misfit fotography [back at whitworth]

i've moved my blog.

2009-11-01T13:29:00.001-08:00

new blog at: http://misfitfotography.wordpress.com/

i decided that i needed a change and that blogger wasn't meeting my expectations. this blog will still be accessible, but i will not be writing new posts here. thanks~

antibiotics [for acne]. crush [from the past].

2009-10-28T17:41:00.000-07:00

acne is annoying. i think it could be on par with lactose intolerance. maybe. anyways, yesterday i decided to try out some oral antibiotics to fight the annoying stuff on my face. it's usually not too bad, but once in a while i get some painful spots. you guys who don't have to deal with acne, consider yourselves blessed. and hey whitworth insurance covers the antibiotic for free. yay drugs!

side effects:

birth defects in children (fortunately i'm male)

a bunch of other stuff

anybody else tried oral antibiotics before and care to share their experience??

i'm also going to be doing an on-the-skin medication too, called epiduo. it's not free (and not covered by whitworth insurance - the only insurance i have), but not too expensive. double teaming time!

(for those interested, this photo was taken by inverting my 50mm 1.8 lens)

hmmm.....when you're single i think you tend to think about past crushes more. at least that's what i tend to do. and then i see one, and i feel hella awkward. anybody else feel that way? i'm not sure why.. maybe cuz i'm still single since i liked that person, and that's a little embarrassing? or maybe because i want to reconnect in a friend kind of way, but am too embarrassed? who knows. anyways, the loneliness continues. but it's not all bad either i know...

i got my blurb book today.

2009-10-27T21:08:00.000-07:00

and i was stoked! at first, but read on.

their service was actually amazingly fast. i ordered the book last thursday night, and it got to my house today. that's a book ordered and at my house in 3 business days, with ground shipping. not bad. it doesn't hurt that blurb is a washington company either.

now about the book itself. i was both pleased and disappointed. here's why:

pros:

decent quality paper (it better be, cuz i paid $5 extra for "premium paper")
book seems to be well made overall

cons:

the blacks are not very defined (ex. black hair tended to look flat)
the color of the front cover photograph seems to be off (but it could be my fault because of monitor calibration issues)
the paper is very stiff, so it's awkward holding the book open and looking at the details as you get closer to the cracks
the binding sucks
cost of the book ($45 with shipping)

my overall score, 0 being absolutely sucky and 10 being amazingly amazing:

2.0

i was hoping and expecting for something better. i'm not satisfied. the paper quality (even though i ordered premium), it's just seems too thick. it also doesn't look like a professional book. the binding is sucky. it's way too stiff and it's a pain to look through the book. looking through a photo book should be pleasurable, not a pain. i contacted blurb to try and get a refund. i'll let you know what they say.

i'm going to try out another company for my next book, and also work on proof-reading my book before i get it published. i had at least 5 typos....and those always stand out to me.

i also want to work on my page layouts, because i'm not satisfied with that either.

mypublisher is next on my list to try.

a packed day. invisible children.

2009-10-26T22:41:00.001-07:00

man, just because i don't have class on mondays doesn't mean that i won't be busy. today, i managed to help finish a multimedia piece for the whitworthian, work out, do some homework, go to a whitworthian meeting, help out with the invisible children movie (unintentionally), work for free, watch a psychological scary movie (also unintentional), and now am in the process of getting my dinner ready.

that's alright, i managed to get an invisible children tshirt between the craziness, and that was [one of] my goal[s] for the day. :D

if you don't know about invisible children, check them out at http://www.invisiblechildren.com/home.php. they could use your support. especially in getting signed petitions. you can sign the petition online and read more about it here.

but i still have to write my methods RD for senior thesis. T.T

p.s. there was a sweet sunset tonight but i couldn't take pics cuz i was rushing off to a meeting...anybody get pics?

download songs at 14 cents a pop. soundsbox!

2009-10-25T19:09:00.001-07:00

hey everyone~

you need to check out soundsbox, because it is a legit way to get cheap music.

here are the reasons:

14¢ a song (slightly cheaper if you buy the whole album)
you can request for albums, and they usually put them up
no program required - you just download albums as .zip files
higher than 128 kbps (usually around 192 or higher)
you get to indirectly screw over other places like itunes, etc. :P

the only downside i can come up with is the fact that you cannot buy songs one by one, you have to deposit at least $20 and then use that money to download. however, the money does not expire and i have not had a single problem with the company yet.

so check it out!

p.s. i am not getting paid for posting this. i just wanted you all to know of way to get good, cheap music.

vote. please. (you have to register, but it's for a good cause!)

2009-10-25T14:34:00.000-07:00

i entered my korea photo book into the blurb best books contest! vote. :)

Vote for my book in the
Best Blurb Books Contest!

Voting ends Nov. 9

View other entries »

ref. 71, photo book, life stuff.

2009-10-23T00:55:00.000-07:00

yesterday, i was working in the auditorium for the ref. 71 event. i had heard the name dan savage from somewhere before...but i couldn't quite place it. anyways, i think he's semi-famous, and it was interesting to hear him and dominique talk.

i was a little disappointed in the whitworth community because not many people showed up. one of the reasons was the crocker lecture...but seriously, would you rather listen to a speech about the conflict in the middle east or listen to a couple speakers talk about a controversial local issue? i mean, the conflict in the middle east is important, but you hear about that all the time. what about referendum 71?

the second reason i feel people didn't show up, was because the majority of the campus is against ref. 71, and so don't feel the need to go listen to two guys talk in support of it. come on! i mean, when do you get to hear speakers like that come and talk in support of gay (and senior) domestic partnerships? the answer is: never. except yesterday. i didn't realize the importance of people needing to go this event until after it happened...too bad.

before i heard the presentation, i thought i was against ref. 71. but now i'm not. you know, i thought i was against gay marriage before this presentation, but i don't think i'm against that either. let's look at it this way. people are not going to stop acting "gay" and change their sexual orientation just because they aren't allowed to legally marry. the conservatives who think they can stop homosexuality legally are going to fail. sorry, but that's just the way it is.

you know, although i support ref. 71, i don't.....think i support homosexuality. and yes, that is a paradox. some of it comes from my christian background and some of it comes from just thinking about life and looking at how sex organs are built. one of things that dan savage brought up at the event was butt sex. yes, thats anal sex. except he called it poop sex. anyways, he said one of the reasons that people don't like homosexuality is because they can't get over the thought of anal sex. i'm not comfortable with anal sex. and that's probably one of the reasons why i don't favor homosexuality. but you know what's funny? he mentioned that straight people have anal sex all the time, it's just between a guy and a girl. it's the guy and a guy thing, and the girl and a girl thing that we get wrapped up in. anyways, i don't think it's "normal" but who is normal? i still need to think about that.

umm.....that's all i'm going to say about that for now. i'm gonna tag some people, so maybe you can add your thoughts on here. i'm not a strong proponent of 71, but i've decided that i'm a proponent. i'll try to respond to your comments too, if you comment in a civil manner.

completely different topic below

i ordered my photo book (on my korea trip)!!!!! i don't know why that makes me so happy, but it does. you can preview it AND VOTE ON IT here at: http://www.blurb.com/photo-book-contest/view_book/913748. make sure to view it FULL SCREEN.

fact: there are 3538 books entered in the contest
fact: the grand prize is $3000
fact: the runner up prizes are $1000
fact: the runner ups are decided by the public
fact: if i won either prize i would be amazingly ecstatic and i would probably go cry in a corner

myth: i would probably go cry in a corner (instead, i would run around and maybe host a party at my house :)

fact: i would love it if you at least checked it out. i put a lot of work into it.

especially the last page, please check out the last page.

completely different topic below

i'm lonely. but i got to hang out with marco today, so that was really neat. and i'm alive, got my book submitted, and i'm not failing senior thesis. that makes life liveable. of course there's other things too.

fact: i need sleep.

many next time.

