life with the tsengs

it’s been crazy town here the last couple of weeks. i’ve attempted to finish this post since last saturday – but since then we have finished packing up our apartment, moved and unpacked 50% of our belongings. Eugene had his end-of-residency banquet a few days ago and today is already his last day of residency. there were a few instances when I wanted to just chuck this post entirely but this milestone felt too important to pass up quietly — today is officially Eugene’s last day of residency – which means that our 5-year journey of pharmacy school/residency is over forever and he/we will be entering a new exciting chapter of our lives. hooray!

I’ve been anticipating this day since…pretty much his 2nd week of pharmacy school 5 years ago so to say I am exuberantly ecstatic would be the understatement of the century. it has been quite the journey – filled with a lot of challenges, a lot of adjusting, mis-communicating/not-communicating and trying to commit to over-communicating, learning to die to ourselves, sleepless nights, powernaps, being crazy busy (him), trying to keep busy (me), eating out of tupperware (him), meal planning and prepping like a machine (me) etc, etc… But as I’ve been reflecting these last few weeks and looking through my old blogposts from the last 5 years — I can’t help but feel overwhelmingly grateful. Though not always pretty and neat at times – these 5 years made our hearts full, our lives interesting, our marriage stronger and love deeper. so to celebrate God’s faithfulness to us in this last chapter of our lives – here’s a quick chronicle:

let’s start from the beginning. a week before school started, Eugene and I took a train from the OC to LA’s union station to try out his commute. he initially had planned to take the train everyday to hopefully avoid the horrible LA traffic commute. we went to union station, took the shuttle to campus, walked around a bit and just rode the train back. All i remember from that day was that it was super hot and humid and we were so intrigued by the mexican fruit cart that was selling drinks outside of the parking lot (we are OC-cultured, LA newbs).

then came his white coat ceremony. this was an exciting day!

I remember he was almost late for his first day of class. He also couldn’t find his keys after his train ride to LA so I drove to the train station and looked for his car in the parking lot to see if he accidently left them inside (I think he did). his first semester was rough one – full of transitions and lots of firsts, for him – he roughed 4-hour drives (round-trip) to class because he had to stop taking the train because it got too complicated planning things logistically. I remember he had to wake up at 4am to leave the house by 4:30am to beat morning traffic for his 8am class. The first few weeks of school, I woke up with him to make him breakfast and pack him lunch (I think I was crazy…) eventually it got too challenging and this is when my tupperware craze began. that first semester was filled with a lot of tears because the transition was a little traumatic for me to be honest. it was hard going from seeing Eugene everyday to barely seeing him for an hour each night before bed.

I drove him to his last final (in CRAZY RAIN) while he took a cat nap in the car and then we went to Pasadena for lunch to celebrate the end of his first semester 🙂

After his first semester we moved out of the OC to be closer to his school. This was the first of the 3 moves we did in those 4 years. We moved in with his family to arcadia/TC area aka asian food galore. his commute to school was less than 20 minutes (yay!) and now that we were much closer, he was able to get more involved with school-related activities. this is when he started getting more serious about considering residency in his future so he started to get busy busy busy!

His busy schedule started to take a toll on us because it was harder and harder for us to spend time together. For most weeks of the semester, we would either only see each other in passing or miss each other completely because I would come home late from work and he would still be gone at school, and the next morning I would have to leave early for work (around 4:30am) and he would still be sleeping. It was a hard season and we had to learn to just accept and re-adjust to new normals all the time.

our move made my commute to work/church about 1 hour each way (opposed to <10 mins) and since he was barely home, I spent almost all my time back in the OC and just drove home to sleep (almost 5 days a week). I got more involved at work, got some really cool opportunities to guest-lecture at the hospital and UCI's nursing program (super fun!) and spent a lot of time with the collegians at our church (sleepovers, late night boba runs and jam sessions!) It was a blessing in disguise — though I missed my husband and wished I could have spent more time with him, his busy schedule gave me an opportunity to do many things that would have been harder to do if he was home all the time so it kept me busy! We did manage to squeeze in a few late-night date nights during this year – we would meet up after a long day (at around 9/10pm) and eat really good chinese food or korean bbq!

