrow. :)

Started the day off with some good coffee, worked some, and then at lunch time went to a friend’s house to spend Thanksgiving. There were quite a few people as much of his family was there. The food was great–turkey, stuffing, cranberry salad, rolls, and so much more! It’s good to have friends who can cook. ;) Afterwards, we played some poker and ended the day with a trip to the theater to watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.