2009-10-20T23:53:00.000-07:00

maybe next time we'll win. you know i'm thinking that this losing streak is supposed to teach me how to stay calm when things aren't going the way that i want them to. or maybe i just need more sleep.

anyways, i posted some new photos on flickr today:

and this one of my photos that got featured in the whitworthian. :)

house of charity journal (part 2)

2009-10-18T14:00:00.000-07:00

(warning this post is a little long.. :)

i didn't mention this in part 1, but i didn't bring anything to sleep with other than an airplane pillow. we were told to bring a sleeping bag and a sleeping pad if we had one...but i didn't have a sleeping bag and i didn't feel like borrowing one. and besides, we were going to be learning about the homeless, so i thought i should go without.

well, my classmates are way too nice and i ended up using emily m.'s pillow, emily r.'s sleeping pad, and amber's blanket. i think i would have had trouble sleeping if not for the above things cuz the floor was so fricking cold. so thanks guys :)

the next day, we were woken up bright and early at 7am. jerry had told us the day before that it would be good to join the people waiting in line for breakfast outside. the doors of HOC open for breakfast at 7:30am monday through saturday. so... groggy and not quite awake, we all walked around to the front of the building to join the people in line.

it was awkward for us because we were 20-ish college students who obviously didn't look homeless/poor, and we were sort of infringing on people who actually needed the breakfast. the people outside didn't seem too annoyed though. some of them asked who we were, and we said we were here to learn about the HOC and the homeless. some of them promptly told us that we should have slept outside to really experience homelessness. we couldn't really say much in response to that.

the doors finally opened and everyone filled into the HOC cafeteria. it was a pretty long line, and with us added, it was extra long. i really felt like i stuck out, even though most of the people ignored us. breakfast at the HOC consists of muffins/donuts and coffee. there was also some donated bread that people could take, and some fruits. now was the uncomfortable part of finding somewhere to sit. jerry had told us to mingle with the HOC patrons and strike up a conversation if we could. i'm not the best at initiating random conversations with strangers, so i wasn't sure what to do...but then lindsay and i decided to go sit with an older gent sitting all by himself.

his name was frank, and he wasn't a talker by any means. we asked him some basic questions about where he was from originally, his age, and where he lived now. he was from oregon originally, was 69 (i think), and it turned out that he actually had an apartment. we asked him why he was at the HOC and he said he came here because it was too lonely in his apartment. here, he at least had the chance to interact with people. having said that, it didn't seem like frank interacted much (if at all) with other people at the HOC. maybe it helped him to just be in a setting with people all around, even if he didn't necessarily interact with people all that much.

frank is a retired veteran. he said he was in the army for 30 plus years and has been to many foreign countries. he was also a part of the vietnam war, and he showed us one of his scars from the war. he said he didn't have any physical problems, but lindsay noticed that his eyes were a little clouded, which might mean cataracts.

we also talked a little bit about his family. he said he has an ex-wife and two kids in oregon. what was surprising was that he said they had just divorced a year or so ago (after being married for a long while). he didn't go into the details of why, but i think a lot of his loneliness might have to do with that. he also has a sister and brother, who i think also live in oregon. we also went into this weird tangent about how east coast people seem to be less friendly than west coast peeps lol.

i asked frank at one point about advice for people like us. he said that we seemed pretty down to earth, and were caring too. he said to never stop caring, it'll always come back to us. that is so true. although we might not need to be cared for at all right now, we probably will sooner or later. and really, caring isn't a hugely complicated thing, it's mostly about taking the risk to build a relationship with someone. caring grows out of relationships naturally, or at least it should. we had to get to a chapel service soon, so we told frank that we would be back later for lunch.

the chapel service was a simple one. psalms 19 was read three times in a row, which was a traditional way of doing it. it was supposed to help with meditating on the passage. i've never done that before, and it actually seemed to help with understanding the passage. after the scripture reading, some of us talked about our impressions and then we ended with prayer. there weren't many at the service (outside our group - 3 to be exact) but it was still neat to be part of the service in the HOC.

after the prayer, a guy named....i think dan, shared his personal story with us. he talked about how he had started drinking in his teens and how he got into weed, crack and meth after that. (side note: you know how weed is always touted as the gateway drug? well, in this case alcohol was. maybe we should outlaw that too.) dan got married at the age of 17 with a girl he thought he loved. one kid and several years later, they divorced.

soon after, he got married to another woman and had two kids. all this time he was having problems with drugs and alcohol off and on. the big trouble came when he was supposedly falsely accused of child abuse. he said that while he was carrying his baby, he slipped and the baby's head was banged on the couch. he argued that he didn't do it on purpose, but he was still restricted from seeing his kids. this went back and forth, with drugs mixed in here and there. meth had become a bigger problem for him, and he even went into dealing to get some quick cash.

i think what he said finally got him out of his downward spiral was the HOC. he started staying at the shelter, then found out they were hiring some men to supervise the sleeping quarters. he jumped on it over a year ago, and has been doing that since. he's also been sober for over a year now.

dan really got emotional when he talked about his kids. you could tell that they were really important to him. later, somebody mentioned that abusers deny what they do, and it's possible that he did do what he was accused of. i dunno, it's impossible to know for sure, but i think he was speaking the truth.

after that we had a little break before lunch. not much happened before lunch...other than some guys trying to get me saved and stop me from going to hell. i was honest with them and told them i wasn't sure about my faith. bad choice. the one guy went off about how there's no in between and i'm either going to heaven or hell. he say i should choose right then. i said i'd think about it. gotta love tract-wielding-evangelists.

actually, something did happen right before lunch. and it was really neat, i don't know why i forgot. our group was all gathered in the chapel for something, so those of us who were outside headed on in. turns out kyle had met this guy called joe, and they had been talking about playing the piano. joe wanted kyle to play something for us, so kyle started playing some classical stuff. kyle was my roommate last year, and i don't remember him playing piano like this before. it was some good stuff. we wanted joe to play some music too, but he was really hesitant. when we started chanting his name, he finally agreed to. :) first he played us some jazz. man, he could play some fast stuff. next, he played some classical stuff. i actually liked the classical better. it was stuff in minor keys (i think) and it sounded really cool. jerry later told us that we were the first group to get joe to play something for a group. we also sang happy birthday for kyle, cuz it happened to be his birthday saturday. good times. next, on to lunch.

lindsay and i were going to eat with frank again, but when we looked over to him, he seemed kind of down. i asked him if he wanted lunch, but he said he wasn't going to eat. hmmm.... well, we got lunch anyways and sat down with him. he opened up a little by little, though we never figured out why he was down (compared to earlier).

we started talking about music, and apparently frank liked music from the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. all music that i don't listen to lol. all my stuff is post 2000. anyways, he seemed to brighten a little while talking about the music he loved.

i also talked about this short encounter i had in line while waiting for lunch. this random guy started talking to me about how the HOC food was the worst in town (not true) and about how people who ran the HOC were uncaring f-ers and the f-ers that received help from them were worthless fools (or something along those lines with plenty of expletives). he also accused the HOC of stealing his car. well, when i mentioned that, frank spoke up and said it was bs. i guess there will always be people who don't get their way and bear grudges against good institutions. who knows, that guy could have had a legitimate bad experience, but he seemed to be going a little overboard.

we said goodbye to frank soon after, since we had to meet up with the group to get a little tour. hopefully i'll be able to see frank again and check in with him sometime in the near future.

the tour that jerry led us on was of the sleeping quarters of the HOC. the HOC has room for 108 men to sleep each night, currently 365 days of the year. men who want to stay in the HOC overnight have to arrive at a certain time each night in order to claim the spot they signed up for in the morning. there is also a waiting list that men can sign up on if all the spots are filled. when the men go in for the night, they are required to take a shower and lock their stuff in the lockers that are provided. it's all really organized. the beds are decent too. there is zero tolerance for fighting and etc. in the sleeping area and men can be suspended temporarily or even permanently. so that's the sleeping quarters.

well, it was time for our last group activity: debriefing. it was time for all of us to say a little bit of what was on our minds. the last night i had gone first, but this time i went last...that was nice. i always have a hard time thinking up speaking material on the spot. a lot of people talked about how they could now see the homeless in a different light. they weren't all the dangerous, uneducated, generally bad people that society has made us believe. most of them were the direct opposite. imagine going through a tough life, then being treated like shit because of the position that you're now in. not cool on our parts to do that. not cool at all.

i talked a little bit about what frank had taught me; about caring. not just throwing money at people, but actually caring. it will come back to me and you, it surely will.

well, that was it. we drove off in our respective cars, back to whitworth -- back towards our relatively sheltered lives. we talked about the past 18 hours in the car, and everybody seemed affected by what we had gone through. but as we got closer and closer to whitworth, i felt like i was going farther and farther away from doing something to help these people. these real PEOPLE we had just met. these people with stories, with pain, with happiness, with failures, with success -- many of whom just need someone to interact with in a human manner. i hope that this experience sticks with all of us, and influences our future behavior or lack of behavior.

the end.

house of charity journal (part 1)

2009-10-17T13:58:00.000-07:00

i just got back from the urban plunge. i don't think i said much about it to anybody, mostly because i wasn't sure what to expect. this will be a semi-reflection-journal-summary of the event.

for those of you who don't know, the "urban plunge" is a program in place at the house of charity in downtown spokane. the HOC is an amazing building, full of resources for the poor and homeless. but we also learned that it is full of resources for people who aren't poor/homeless too, for example, people like us. the urban plunge is a 18 hour program where you get to experience life in the house of charity, interact with the homeless, and also get a short tour of downtown spokane. around 7 of those 18 hours are spent sleeping, so it's only around 11 hours of actual "experiencing".

the urban plunge started at 7pm, yesterday. after arriving at the shelter (a little late...with kevyn and emily lol) we found the conference room and sat down for a little introduction by a guy named jerry. he's a down to earth, really amazing guy who works with the homeless at the HOC. he told us what we were going to do, and then we headed out for our tour of downtown spokane. the tour started with a woman named dotty showing us her place on the street. she was currently living with her fiance (ronny) and they were sleeping in front of a business. they had some blankets rolled out on the cement, and they were under an overhang. what blew me away was how peaceful/happy she was with her situation. she wasn't content with staying that way of course (she got her drivers license recently and is planning on buying a car), but she is happy that she and ronny have a place to stay for the night. and, she was happy to be talking to us. she told us a short synopsis of her life, about her kids, and about her current life. she's gone through some shitty stuff, has several mental disorders, yet she's still pushing ahead with her life. although ronny was on the quiet side, he seemed like a cool guy too. dotty attributed a lot of her present success to his help. she also said something interesting about Jesus and God. she said she could believe in Jesus, because he actually came to earth, but has a harder time believing in God because he's up there somewhere and isn't as personal to her. i can totally understand that, even though i've never really thought of it that way. interesting stuff. we say goodbye to them and continued on our tour.

