Visiting the City of Angels

It is winter break! Which means endless days to do whatever my little heart desires. What's the first thing I want to do with my free time? Visit L.A. of course! The City of Angels (and delicious food!). While others will document the place they visit by the sights they see, I usually document the places I visit by the food I eat. Is that bad? I don't think so :) Hope you enjoy my adventures in L.A. through the interesting meals I had and a little bit of the sights I saw ;)

Started my L.A. adventures by hiking and attempting to get close to the Hollywood Sign. 

We hiked up the trail next to the Griffith Observatory, the scenery was so serene! 

No explanation needed, we had to make a stop at ... Georgetown Cupcake! 

These adorable Rudolphs on the cupcakes more than make up for the horrible L.A. traffic!

I have no regrets about the amount of cupcakes I bought at all... It was so worth it! I have been mesmerized by their taste since my visit in Georgetown a couple of years ago. 

In Irvine, CA lies a wonderful little restaurant called Boiling Point. They serve mouth-watering individual hot-pots of various different flavor. I, of course, ordered Thai Flavor Hot Soup in flaming spicy. It was soo good!

Here's the Fishball Curry Hot Soup! 

The restaurant also served these delicious macaroon/macaron ice cream sandwiches! It was my first time and it was definitely worth the wait all these years.

Another one of my favorite places in California that I always go whenever I visit my family there. Tebo Tebo - the hipster lounge for boba-drinkers. All their drinks are served in the coolest glass and bottles and their menu is so diverse every time I visit I always get the opportunity to try something new. 

This weird-looking spiral on the stick is actually potato, can you believe that?! Ponado is this  strange dish's even stranger name. Paired with sweet and sour sauce, it was the best late night snack. 

Outfit of The Night

[On me]

Top: H&M

Skirt: Tobi

Shoes: Gianni Bini

Cross-body Bag: Steve Madden

Watch: DKNY

Day Trip To Sedona, AZ

Recently, I got the chance to get away to Sedona for the day and it was so good to be one with nature for the day. We hiked up to the Devil's Bridge, where there is a little piece of rock walk way with nothing under it. It was super scary! I wish I had better pictures to show you... but my boyfriend and I got our pictures taken by an older lady so she ended up taking selfies in burst. Yeah that is definitely the ultimate fail, but it was so much fun and adrenaline filled nonetheless!

Here is me at the end of our hike! Even though it is December, Arizona is still boiling even in Sedona so the hike was so tiring I was just glad to finally reach the end of the trail. 

And of course the classic pondering life shot.

Sedona is famous for their red rocks. It is such a beautiful contrast between the red of the rocks and the greenery all around. 

After hiking, we visited the Tlaquepaque Center to walk around, visit all the art galleries and cute shops. Here is a picture of me with the cutest bench statue. 

This is Alexi attempting to be cool at the end of the walkway tunnel. The Tlaquepaque Center was like being transported to Rome or Spain with the romantic structures of the building. 

We had lunch at the Oak Creek Brewery & Grill. Yummiest burger and onion rings I have ever had! We ordered the Mushroom Brie Burger... sooo good! I would highly recommend this place and Sedona in general. Definitely worth the 4 hour total car ride to and from Sedona :)

My Obsession of The Moment - Planners

Even though my room is messy, my mind is organized I swear! One of my favorite things in life are planners. It has been a recently developed obsession stemming from watching too many Youtube videos of everyone and their mamas talking about their planners. But I have gotten into decorating my planners as a way to motivate myself to get my shiz  together. Washi tapes, stickers, the whole nine yards! As the year is coming to a close, I am sooo very excited to be switching from my current planner to a Day Designer by Whitney English.

In earlier posts, I have showed you guys my current planner. It is a Blue Sky Planner from Target. What I love about it is the size, it is the standard paper size so I usually stuff any loose papers I have into my planner, which I carry with me everywhere... literally! It has a monthly view as well as a weekly view, which I love. Over the summer I used it religiously everyday in order to help me plan out my study schedule for the MCAT. I did not have a pre-made schedule I was following nor was I taking a class so I really had to keep myself motivated and keep myself on track. I was literally making up my schedule as I was going through the summer, so writing every thing down and keeping track of my score progress was very important to me. 

This is my current planner back when I really took my time decorating it. 

This is during the midst of my MCAT studying, each subject was color-coded a certain color. 

For 2015, I got the Day Designer as a present for taking my MCAT (I am dramatic... I know). But it has been something that I was literally spending all my free-time researching for - a good planner that will help me be even more organized. I love my current planner, but it was really hard to keep track of my schedule as well as my to-do list in the same space. In the Day Designer, there are a month-at-a-glance page and daily pages. I love that each page is designed for each day (except on the weekend). On one side of the page is your schedule for the day and on the other side of the page is a list of to-dos for that day. I am so excited for the start of the New Year so I could use my new planner!! 

 This is the daily-page view. I have already started putting my class schedule into it, that's how excited I am!

This is one-side of the month-at-a-glance page.

This is the color-coding system for my Day Designer, I taped on the inside of the planner with cute washi tape. 

This is how beautiful it is <3 The pink band is an old glitter-headband I found that goes perfectly with the planner (the inside cover is the exact same color). 

