Myanmar | Mastering the Art of Burmese Cooking

In my six years in NYC, I used my kitchen maybe three times a month. I didn’t exactly use my oven to store shoes, like SJP’s “Carrie” in Sex & the City, but I did (and d0) like going out to eat. Even if I wasn’t going out, I’d be perfectly fine eating cereal (or Chipotle) for dinner as I’d usually grab a bigger lunch at work to escape my desk.

Even though I don’t cook a lot, when my local Sundara friends mentioned that Thuya’s sister May taught a cooking class {Pennywort Cooking Class} in Bagan, I wanted in on it. I was absolutely LOVING the Burmese cuisine, as I knew I would with my little taste at Cafe Mingala in NYC. During my visit, I was especially obsessed with the green tea leaf salad, a traditional salad that was incredibly delicious but at the same time completely unrecognizable to me. I needed to be able to recreate these tastes for myself and also wanted to share them with my family once I returned back home, even though my dad can be quite picky.

NYC | What It’s Like to Take French Lessons With Fluent City

When I was in Spain last year, one of my favorite things (along with this bar in Madrid, our Flytographer photoshoot, and all the art of my favorites) was communicating in Spanish. I hadn’t been to a Spanish-speaking country in years and the language came back to me quickly. Though it seemed to be default in restaurants and hotels for us to be addressed in English, I made a point to speak in Spanish with each of our cab drivers. I asked each one for restaurant recommendations and told them all about how our trip was going. I loved it.

NYC | Paint with all the Colors of the Wind

I am struggling A LOT to find an apartment to live in come August, but luckily I will not be struggling to decorate my walls if/when I actually find a place and move. As you may recall, I took a painting class with Nicole in December, I also recently stole a painting from my parents’ house that my dad did in college, and I just took a BYOB watercolor class with Emily last week.

NYC | Big Wheel Keep on Turning

There are three main things that I’m really proud of that I’ve done for myself since moving to the city. 1 is this blog. 2 is the guitar lessons I took last year (I promise to pick up my guitar again up soon!). 3 is the pottery classes I’ve been taking. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, I’ve just realized all of these deal with creativity which is probably hinting at something.

NYC | Frosting Nipping at your Nose

For her birthday last year (in October twenty TEN), I got my fab roomie a few gifts courtesy of Groupon, for some fun activities that we could do together. Unfortunately, we let time get away from us and didn’t use any of them for over a year. The Butter Lane cupcake class expiration date was creeping up on us so in December (the same night we scheduled our painting class at Paint Along), we sat down and booked it for last Thursday.

NYC | Best New Artist Award

A few weeks ago, Nicole and I took *another* class together, a BYOB painting class at Paint Along NYC. We bought a deal somewhere online for $22 classes, but regular classes are $45. It was AWESOME. We were able to pick which painting we wanted to do on the online calendar and decided on a Monet-like waterlily one.

NYC | Well I Got this Guitar, and I Learned How to Make It Talk

I have always thought it would be really fun to be a musician. Unfortunately, age 10 Erin didn’t want to practice piano anymore and age 11 Erin didn’t like the clarinet. So one of the items on my 26 list that I was most excited about was “learn a song on the guitar.” When I moved to the NYC area, I took the guitar my dad bought from our neighbor 10 years ago and said, “I’m taking this.” I had these visions in my head of me playing in the park with my friends, carrying my guitar through the subway, maybe even me sitting in a recording studio.