the next guy we met was neil. he lives in low-income housing, and it seemed like a decent place. he has several health problems, so he receives social security (i think) for his disabled status. he's one smart guy. i was amazed that he let us in to his little apartment. he has obsessive compulsive disorder, so he's always worried about things not being in place. for him to let a fairly big group like us into his home is pretty amazing. the first thing you see when you walk into his room is his ridiculously huge flat screen tv. he had a pretty cool picture slideshow playing on it, since it was hooked up to his computer. that 40 something incher is his computer screen (heaven anybody??). he described some of the stuff (4.5 tb hard drive space and other cool stuff) that he had (his view of success) and then played some piano for us. wow. he has problems with his muscles tensing up, yet he still manages to play some amazing stuff on piano. neil wasn't always this well off though. he had to get out of the rut he was in, in order to save up money and get to where he is at now. what i think impressed me the most, was that he came outside with us on the rest of our tour. his health problems prevent him from walking too far and he has to use a cane, but he still went the whole way with us.

we walked past several organizations that help with the poor, and jerry told us some details about the organizations. i don't remember much of that, other than that one of the places (a church) has really good free food. the union gospel mission is a great place for the homeless to go, but the only caveat is that you have to be clean and sober in order to stay there. that works for some, and not for others. we also went past some buildings that used to be low income housing, but were bought by rich developers (to put it nicely) so that they could make the buildings into expensive housing. which still hasn't happened. people were evicted, and their old homes are just sitting there, unused. there are a lot of different details to the matter that i don't know about, but basically, that's fucked.

the tour ended at the davenport hotel, a sort of historical stop. the davenport has been in spokane for a long time, and i guess 7 u.s. presidents have stayed there. it's a pretty old school building and it really showed the other, richer side of spokane. there were a bunch of people in there, sipping on their wine, and it was a little frustrating. just because you're hanging out at the davenport doesn't make you a selfish prick, but i guess i was inclined to feel that way at the time. the poor outside and the rich inside. but it's not that simple. like we talked about, there are different types of poverty. the people inside could be suffering from all sorts of emotional poverty that the people outside may not be suffering from. who knows. anyways, it was a sort of bittersweet look at the hotel.

that was the end of our tour. we headed back to the HOC after that. i got to see tim's reepeecheep tattoo on the way back (he pretty much pulled his shirt off haha) so that was cool. it's that mouse from narnia, on a boat, on his chest. pretty cool. we debriefed in the conference room and each of us shared some of our thoughts. one of the things that came to mind for me was that i would see downtown spokane in a different light after that night. i think i'm going to notice more of the homeless and try to do more to interact with them. at least i hope so.

we all slept on the floor and it was kind of a cool bonding experience. a sort of a college slumber party, minus the party. just bonding. :)

part 2 to come soon! (gotta go shoot the men's soccer game for the whitworthian...)

photo book preview!

2009-10-15T23:10:00.000-07:00

hey everyone. so, on top of regular hw, regular photography stuff, and other regular life stuff, i decided to make a photo book. i mentioned it a little while back, but the main reason i'm getting it done pronto is because the deadline for the blurb photo book contest is middle of next week. the top award is $3,000. i don't think my book will have a good chance in the category i'm submitting it in though. my book will be made of photos from my korea trip, so i'm submitting it to the "travel" category. because there are a lot of people photos included, i don't know if it will look like a true "travel" book...but hey, i'm gonna give it my best shot!

i half loaded the first half of the book into a windows live slideshow. click on that link, click full screen slide show, and check out the pics if you have a chance. let me know if you have any suggestions for me. i will be adding another 40 or so photos. i've been trying to include a variety of photos, so let me know overdoing a certain kind of photo or something like that. thank you~

by the way, the books can be voted on as soon as the deadline passes. public voting will determine the runner ups. of course, i'll be posting that info when it's relevant and hounding you all to vote for my book :D

man...it's been a long day. i hope i make it through senior thesis.

p.s. view the slideshow in firefox or ie because there's no full screen option in chrome (or possibly other browsers)

new photoshop filter! [286|365 Too much filter? ~ 인물사진]

2009-10-14T22:38:00.001-07:00

286|365 Too much filter? ~ 인물사진
Originally uploaded by comatosed

this should be hilarious to all you photoshop nerds out there. :D

click on picture, then click on the link for the "large" size.

temporary dog, pancakes, and new-ish speaker system

2009-10-10T15:00:00.000-07:00

new [temporary] dog!

so josiah's (one of my housemates) girlfriend works at a veterinary hospital, and i guess they found a stray pup that they couldn't keep. so he's chilling at our place [outside] so a little bit. who wouldn't want such a cute dog? well, he might have a chewing problem, but other than that seems like a nice dog.

PANCAKES!!!!!!!!

if you are evan or bobby, you know what i mean. here are steps to having the worst pancake day of your life:

decide to make a batch of pancake mix but divide it in half so you can save one half for later (of the dry stuff of course).
accidentally put twice as much flour as needed into each half batch.
do not realize that until you try to add milk/eggs.
realize that the batter is looking more like dough.
try cooking it anyways and end up with flat bread.
keep pouring milk in until it gets smoother.
decide that since you already put too much flour in, might as well put more of the other ingredients in.
accidentally put in 1 tablespoon of salt instead of sugar.
do not realize that until you taste the first [should be pretty decent] pancake.
take one bite, notice something is weird and then realize your horrible mistake.
try to decide whether or not to combine both half batches, but realize that the first is horribly ruined.
throw out the first batch.
make the second batch (with the extra flour) and add the necessary ingredients to make it into the full batch.
cook and eat under-par pancakes.
end up with no extra half batch to use later.
fail.

new-ish altec lansing speaker system!

so my old speakers were making weird du-du-du-du-du-du-du noises so i got some new ones. and by new ones i mean 5 year old ones that a lady was selling. but let me tell you, these 5 year old speakers/sub sound amazing! and they are 200 watts. this 2.1 system blows my old 40 watt 2.1 system out of the house [into the basement for storage]. it also shakes the house.....something i always wanted to do haha. i'm sure my housemates wouldn't be too joyful about hearing about my speaker system, so i'll just keep it on the down low. i think i'm pretty considerate about my music levels usually....lol.

old sub on top, new on bottom. :D

losing, multimedia project, etc.

2009-10-08T22:38:00.000-07:00

i have a problem with losing. i'm talking about intramural soccer here. tonight we lost for the third time. i also have a problem with keeping my head in situations where something good is almost happening (winning). i also have a non-problem of yelling, usually constructive criticism/encouragement. but i have a problem (especially tonight) of using expletives to make my point. it's not directed at anybody per se, but it could be taken that way. most of that happens because i am frustrated with myself. i was a little tired tonight, and i made some dumb moves. some pretty dumb ones. i know people call me a good player, but c'mon, i did do some irrational stuff tonight. at least i didn't hurt anyone...i tend to get a little over intense when i feel like i'm screwing up. i know we all want to win, who doesn't? we just gotta work more as a team, which we did here and there throughout the game. i keep thinking, maybe i just need to learn a lesson about losing. but i feel like i've had that lesson more than enough times, and not just on this team.

i think the one thing that kept me sane, was walking back with part of the team after the game. i got to let some of my steam out and just laugh and joke with people. without that, i'd probably still be in a pissy mood right now. the team members are great people, and that's what keeps me going. and wanting to win of course....

i also have a problem of rambling on about myself.

multimedia project:

i need to do a multimedia project for the whitworthian about something, anything. well, we have a project in my psych of poverty class that we need to do. basically, we need to do something that will get the voices of those less fortunate than us out there so people hear them a little more clearly. tim assad and i going to photograph and interview a couple (maybe several) of homeless individuals from downtown spokane. we will also hopefully interview someone working with the homeless. we're hoping a compilation of photographs and audio will help bring their stories to life and get some sort of response either from the whitworth population or the spokane population in general. it's still a rough idea, so any helpful hints would be appreciated.

the final project will be a sort of audio slide show. i am also considering making a photo essay book based on what we do. well, i need to make my korea photo book first and see how that turns out. if it works out, maybe i could sell the books and give the profits to those individuals. who knows.....but tim and i are pretty excited.

ok.....i think i'm loosened up now....time to check out my flash that i got today in the mail!!

lieutenant jeff

2009-10-04T18:18:00.000-07:00

I was going to write about this, but I totally forgot. I was out and about near downtown on Friday, and I decided to get some Dick's. For those of you in the know, Dick's is amazingly cheap fast food. And it actually tastes good. As I was about to turn into Dick's, I noticed Lieutenant Jeff. He was sitting at the corner of the road, with a sign asking for help. "Anything helps", was some of what the sign said. I had always wanted to buy a meal for someone homeless, but I never had the nerve to. I decided that I needed to do that at that moment.