Another action shot, I can't get over how beautiful and sophisticated it looks still!

I got my Day Designer from this really cool website called The Grommet, where they have other "Unique gifts and innovative products by makers" as well. It is such a cool and authentic site helping to spread the ingenious ideas of individuals. Here is the link for it, usually the Day Designer is sold out on the official Etsy account but they seem to always be available at The Grommet. Hope you guys love the Day Designer as much as I love mine already :)!

Outfit of the Night

This weekend was one of my friend's 21st birthday, so we all dressed up and went to this really nice, bougie restaurant in Scottsdale (where the rich people are!). The restaurant Az88 was super fancy and the chairs were supposedly the same chairs that were at Kanye West's wedding... I'm not sure how believable that was but it was a super cool place to be overall. 

As you guys can see... I have a favorite night-out outfit combination. My Tobi twisted-front skirt combined with a black crop-top never fails me. Because it is "winter" time here in Arizona, I added a leather jacket to keep warm and pointed-toe pumps for some night-time fun. Also, the gold-hoops for that bad-ass vibe!

Leather Jacket: H&M

Purse: Michael Kors

Crop-top: Q

Skirt: Tobi.com

Shoes: Gianni Bini

Earrings: Forever 21

Struggling to take the photo...

Finally getting it right :)

(One of) My Passion: Photography

So there are a lot of aspects to me that I believe make up of who I am as an individual. In this blog I have really shared my fun, girly side with you guys but there are also other dimensions of my personality that I believe are crucial aspects of who I am. I love photography! I know... it's hipster and random but for some reasons I have always loved either having my photos taken or taking other people's photos. See, I am just not all books and research :P I really do think it's important to do things that you love and follow all of your passions (if you can!).

Below are some photos I have taken so far, I will continue to post them as I take them from now on. I hope you guys enjoy them, all of the photos were taken on an Iphone 5s. I am in the process of maybe... hopefully getting a camera, more on that as it comes.

My friend, at the tutoring center after hours where we both work at.

Another one of my friend, also at the tutoring center after hours.

My boyfriend (left) and our friend... playing with bananas. I have no explanation for this, it was a candid capture. 

Another friend, candidly captured.

As you can see, I love capturing people and their emotions. I love the rawness of a truly candid photo. It is really nothing special, but it is photographs of people who are really important to me and shows them in their element. 

MCAT Score!

My MCAT score has finally arrived (... last week)! Anyways, now that this road block is out of the way I am going to focus more on the fun things in life, like this blog :) Here I am going to kind of let you know all about my journey throughout this summer with studying to pushing back my test date and to finally getting the score I wanted <3

Reaction: I got my MCAT score around 1PM in the middle of my small Biochemistry class of 30 people (max). I audibly gasped out loud which caused all of my friends to become nosy and the whole class basically knew my score by the end of class. In the beginning of the summer, I kept saying "I want to get__ on my MCAT!", but when it happened I really did not even know how to react.

Process: I study throughout my summer break while doing my Research Fellowship at the Mayo Clinic. It was very hard to fit it in and I still remember getting super frustrated throughout the semester on my lack of progress on the various AAMC Practice tests I was taking. I was originally schedule to take my MCAT on 8/21 but because I was having Community Mentor/Resident Assistant Training I did not feel like I was at a good place to take it at all since I was stuck in training for 12 hours out of the day. At that point I was only scoring up to 30 on all the practice tests. So I pushed back my test to 10/21 which I was very nervous about because that was in the middle of my Junior year semester and I was uncertain whether or not I would be able to get enough practice and studying in even with the push-back date. I dropped a difficult biology course and instead opted to finish my psychology major in order to have enough time for studying. I only took 16 credits, which is the lower number since I have started college. I studied to a good extent where I felt prepared and was not stressing myself out. 

Night Before: I had dinner with good friends and just enjoyed my time with people before what felt like "judgement day". I attempted to relax but however I ended up re-taking AAMC 11 in lightning speed right before bed because I still remembered all of the answers. I quickly glanced over the Kaplan quicksheet and that was it. 

Test Day: Without divulging test info... all I can really say is I am not a person who gets nervous or scared easily even in the face of the looming MCAT. But the Physical Sciences portion of test was brutal! After that section I was literally shaking as I tried to exit the testing room to go to the restroom. In the back of my mind, I always knew Physics was a weak spot for me because I have not had any physics classes in college and the last physics class I took was my Sophomore year in High School. However, I did not expect to feel this horrible after a Physical Sciences section. In the restroom I was trying so hard just to collect myself for the next portion, Verbal Reasoning. When I came back into the testing room, I was determined to redeem myself for the rest of the section. I thought that both VR and BS had gone sufficiently well (compared to the butt-whooping I just received from PS) but mostly because I was definitely just high off of the adrenaline I got from the PS portion. 

MCAT Score! 
Before, I reveal my score I have to note that the distribution is definitely not ideal and there are definite way better preparation methods than mine! But anyways, here it is:

PS: 12 / VR: 14 / BS:14

Composite: 40

I will definitely go into more details on my study plan and the materials I used in a later post :) Hope this helps anyone out there struggling with the MCAT! It's scary, but so worth it to see your hard-work pay off in the end!