nothing to prove

minnesota new year

It is hard to believe that 2006 is done already and that my blogging skills post-japan have failed miserably. Hopefully this year will be better in terms of blogging and keeping people a little more up to date on my life. Even though Minnesota is not Japan, there are plenty of exciting things around. Since I have been home, I have been working two jobs: waiter at the Sunny Side-Up Cafe (my college summer job) and coaching diving at Eden Prairie High School. Both have been a lot of fun, especially coaching. Currently, I live in St. Paul with three other guys, just across the river from Minneapolis.

Anyway, the holiday season was a great opportunity to see family and friends. Most of my friends were back from a variety of places around the country and world. For the first time, my parents decided to take a trip over Christmas and New Years so, with my consent since I was in San Diego over Thanksgiving, they were of to Mexico on Christmas Eve. Instead, my parents, sister, and grandparents had an early Christmas at home. It was admittedly nice to open some presents a little early and I was happy to get what I had asked for.


On Christmas Eve, I was at my grandparents house with all my extended family. It was fun to see everyone again although most of us talk to each other somewhat frequently. After a huge dinner, there was a huge exchanging of gifts among the grandchildren where the chaos of paper throwing and screaming ensued. In following tradition, we played plenty of board games. This year we chose Pop 5 which is a new version of the Cranium games. The game was hilarious and it was a blast winning with my cousin Keiko.

The next morning I was invited over to my cousin's house for some brunch with my grandparents. It was nice to have somewhere to go on Christmas since my parents were gone. Once we finished eating, Nichole and I played a lot of Dance Dance Revolution, which is this awesome video game that involves a dance pad. I need to buy that game soon!


Over the next week, I got together with a lot of my college friends that I normally don't get to see. Sadly I still had to work so it was interesting trying to sqeeze everything in. One thing in particular that happened was the third annual present exchange. This year there was ten of us that bought gifts for under ten dollars. We all ate at Buca DiPeppo's for dinner and opened the presents there. It was just a chance for all of us to reconnect over the holidays and needless to say the food, drink, and gifts were great.

Skip forward to New Years Eve. Ben, Reid and I had a keg at our place. I had to work earlier in the day and head back to Blaine to check up on my parents house and take a nap. Well my one hour nap turned into three and by the time I woke up it had begun to snow pretty hardcore. Plus I hadn't gone shopping for food at our little party. Over an hour after leaving Blaine, I got back to our place in St. Paul where everyone had already begun to drink. In order to catch up, I took a quad shot of Captain Morgan, my christmas present from Ben, and had a beer in the shower while I was getting ready. By the time I got out of the shower I was ready to go! Slowly people started to filter in but just as the party was rolling I went to another party with a friend, Travis. We went to his friend Beau's place for a smaller little party. After about an hour there we headed back to my place to drink more and see the ball drop. Needless to say I don't remember parts of that night but overall it was awesome!



It was sad to see all my friends go their separate ways and hopefully I will get the chance to go visit them in their various parts of the world. In the meantime, it is back to grind of work and next week i am starting a couple pre-requisite classes for my graduate program this May. It seems that I manage to stay a little bit busier than I did in Japan. Happy 2007!

posted by Aaron @ 7:32 AM