So, I went over to L. Jeff and asked if he wanted some Dick's. He said sure, anything helps. I told him that I'd be right back. I bought him several wammies (burgers with two patties and two cheeses), fries, and a hot chocolate. It was sort of chilly out, so I thought that might warm him up.

I came back and as I handed the food to him, I asked him for his name. He was sort of mumbling, so I couldn't perfectly understand him, but I think he said he was "Lieutenant Jeff" (along with other information about his rank, but I couldn't understand the rest). I told him mine, and as I was about to leave, he asked if he could say a prayer for me. I said yes, and he proceeded to say a short prayer that he said he had prayed for a long while now, every morning. He thanked God for people, and even mentioned loving his enemies. I thought it was a pretty powerful, if not short prayer.

I thanked him for that, and went to my (borrowed) car to eat my wammie.

donate to kelvin garner, burlington coat factory, shopping, photo book, etc.

2009-10-04T16:17:00.000-07:00

YOU should donate to the Kelvin Garner Recovery Account. If you haven't heard about what happened, check out the Whitworthian article. When I heard about it the first time, I thought to myself, "man, that sucks". Well, then I though more about it and realized that I had just got back from studying abroad. What if I had been in the same situation and was in a coma in some foreign country? I don't even want to think about it.... It's super easy, go to a Wells Fargo branch and ask to donate to the Kelvin Garner Account. Tell them the account number (242 547 3655) and you can write a check to the account. The closest branch is 5 min. by car from Whitworth at:

7404 N Division St

Spokane, WA 99208-5611

Don't have much money? Neither do I.

Speaking of money....I went shopping with 주연이 누나 (Jooyun) today, whew we went to a lot of different places. I went to the Burlington Coat Factory for the first time, and I was blown away. I've driven by it before, but never had I imagined the amount of different things they sell there. And the good prices. I don't have a lot of money, so I just bought some pants and a duster. They have a huge selection of men's and women's clothing, accessories, kitchenware, bathroom stuff, canvas prints, seasonal stuff, kid's stuff, baby stuff (maybe for some newly married/engaged folks? haha), random shit, and LOTS of coats. But hey, it's a "coat factory". I'll be going back for sure.

After that we went to a couple sports stores to look for some gloves and I ended up getting some at the Sports Outlet store. It's kinda sad that I'm already looking for warm gloves to wear while biking... Next, Skippers. Great food. :) We are having a Korean meal today at my house so we also stopped at the Korean mart on Division where, amazingly....there were having a half off sale for everything Korean because they were doing some renovations. Amazing!! I stocked up on some Korean canned drinks, curry mixes, and some snacks. :D

Fred Meyer for groceries, and a couple other misc. stops.....man I was tired from running around. But it was still a good time though ^^

So, a photo book is in the works. It would be about my semester abroad in Korea. I'm super excited. Actually, this is what happened. I wanted to get a larger print for the house (maybe 11x14 or 16x20) of one of my photos, then I happened on Blurb.com. They are having a photo book contest that ends in about two weeks, so I thought, "hey, why not make a photo book and enter it in the contest?" I mean, shoot, I can use it for the house (coffee table book) but I can also have the chance of winning some money. Who knows.

Here is a preview of the front cover:

I was originally thinking 40 pages, but I don't think I can do that small of a book. :P Might as well go 80 pages! I want to have a draft done in a week...I will have some sort of preview available if possible!

That's it for now....Korean meal tonight....yummy.

Hope you guys have a good rest of your weekend!

weather, senior thesis (again), a dream, and the fitness center (article).

2009-09-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

it's so cold. when i first went out today, it was 48 degrees. that's 16 degrees away from freezing. and i'm freezing on my bike at 48, then i'm definitely not going to make it at 32! ><

i wanted to rant a little about senior thesis. now that i am heading more in the direction of photography as a career, it's getting harder to concentrate on completing my degree, and by completing my degree i mean doing well in this senior thesis class. i like experimenting, but i hate doing research and writing. unfortunately i have to a lot of research/writing before i even get to experiment. if i can just make it through this class...the rest of my classes aren't too bad at all. just this one. i have a feeling that senior practicum will be a lot easier for me since it'll be hands on. i'd much rather do hands on stuff that takes time rather than this crap that takes time. ok, enough for now. i like psychology, i really do. just not enough i guess.

dreams. i had a sweet dream last night that i was back in korea for a job or something. and i went to my former dwelling place (the international dorm at ewha) and i was let in by one of my friends lol (john hettler). a good dream. :)

by the way, i suggested (by email) to the whitworthian that they write an article on the "no-sleeveless shirt/spandex" rule at the scotford fitness center. iris wu took up the article and did a great job! check it out at intimidating sleeves.

that's all for now. enjoy your week peeps.

newish camera, senior thesis, work, etc.

2009-09-26T23:09:00.000-07:00

my olympus setup has served me well, but it is now on ebay, going to be sold for at least $399. well, i hope it doesn't get sold that low, but there's one bid on it at that price so far. but there's still 5 days left. the canon i decided to purchase was a used xsi. it seems alright so far. i don't really like the shutter sound, and the body is a little less comfortable in my hand compared to the olympus, but overall noise-control wise, much better! and that was my main reason for getting it. the lcd screen is bigger, so that's nice too. but overall, i liked the design of the olympus camera better. next camera on my list, the 40d.

senior thesis is going decently...i have to do a senior psychology research project, and i'm planning on doing mine on how attractiveness (both physical and character wise) correlate with popularity in college students. hopefully it turns out interesting enough...so far it's alright.

work. been working a lot since school started. i've already had 40 hours in the last two weeks. which is good, cuz i need the money.

i'll end with a question. what's the answer to loneliness?

p.s. check out my flickr page, i've added some more photos recently!

sore neck, pics for whitworthian, antibiotics, 50mm lens, etc.

2009-09-20T12:35:00.000-07:00

my neck is sore. i think it's from the situps i did yesterday. i hadn't done the 8 minute abs at scotford for a while...and maybe i overdid it a little yesterday.

i decided i wanted to take pics for the whitworthian, so yesterday i took pics at the whitworth girls' volleyball game. i took about 600 pictures and deleted about 500 of them. my first time taking pics at a volleyball game.

it was a little tough with my camera setup (olympus e-520 with 3.5-5.6 14-42mm kit lens and 4.0-5.6 50-150 kit lens). apparently olympus sucks at noise control at high sensitivities compared to nikon or canon. i'll have to switch to nikon/canon when i get the chance. and by chance i mean money. :P more pics at my flickr

i got some antibiotics on thursday. i decided enough was enough and that being sick for 1.5 months warranted seeing a nurse. hopefully they kick this thing for good. at least it's not h1n1.

i'm in the process of acquiring a f1.8 50mm OM lens. for those of you who don't know what OM means, that might sound like an amazing lens. well, it will be, just that i'll have to manually focus. the OM system is olympus's film system, now extinct. but with the right adapter, OM stuff can be used on digital bodies for poor/experimental people like me. haha....

shoot, i've put off doing hw until now. gotta get some research/reading/papers done. i hate hw. i think a photography job would really suit me. time to look into that more seriously!~

in oregon.

2009-09-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

[earlier today]

So i'm sitting in an amtrak station right now...at 1am. I really want to fall asleep but then not really, cuz I don't really want to miss my train. I'm heading down south to the salem, or area because my cousin is getting married there. She wanted me to take pictures at the wedding so I am leaving spokane (and my perfectly good bed) to board the train at the ungodly time of 2:30am.

I'm falling asleep.....i was trying to go through pics but I'm just too tired. :( just gotta stay awake for an hour! And there's no wireless here. Sucks.

My week went pretty well, I don't feel overwhelmed quite yet, but I guess I haven't had my first full week of school yet.

[now]

so i ended up falling asleep while i was waiting for the train....but i didn't miss it :) somebody woke me up for the seattle train, and i just stayed awake while waiting for the portland train to show up 30 min. later. the train ride wasn't too bad, i was tired enough to sleep for most of the ride. i was awake by the time we got to vancouver, wa and portland was only 15 min. from there. i'm at a restaurant called "ford's" right now waiting for my "house breakfast". it's been like 10 minutes already though, hopefully it comes out soon... i've never really been to portland before so i guess it's cool to chill here for an hour or so.

they seem to have pretty good public transportation; much better than spokane. they have light rail and buses around downtown so that's sweet.

[breakfast update] it was $5 for the breakfast, for two eggs, two pieces of toast, hashbrowns, and coffee. tastes pretty good and didn't take too long. not a huge selection of breakfast items though.

well, that's it for now, off to salem pretty soon. and onto wedding craziness. ><

today.

2009-09-09T00:42:00.001-07:00

today was a long day. well, actually, it wasn't as long physically as some other days have been, but i did/didn't do a lot of crap today.

i didn't go to work at 10am cuz i forgot that i was supposed to work.
i did go to work at 11am to apologize for my lack of presence.

yesterday, i was all excited to sleep in cuz i thought i had nothing in the morning today.
but i wake up to 2 voicemails from my boss.
not the best way to wake up.

well, she wasn't too pissed, just wrote me up.

after that it got progressively better, just kept busy.
i helped mijin with some more internet problems, that finally, got figured out.
man, whitstudent has a lot of problems.
then i helped her out with some scheduling stuff.

before that i ran for a little bit and was going to work out, but scotford closed for the time i wanted to work out at.
then i visited some friends in shalom.....and from 6:30-11:15pm i worked mock rock and cleanup.

i was pretty hungry so i made myself some ramen with egg and potstickers, good stuff :)
now, shower and sleep time so i can wake up for work tomorrow!

craziness that my life is.

hope everyone's classes start off well tomorrow!

moving in, first week of work, and etc.