Because we lived so far away from everything, on Sundays after church we would always rush out to squeeze in study sessions in-between dinner plans and meetings/church events. We frequented many different coffee shops and cafes so that Eugene could try to study and of course I tagged along.

studying at Panera

We also took a lot of naps in the car in the parking lot at Mcdonalds because we couldn’t go home in-between things. Eugene was very tired this year haha.

napping at corner bakery

Though it was challenging, we tried our best to stay positive and find creative ways to spend time together. One of my fondest memories of this year was our 4am breakfast dates at Denny’s before we both left for work/school. We were only able to eat for about 30-40 minutes but it was sweet!

before Eugene’s third (and hardest) year we moved out of Arcadia/TC and moved closer to the land of milk and honey (aka Portos). this was the perfect halfway point for us as Eugene was working in Downey and it was a 30 min-commute for each of us. This was move #2.

P3 (aka third year) was known to be the most grueling out of all four-years of pharmacy school and it did not disappoint. Eugene was super busy with school and had tests like every few days/every week back-to-back. This year, in a lot of ways was a complete blur.

All I remember is him being really busy and stressed and I made a lot of trips to Costco and made a lot of meals. Eugene’s love language is definitely food – and his “comfort food” is healthy food (so weird! and sad – for me. I wanted junk food..) so I meal prepped a lot and made a lot of smoothies.

and not sure if I mentioned this already – but Eugene’s love language is literally: food.

At this point, for the most part we were seeing each other about 1-hour a week total (10 mins and here and there). As you can imagine – it was not fun or easy.. but again, it was my call to keep busy and try to find things to do! I considered getting a side-job and doing something fun (i.e. trying out for the disneyland parade or working at a fancy cafe!) but decided to do hospice home-health per-diem to fill my days off with things to do. This job sent me to strange and interesting far-away places – I had patients in culver city, hollywood, chino, covina, san clemente, laguna woods, gardena, torrance (places I don’t usually frequent) and because my drives were so far and my days were so long I ate a lot of meals by myself. and before you feel sorry for me one ounce, don’t worry- they were nice meals hehe.

lunch break for one in gardena

I will always remember our apartment in downey because of the baby blue wall that we chose (why – i don’t know) and that Eugene pretty much used our dining table as his study desk for those entire two years. I think we ate less than 10 meals together on that dining table haha but many study sessions were had. We also ate an ungodly amount of portos cheese rolls. Funny story – this one time, Eugene was able to track my walk to the car because of all the cheese roll crumbs I left as I was walking to my car. (LOL!) a real life hansel and Gretel action right there.

then came 4th year! we found out we were pregnant (yay!) and Eugene was busy doing his rotations! for the most part- the rotations were great and he was home a lot more than usual. however, when I was in my third trimester of pregnancy, Eugene had to go away for 6-weeks for a very brutal ICU rotation. We rented him an Airbnb and we did a huge costco trip for him before dropping him off. By God’s grace he survived that brutal rotation and our sweet baby boy waited patiently in the womb for daddy to finish so that mommy wouldn’t have an emotional breakdown having to take care of him alone while daddy was away. Asher came about a week after Eugene finished (woo-hoo!)

then he graduated! took his boards. found out he got into a residency. His first words to me after seeing the email at 6am was “I’m so confused” (he had been matched with the first hospital he interviewed at which he said he had “BOMBED” the interview (‘bomb’ in the bad way) but we were so thankful and happy!

During this year of residency, we raised our first child together and are now pregnant with our second. In just a few hours, he will be home and DONE FOREVER from the school and residency life. God has so graciously provided him with a job and he starts on Monday.

These last 5 years were probably the most challenging years of my life. I cried (SO MUCH) and had to learn a lot of hard lessons about being flexible, understanding, patient and dying to myself. Eugene was so patient with me and all of my late-night-lets-talk-for-three-hours-because-I-have-to-let-out-all-my-feelings-even-though-you-have-to-wake-up-in-three-hours and so many people have labored in love and prayer for us. It is with so much excitement, anticipation and a little touch of anxiety that I beckon in this new chapter of our lives. I know that even this transition, albeit exciting and so, so sweet is not gonna be easy. But one thing I know for sure is that God is sovereign, He is good and always in control. His grace has carried us this far and it is that same grace I will cling to everyday for the rest of our lives to continue to live with joy, thankfulness and purpose no matter what the circumstances!

Thanks for joining us on this crazy ride!

P.S. for those of you who are currently wives to students – here is a fun guide that I made from the lessons I learned. Hope it helps!