2009-09-05T18:26:00.000-07:00

so i'm back at whitworth. it's good to be back, and it's been good seeing old faces. and by "old faces" i mean people i haven't seen for 6 months haha. the day before i left was my mom's bday so we went to a korean restaurant for lunch to celebrate that. :D

food was good and it was a good little celebration

the next day was drive over to spokane day/looking for stuff for the house day.

driving over wasn't too bad, but we spent about 5 hours in spokane driving around and picking up various necessities (bike, food, furniture, misc stuff). it was nice to get most of the shopping done in one day though.

i like the house, it's a nice size and it's only 5 minutes away by bike. my room's a little small but not too bad really. i decided not to try to fit a desk in and instead just buy this small portable laptop table and sit on the floor. seems to be doing the job so far.

here are some pics:

right now, i'm just at work chilling with the cd player at an outdoor meal for the freshman students and parents. the job's been decent, with the usual quirks (those of you who've worked sound at whitworth know those quirks). i'm working a lot these next few days, all for the frosh. they better appreciate it all.....

classes start next wednesday, crazy! i'll be taking 17 credits total, it should be a decent load, hopefully it's not too much. well, not too much else to write about... well, actually i met the two girls from ewha and i've been hanging out with them (and two other koreans from cali/korea) so that's been fun. :) it's very nice to see friendly faces from my stay there.

should be a good year!

as long as i don't catch h1n1.

my good ol toshiba and other stuff.

2009-08-27T20:15:00.000-07:00

this is what my toshiba looks like now:

but, don't worry, it's something i did on purpose. my screen went out a few weeks ago, so i was hoping to get a new laptop...and i'm getting one tomorrow!! i think i'm way too excited, especially since it's just a laptop. but those that really know me, know that i am a partial geek (if that is possible) so this is very exciting for me. i'll probably lose sleep tonight...and that's where i stop talking about that haha.

actually, i'm going to talk about it a little more. it's this one:

i've been drooling over it for several months now, and i finally have enough money to purchase it, thanks to my generous aunt :) it's a 14". the top reasons i'm buying it is size, battery life (rated at 7 hours but probably around 5 hours), 64 bit capability, 2.1 ghz, and 320 gb hd. ok, so it's not extra fancy, but it's an amazing deal for the price. now i'll stop. oh, and it's from best buy.

oh, the reason i took the screen off was a) because it didn't work (and from what i found out from research couldn't easily be fixed) and b) cuz it got it in the way of the crt monitor it's now hooked up to. so below is the current setup of the laptop:

might look like a crappy setup, but it's actually faster than the 3-4 old desktop that is our family's main computer. the crt monitor sucks everything, but hey, it's a working computer. i'm leaving it behind so my sister can use it. all the setup needs is a lcd monitor and it would be a decent system for several more years.

ok, enough partial geek talk.

i got back from DC on tuesday, and man was i tired. i was sick pretty much the whole time i was there, albeit not horribly. it did get worse throughout the time i was there though, but i think that was from being busy all the time and not getting enough time to rest. but was it worth it? definitely. :) i got to hang with the fam and especially spend a lot of time with my 7 year old cousin. she's a handful, but a cute handful. lol...

i had a great time overall, ate some delicious food (both cooked by my aunt and at restaurants), saw a bunch of museums/historical places, only got sprayed once in the eye with perfume, and got to know my aunt's family (mom's side) much better.

tomorrow, i'm celebrating my mom's bday with my fam. and early saturday morning i'm leaving for spokane. and craziness will ensue. by that i mean shopping for all the stuff that i need in order to function in a house. and then next week is a full 40 hour work week as a sound technician at whitworth (my job from last fall). i'm stoked though!

museums, food, and walking around

2009-08-17T04:38:00.000-07:00

so all last week, from tuesday until sunday, my sister and i visited historical sites/museums in the area. here is a list:

Freer and Sackler Gallery of Art
National Gallery of Arts (we were only able to see the west building because of time limits)
National Museum of Natural History
National Museum of Women in Arts
Gettysburg National Military Park
Mount Vernon (George Washington's estate and gardens)

it was definitely great to see them all, but it does get a little tiring haha. today my sister, my cousin, and i are going to the montgomery county fair so that should be a fun respite. :D

food:
friday night we had a delicious korean meal, saturday night a crab feast, and yesterday, some pretty good pizza. those were all good, but my aunt is actually a great cook. when she has time she cooks us dinner and it's first class.

walking around:
that we do a lot of.

side note:
crazy that i'm going back to spokane next saturday....let's do this senior year. i feel that some people aren't too excited about returning to spokane, but i'm excited to try to make the most of it this year. we'll see how it goes!

p.s. pics to come when i have more time.

in DC! (well, actually virginia, but DC sounds cooler)

2009-08-12T14:59:00.000-07:00

after being home from korea for 6 days, my sister and i left for washington DC. apparently my aunt there wanted us to come visit/babysit our 7 year old cousin for a couple weeks, and was willing to pay for plane tickets. how could we say no?

the flight over was ok....not the best since we flew on the cheapest airline ever, air tran. they make it clear that they're not a luxury airline or anything, so they met our expectations. they got us from point a to b cheaply and in time. guess that's all we asked for.

my days this week consist of: getting up at 5:45am to drive my uncle to the subway station, taking my little cousin to summer camp at 9am, going to explore the smithsonian museums during the bulk of the day, getting back by 4pm to pick up hanul (my little cousin), picking up my uncle at 5:30pm, and then playing with hanul/relaxing/dinner/going to sleep by 9pm.

so yeah, it's going generally good, except that i'm still sick, and that hanul doesn't listen to me in the morning.

here are some pics. :)

p.s. i barely had enough time to post this blog.

p.p.s. i'm using a macbook and it's really annoying.

the national gallery of art

finally downloaded firefox on this thing, cuz safari sucks.

maybe final post in korea...ㅜㅜ

2009-07-31T09:37:00.000-07:00

so it's 1:38am in korea right now. (9:38am yesterday on the west coast) i had a final hangout with some of my international friends, and it was a good time. we went to a korean-style japanese restaurant, then went to a korean-style drinking place after. [note to friends/people who read my blog/notes and are christian: a lot of christians drink. some drink more than others. some "christians" who drink are not really christians. some christians who drink are stupid about it and end up looking like "non-christians". at the moment, since i am struggling with my faith (or something else i'm not sure) i'm not sure where i end up. anyways, drinking can lead to stupidness and other negative things, so watch yourselves.] just added that part because of something someone close to me said [aka dad].

you know the internet is an interesting place. maybe when it started it was developed by slightly older people, but as time went on, younger people dominated it. but now, the slightly older people are catching on and making contact with the younger people. that can be a good thing and a bad thing, but i guess it's good overall, cuz we're all in contact. and that's what the internet's supposed to do.

anyways... like my title says, this may be my final post in korea. i still have a cold, but my departure time is not changing (8/1 5:10pm korean time) . sucks. but i bought some pills that are supposed to help me fall sleep at the pharmacy...because i think i won't be able to fall asleep on my own on the plane. hopefully if i sleep at least 6 hours on the plane, it will help with jet lag and whatnot.

overall, it's very weird leaving korea. it feels like i've been here for much longer than a little over 5 months. i have a feeling that it'll take a lot of august to adjust to life back in the states. probably a period of feeling like, "shit i wish i was in korea right now". but a lot of me wants to back in the states.

i have one year of college left. that should (but isn't yet) scare the everything out of me. because i'm not sure what i'm doing after i graduate. but i guess we'll take it one semester at a time eh?

is immortality what christianity comes down to?

2009-07-12T07:22:00.000-07:00

wow, my blog title sounds way to theological/philosophical. lol, but it's the best i could come up with to draw readers in haha... but really, this was something i was thinking about today. it might sound heretical to some christians, but i think it's an important point to think about.

i decided that (in my definitely not scholarly musings, but rather personal ponderings) the one thing that would make or break christianity is getting to live forever. i KNOW that there is much more to it than that, but think about this: if everything about christianity was true, EXCEPT getting to live forever with God, would anybody be a christian? my answer is, of course not. what would be the point in believing in a God if you ended up in the same place as a non-believer? i think it's possible to live a moderatly good life on this earth, without being christian (and of course, this person wouldn't be considered a christian). and if there was no eternal life for that moderately good person or the christian next door, then there wouldn't be a point in being a christian.

yes, i know that christianity is more than just about eternal life, but it seems that living forever is what it boils down to. [by the way, i should specify here that when i say living forever, i mean living forever in a good place (such as heaven) and not living forever in a not so good place (aka hell). ] well when i think about it like that, it all seems kinda pointless. we are believing, yes because we supposedly love God and want to serve him, but in the end, it's because we will live forever in a happy place. then again who knows who will end up in heaven and who'll end up in hell? i guess when it comes down to it, you could assume that based on the sum total of a person's life, he/she will go to heaven or hell. but then again, christianity is not about sum totals, it's about one decision to believe or not to believe. or at least that's what i've been told.

so is it all about the selfish choice of wanting to live forever in a happy place? is that the conscious or unconscious reason why christians believe? is that why i believe? gotta think about that some more. let me know if you have any thoughts on this. :)

department stores, seoul rain, and other misc. things.

2009-07-11T18:44:00.000-07:00

department stores
yesterday i went to 죽전 (jook-jun) where a friend of my mom's had recently moved to. she's the lady who let me borrow a rice cooker for the semester, so i was pretty grateful for that. that allowed me cook my own rice (against dorm rules because it was an electrical cooking appliance haha) and save some money in the process. when i got off the subway i noticed that even though the place is little ways out from the downtown of seoul, it's a pretty rich place. the first thing you see is the giant 신세계 department store. there was a deceiving sign on the side of the building saying it was the largest department store in the world....i mean it was pretty big, but the biggest? i went online later and researched a little, turns out the largest department store in the world is the 신세계 deparment store, just the one in busan (largest department store). so korea has the largest department in the world, big deal. department stores actually annoy me a lot. they sell "designer" clothing/items at ridiculously high prices for people willing to waste their money on such products. the only time i went to one in korea is when my cousin wanted to buy me a jacket. the only jacket that i liked was a ralph lauren one. the only problem for me was that it cost 3 times the amount of a really nice jacket i could get somewhere else. but my cousin insisted on getting it for me so i couldn't say no.... also, while i was searching for information on korean department stores, i found some information on a deparment store that collapsed in korea in 1995. it's a pretty sad/angering story because of the corruption involved that helped lead to the death of over 500 people. info at wikipedia.

seoul rain
last thursday it rained an insane amount. which sucked cuz i had to go to work. i went out of the house with my little dinky umbrella, walked for about 2 minutes, then reliazed that i had forgotten my wallet/my umbrella was failing on me. by the time i walked back to the house the lower half of my pants were soaked and my shoes were getting there too. i got my wallet and a sturdier umbrella, but i feel like the umbrella didn't help the lower half of my body from getting soaked at all. :( seriously, the there was basically water flowing down the streets because of the insane amount. its called the 장마 (jang-ma) season in korean. most days seem to be okay, then it just fucking pours. by the time i got to my job (which really didn't require that much walking) my pants were half soaked, my shoes/socks were completely soaked, and water had gotten into my backpack (where my camera was). lame. today is similar to last thursday but i think, not as bad. i was planning on going to church this morning, but it was raining too hard, so i'm going to the afternoon service. i just hope it doesn't pick up again.

soju
i asked someone at a local korean grocery store probably the stupidest question you could ever ask in korea. the question was "do you have soju?" FAIL. if i would have asked "where is your soju?", then it would have been perfectly fine. but as soju being the most commonly drunk alcohol in korea (as far as i know), it IS at every store that sells alcohol. i will make sure to not make that mistake again. on another note "J" soju is actually pretty smooth. i think that's mostly contributed to the slightly lower alchohol level (18.5) compared to cham-ee-sul (20.1).

삼겹살 (sam-gyeop-sal)
i am ridiculously full of pig's belly meat right now. that is kind of meat of sam-gyeop-sal is. very tasty and pretty fatty. :D perfect combination haha. i also had it yesterday, when i went to my mom's friends house and i will also have it tomorrow when i get dinner with my friends. i think that's enough meat/protein for a couple weeks.

my 21st bday!
so tomorrow is my bday (in korea ;) and i'm pretty stoked. it'd be cool to celebrate it with some peeps from the states, but at least i have my international/korean friends here to celebrate it with. i'm planning on working out in the morning, going shopping for some headphones/other stuff in yong-san, then meeting up with friends and hanging out for the night. should be a good day, as long as it doesn't rain much, which it's not supposed to. good stuff.

just posted some misc. new photos!

short update and some thoughts.

2009-07-10T06:10:00.000-07:00

since last weekend (at my grandma's) i haven't done too much.. i started tutoring a dude from the shinchon area for 6 hours a week. it really seems like i get these tutoring jobs at the exact time that i need them, because i quit my job teaching kids this week. it because of one of two reasons, 1) because God is still watching out for me or 2) because of pure luck. the kids are cute and all...it's just that they don't listen very well, keep running around, and the lady who pays me isn't that reliable. i mean, she pays me, but only after i email her, text her, call her, then text her again after she says she'll text me but doesn't. BUT, i guess the important thing is that she still ends up paying me. it's weird because her job is to hire foreigners, but she doesn't speak english that well at all. it seems that only when i speak to her in korean does she understand that she needs to pay me.... i just wonder how the other non-korean-speaking teachers (hired by her) get paid. i'll have to talk to john, one of my friends who works for her.

i did get to hang out with my buddy and get some lunch/dessert with her. we went to a viatnamese restaurant. my buddy got pho but apparently they just call it viatnamese noodles here. anyways, my dish was good but not the most filling. then we went to a local pat-bing-soo place where they put granola in it. so good! it might sound weird, especially to those of you who know what pat-bing-soo is, but it was delicious. today i got lunch with mijin, the girl who had the flu, who is now better, who is going to whitworth next semester. it was cool to see her again because it's been a while since the last time. because of finals she wasn't able to meet up for a while. we had some delicious nang-myun WITH meat. actually, the nang-myun was delicious because of the addition of meat. apparently we were eating at a new nang-myun place and this meat thing was also a new fad. well, i like it. because i like meat. lol..... :D it was great to chat and catch up with her.

i bought a "cheer you up" tshirt today. ^^

i had seen the tshirt before in shillim, and i actually thought it was a "cheer me up" tshirt lol...which i think is a sort of tshirt i need more often haha... some of you know that i am into getting cool tshirts with at least some meaning behind them. unfortanately, my lack of money prevents me from buying too many tshirts. plus buying too many tshirts would be a waste of money anyways...

now, onto "some thoughts". why am i so flawed?? i know the christian answer is "because of the fall", but i wish there was was something that satisfied me more. i just seem to screw up over the same things over and over again. especially when i'm down and lonely. that's the worst place for me to be; down and lonely. a place i seem to be at too often.

where is my faith struggle leading me to? i read this really insightful blog today, which is at:

Advent Post: How I Almost Decided to Hate God, Authenticity, and why One Sufjan Stevens does More Good Than The Entire CCM Industry... Part 2

its about a guy who's in korea who talks about his own faith struggles. it sounds pretty legit.

maybe my struggles will lead me on a path similar to his, i dunno. i just that i don't think i belong in the "mainstream church scene". i like getting to know real people. well i guess those people are hard to find both in and out of the christian circle.

real people. where are you guys? or am i just another faker?

hanging at grandma's.

2009-07-05T06:59:00.000-07:00

so as you may have seen on my facebook status, i was at my grandma's house in bu-ahn (mom's side) this weekend from, friday night to sunday morning. i was fortunate enough to have my cousin come with me, making the trip much more interesting lol.

i had a good time overall, and it was cool to stay at my grandma's house again. it's way out in the country so it's a nice change from seoul too. although, i was definitely ready to get back to seoul lol... mostly because of the excessive amount of bug life in that area. man there seemed to be an eternity of flies...we kept killing them and they kept coming... :( the mosquitoes weren't actually that bad. well, actually they were when we were outside doing something for our grandma. i got 7 bites in like a 15 minutes time span. ugh. but inside we had a mosquito repellent going while we slept.

man, my grandma keeps on working and stays busy, even though shes not in top physical condition. she's definitely a hard worker and i respect her for that. she also made sure to keep us fed (or rather, overfed) while we were there hehe. her food may have not been the tastiest (even though most of what she gave us was pretty damn good) but i definitely her effort in preparing meals for us. she couldn't eat most of what she prepared for us because of digestive problems, so that's even more impressive.....

that's its for now...if i think of anything else i'll post later.

my 21st is in a week!!! crazy............

time to sleep. :D
night/good morning folks.

pics at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031502&id=59401921&l=33ede27aed

mosquitoes and crazy kids.

2009-07-02T07:32:00.000-07:00

hey... so today was a little bit of a stressful day. i spent the night at my uncle's house in anyang and i came back a little late in the morning, well, late because i had to rush off to teach kids in bangbae. i hung out with my cousin bum-sung and his gf yesterday in anyang, that's why it was easy to go to his house and spend the night. anyways, so being a little rushed today didn't help. then, the kids at bangbae (or at least a third of them) were crazy today and wouldn't pay attention/were running around causing havoc. ugh................ i was really planning on quitting that job today, but after a little bit of time and talking to some peeps, i think i'll quit next week. haha. not much difference, but at least i can tell the kids that it's my last day and all that. they're not always that crazy...but they just generally can't concentrate and i feel that they are learning little if anything at all. a lot of that actually has to do with how boring the stuff i'm teaching them is... man.....tomorrow i'm supposed to teach 4-6 year olds something about summer in an active sort of way (to keep their attention) and i have no fricking idea what to do. if i had some supplies, that would be nice. but the place doesn't provided me with anything. just great. i'm quitting that one next week too. the reason it's easier to quit is that someone called me up today wanting to start getting individual tutoring starting next week, for 6 hours a week. that should be enough to save up a little bit and not work at the children's places. i mean, don't get me wrong, the kids are cute and i think they like me....it's just that some of them just drive me over the edge. >< i just hope i'll have more patience with my own kids lol...

next topic. mosquitoes. i fucking hate them. it's not funny, don't you laugh. i'm totally serious. the one night (at my uncle's house last night) that i don't turn on the mosquito repellent, they fucking attack me. and my mosquito bites actually haven't been too bad so far....but these ones, no, they're like 1/2 inch to 1 inch size lumps on my body. and the itching is getting worse and worse... i wanted to find some itching creme but i didn't have time tonight to get any.... :( ㅜㅜ :/ mosquitoes are my worst enemy.

well, the one thing that made today more bearable was hanging out with joo-yun noona. we had dinner, played some wii at a wii place in hongdae, and had some drinks together to finish off the night. she's one of the girls going to whitworth, so it's been cool getting to know her. the other girl, mijin, was supposed to get dinner with us but unfortunately caught the flu. :[ it was pretty fun and we talked about relationships, so it was good to get some stuff off my chest that i've been thinking about...about that one girl :} (who is in china now... :{ ㅎㅎㅎㅎ)

anyways.......tomorrow, wake up, exercise, go teach kids in shin-sa, and then go to grandma's house with my cousin bum-sung. should be cool, it's been a long time since i've actually gone to my grandma's house. like maybe 7 years? 몰라. 너무 오래 됐어....

sleep time! good night/good day folks! i wish you a better day than my experience with the kids. lol.....

studio wedding photography. hot HOT summer days.

2009-06-28T07:46:00.000-07:00

as i told you all in my last blog post, yesterday (saturday) i had my first shot at wedding photography. however, it might not be quite what you think of when you think of wedding photography. the bulk of the pictures that i took were in a studio (pre-wedding) and i actually didn't take a lot of pictures at the ceremony. that was mostly because the wedding was very short. i think it was mostly short because of the nature of the wedding; the fact that it was a volunteer effort and so was meant to be short and sweet.

anyways, the studio part was hard, but it was fun too. it was my first time doing it, so that didn't help haha... there were 4 photographers total, all of us from the ewha photo club. two of us were the main photographers (one of the girls and i) and the other two were assistants. thankfully, the owners of the studio were kind enough to give us pointers and help us along with ideas for poses, etc. i was put in charge of using the strobes (by using a wireless flash trigger) while the other main photographer was put in charge of taking pics of a constantly lit setting.

here are some of the many pics:

this couple had been officially married for a little bit now, they just hadn't had the money to have a proper wedding....but now it was possble! :)

in this pic, the groom looks a lot taller, but he's actually not lol....as you'll see in the next pic.

one of the more funny pics haha....this actually wasn't my idea (though i wish it was haha), it was the idea of the lady helping us out.

in my opinion this couple was more fun to work with...but hey both were fun. :D

hearts.

big and bad. hehe.

she seemed to have this expression a lot...i'm not sure if it was from being stressed out, or nervous..but once she got comfortable she could really light up.

ok that's it for now (the pics) but i will probably post more on facebook.

and now. on to the HOT weather.

not really too much to say.
other than that i'm sweating profusely during a lot of everyday activities that i'm not usually sweating at back at home. everyday activities such as eating, walking short distances, taking a shit (i know tmi lol), sitting at the computer, and etc. i feel like my relative's house is especially hot...they do have a/c but don't use it all the time. i definitely understand the money part of it, that's probably what i would do too. that's what fans on for. in fact, i have one sitting a foot away from me blasting semi-warm air at me right now. but the main thing is, the fucking humidity. that's what kills. i hate it....but i guess i can deal with it....if i decide to come back to seoul for a longer period of time, i'm going to have to factor that in haha. it hasn't got unbearable yet, just high 80s with very high humidity. BUT. it's not even july yet!!!!!!!!! ah.....i hope i live to see home.

:P thanks for reading. :D

first shot at wedding photography tomorrow.

2009-06-26T08:10:00.001-07:00

so. tomorrow, i will have my first try at wedding photography. let me fill you in on what's going down.

there's a wedding tomorrow for two couples who do not have the money to pay for their own weddings. everything (as far as i understand, including the honeymoon) is sponsored, so the couples don't have to pay anything. all the services at the wedding are provided by either clubs at ewha, or other organizations. the ewha photography club is doing the photography for the event. i was picked to be one of the main studio photographers and a general photographer at the wedding. i have experience in neither, but then neither does anybody else lol... and it is a volunteer event. we'll just have to do our best, i know that i want to make some good photos for the couples!

let me elaborate on the "studio" part. before the actual wedding, we are photographing the couples at a studio near ewha. i will be photographing one couple, with one assistant, while another girl and her assistant photograph the other couple. sounds very pro...but like i said, i'm pretty sure that none of us have ever done this before. i studied up a little bit as to what i need to do to make the pictures turn out...but we'll see what happens in the actual thing.

needless to say, i'm hella nervous. it should be an interestiny day for sure. if nothing else, it should be fun and also give us all a boatload of experience.

wish us luck! :D

movie. already thinking about missing people.

2009-06-24T08:36:00.000-07:00

today i worked out, then went to watch a movie with ji-yeong. we weren't sure what we were going to watch, but we decided to watch 거북이 달린다 (running turtle). that might sound like a weird/boring movie, but i actually really liked it. it was about a cop who wasn't so good at his job, but who through perseverance was able to catch a very high level escaped prisoner. it was a little long, but it didn't really seem like it was that long. kind of an action/comedy/drama all in one.

after that i went to ewha to get some dinner with some international friends. meat dinner. so good. lol...

today, i got to thinking even more about how much i'm going to miss korea. so many things. first and foremost of course are the friends i've made. i don't want to say goodbye, even though i'm sure i will come back (maybe even next year?? : ) and of course i will miss my relatives too... and next, the food. lol... i love it. man the food. hahaha. next, just the bustling atmosphere of seoul. it's a little hard to be surrounded by people all the time, but i think if i had a room to myself, i would be able to handle it much better. i do get a little overwhelmed sometimes. next, the convenience of things. yes, some things aren't so convenient, but overall, no real complaints. korea is definitely not america, and i'm not sure which i like better....but i definitely love it!

some things i won't miss:
the humidity. i hate sweating a lot...maybe it's just cuz i haven't adjusted.
the lack of real cheese.
mosquitoes. (but those are in the states too haha)
i actually can't think of anything else at the moment....

anyways, the stuff i can do without, it's the people that i'm going to miss so much. :( some of you may know this, and some of you may not, but i can get pretty emotional. so let's see each other as much as possible (preferably in ways that require minimal money, cuz i need to save! lol) and have some more good times before i/you leave! i still have over a month yet....and i'm writing this. how i'm going to feel in a month i don't want to think about. ㅠ.ㅠ

but till then, i want to enjoy korea and all of you great people!!! :D

a surprisingly busy day.

2009-06-22T09:49:00.000-07:00

today. workout. lunch. ewha. writing a letter. going to the travel agency to help a friend out. seeing a friend for like 10 min. going to volunteer. finding out i didn't have to and instead watching a performance put on by seoul metro. going on an unplanned climbing adventure in 응봉 with my fellow volunteer teacher and his friends. getting back at 12:45. eating my second dinner. computer. sleep.

tomorrow. get up. breakfast. ewha. haircut. practicing taking pictures for the wedding we (the photography club at ewha) are volunteering for. chilling. last official salmon meeting. coming home who knows when. and other unplanned things.

p.s. originally i had this sweet conversation with my imaginary friend (about today) all typed out but then ie crashed on my aunts computer, causing me great aunguish. i think i spelled aunguish wrong. anyways, i will try that next time. if you think i'm crazy, i'm not. i'm just feeling creative and tired at the same time. :P

weekend update!

2009-06-21T06:39:00.000-07:00

hey all.

it's been a pretty decent weekend. restful, and i did a couple things. after waking up past noon, i signed up at government run fitness place on saturday (well, my cousin signed me up)...so i can finally work out while living at my aunt's house! it's not a great place by any means, but it's the cheapest so that's why i picked it. it has plenty of machines, treadmills, and whatnot. there's just no AC, or at least it wasn't turned on when i was there. which might be a problem later in the summer when it's to like 95 degrees here. i'll just have to go in the morning then. i'm still sore from working out yesterday. but it felt good. :)

after that, i chilled till i went to a jazz bar with some friends from ewha. it was a decent places, but the drinks were overpriced and the setup wasn't that nice. oh well, it was still good jazz though. well, other than the woman singing....i think she has a nice voice, but when she sang in english (well, all her songs were in english) it just sounded like she was imitating someone...not just a little, but a lot. and her pronounciation just wasn't that good. kudos for her singing out though, and memoring all those lyrics. that's half the job! the instrumentalists were pretty sweet.

today i went to a new church (again) and i think this is the one that i will finall stick with. with there only being like a month left, that doesn't mean much...but at least i found one that i think i am comfortable with. the pastor seems pretty down to earth. the service was a little on the long side, but hey, i can deal with that. ;) and least it's long and interesting.

after that i pretty much just chilled and took a nap.

tomorrow i'm planning on working out in the morning, eating lunch, going to ewha for a lil bit, then volunteering. should be a full day.

thanks for reading. :)

6.19 demonstration.

2009-06-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

today my plan was to go to nam-dae-moon market to buy an external flash for my camera. well, i did do that but i was also able to take a bunch of pics of a demonstration/rally going on in the same area. because of all the current political unrest, they're not uncommon by any means, but still interesting to observe and photograph.

pictures and captions here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031040&id=59401921&l=8b7374cd70

oh, the flash. i found a pretty good deal for a used flash. i was actually pretty lucky because almost nobody was selling olympus flashes. and this was the only used one that i found. and the dude sold it to me for a good price...well, i kind of forced him lol. i told him i only had so much money (which was true) so he kinda had to sell it to me. i say that because it was a used flash and not that many people use olympus dslrs in korea. my first external flash!!!

photography nerd.

oh you aint seen nothing yet.

hmmmm....

2009-06-17T09:10:00.000-07:00

well, i said in my post yesterday that i was nervous about doing something today...and i did it....but it didn't quite turn out the way i'd hoped. but maybe it's a good thing. i don't know yet. today, i was planning on telling a korean girl that i liked her and see how she felt, and i did that. well, i guess she didn't quite feel the same way...so it was a no. so that sucks. and i'm kinda depressed :( but she's a nice girl and i still like her...so i guess i haven't quite given up. but i don't know if it's worth it to not give up. i dunno....i hung out with some friends tonight to kinda forget about it, but of course i couldn't forget about it. oh well, we're still friends, and that's a good thing. :) because she's a really neat person.

tomorrow i'm tutoring at the after school place and then i'm going to costco. lol, good stuff...i'm excited to go the most american store ever. and then i don't really have any plans for fri-sun. it'll be nice to just relax. yes. i'm gonna sleep forever. well, probably not because i want to take advantage of the time i have left in korea.

that's it for now. good morning folks in the u.s. and good night you late nighters in korea.

done with the semester :) and :/ but overall =D

2009-06-16T08:02:00.000-07:00

i finished my last test yesterday (poetry final) and turned my final essay in....and it felt good!! especially cuz i think i did better this time than last. and of course i took a nap right after. lol..

yesterday was a very long day (i was almost up for 24 hours) cuz i stayed up to say bye to my roommate and some of the others who were leaving korea. it wasn't as sad for my roommate, cuz he's coming back, but some of the others were pretty down about it...who knows if i'll see some of these people ever again. but the world is becoming a smaller i think.

man, so i went to sleep at like 6:30 and then got up at 12pm cuz i had to tutor at 1pm.. :/ then i finished packing up because i had to move to my aunt's house today. whew, packing took longer than i thought it would take...and i discovered that i had more stuff than i thought i had . :( but it worked out. i took a taxi to my aunts house from ewha and it was a nice comfy ride...other than the taxi driver driving like a crazed man but thankfully we didn't get into a wreck. he was a really nice guy but he drove the taxi like he was racing or something. which is kinda cool, i'd love to do that haha...

it's always weird leaving somewhere (my ewha dorm) where you've been living for a while. i already feel nostalgic for it, even though it wasn't the most comfortable place ever (i'd have to say the shalom dorm was the most comfy yet). i'll still be in korea but it just feels different. i mean i like living at my aunt's house so far...but it's different. BUT, this will be good for me because i will get to work on a lot of korean and save a lot of money. and get to know my cousins, aunt and uncle better. a lot of good points. :D

tomorrow i'm planning on doing something that i'm really nervous about...but i'll tell you about that after the outcome....mysterious right? ㅋㅋ

one more test. almost there.

2009-06-14T05:32:00.000-07:00

man, it sucks when i still have one more test and half of the other exchange students seem to be done already. especially when there's no 24/7 consideration here like there is at whitworth. well, tough luck. just gotta press on....but i'm almost done!

poetry test tomorrow at 10am.

then i'm done.

just got to study now, cuz i really haven't that much... :P

after i post this blog, i'm not using the internet anymore until tomorrow after the test.

that will be tough lol. i'm being serious.

on another note, i kinda feel like a poser. about telling people what i really think. my roommate said that tomorrow night a bunch a guys are going to have a drinking contest. a drinking contest where each person tries to drink 5 liters of beer. in u.s. terms, that's about 170 ounces, or over 14 cans of beer. okay now that i think about it, that's not the most some of these guys have drank i'm sure...but the point i'm trying to make is that i should have told my roommate that that's a plain stupid idea. i mean do these guys ever do anything other than drinking while hanging out?? c'mon. but instead i think i mumbled that's cool and told him not to overdo it. lame. lame.

that's about it for today. till tomorrow then.

hangout/study weekend

2009-06-13T08:24:00.000-07:00

thursday and friday night were both hangout nights. thursday was a sort of an end of the semester hangout for our korean class. we all got dinner together, went to this cool bar called izakaya, then went bowling, and finally went to a 노래방 (kareoke). friday night was a little more simple, went to a final office of global affairs farewell presentation, farewell party with the buddies, then to mikes cabin (my first time and my last), and then a movie (the taking of pelham 123).

mike's is the main hangout place for the international students but i don't like it for several reasons. 1) they're mostly foreigners there. i don't really feel like hanging around a bunch of foreigners. 2) it's loud. you can't talk without shouting. 3) looks like it would get boring after about 45 minutes. yeah, there's foosball and darts, but you can only play those two things for so long.
i don't get how people could enjoy hanging out there...

today i worked on an online final for my family and gender in the korean family class. wasn't too bad, it was just 4 open book essay questions. now i'm working on studying for my poetry test (i sucked at the midterm test). tomorrow i gotta write a final essay. way to procrastinate. that's i how i do it i guess.

i think a lot of the international students are going to be partying every night these last few days. it's the way to finish up the last days together i guess. i don't know, i'd rather be sober and have some last final memories then be drunk and forget everything. except the pictures i guess lol. whatever.

i submitted a picture to a korean photography contest today. it's all about street photography. i doubt i have a chance, i just found out about it and submitted a decent photo of mine. if i'd known about it sooner i might have taken the time to prepare a better picture. we'll see though, i think the one i submitted is decent. and the prizes are pretty large cash prizes, even the lower ones. i can only hope. :)

i'm moving out of the dorm next tuesday.....fun stuff.....hopefully it doesn't take too long to do that. i'll be living with my aunt and her family in silim-dong. that should be fun. :D

have a good rest of the weekend!
laters.

finals week update.

2009-06-09T06:45:00.000-07:00

well, i've finished two days of korean tests so far....monday was listening, and today was writing/reading. yesterday was pretty easy, and i thought today would be harder than it was. not saying i got 100% :P but i think i did alright. of course that's the sort of thinking that can be dangerous. ㅜㅜ anyways, tomorrow is speaking, which i think is my strong point.

it's crazy that this semester is coming to an end. i'm especially going to miss the korean class; my classmates (many who are friends now), the teachers (both the slightly boring one and the funny one), and just generally learning the korean language. i've definitely improved...though i want to improve more. i'm planning on purchasing the rosetta stone language program as soon as i have the money so i can continue working on my korean. my mom tried to tell me, but i didn't realize how important keeping up my korean was until i actually came to korea. i really want to keep it up and i hope that drive stays with me after i head back to the states.

today at the weekly salmon meeting i kept falling asleep...partly because i was tired and partly because the message was boring. it was a little awkward for me because the girl speaking was talking about healing and at the end she asked if anyone was hurting. a couple of people raised their hands. next we were supposed to pray for them. then she asked if everybody was better. people kinda mumbled yes and so she said that's great. to me that's kinda weird. but i'll leave it at that for now.

i just uploaded two albums onto facebook...yay! i finally had some time. one album is a small one with pics from the celebration hangout (for me winning 2nd place at the singing contest, i kept telling them that it wasn't a big deal but they wanted to celebrate :) that my classroom friends put on for me. the next [larger] album is from when my cousin, her friend, and i went to andong.

check em out~~
talk to you all later and have a good week then!

celebration pics
an-dong pics

안동 weekend

2009-06-07T06:45:00.000-07:00

saturday i went to andong with my cousing (선경이 누나) and her friend. andong is a city south of seoul...it usually takes a little over 3 hours to get to from seoul. well, getting there took almost double the time because of the stupid traffic. i was kinda carsick on the way there so that didn't help either :(

however, it wasn't all bad! we stopped at a huge rest stop area on the way and it was definitely something i hadn't seen in america. the rest stop area was more like a mini entertainment/food court place. there was a batting cage, lots of different food vendors, several bathrooms, a medicine place, small bookstore, and other things i don't remember. 형 (hyung - name/title a guy calls a guy older than you) and i tried out the batting cage. i didn't do so well, but i kept trying a got a little better haha.

[man, it's late already ><] i just want to take a break for a day or two....but i can't. :(

anyways, we went to a restaurant as soon as we got there, it was pretty decent. i had some shark meat but it wasn't that good...too chewy and tasteless.

we went to a traditional korean place of study after that. it was in a really secluded place, i guess so that students could concentrate on studying. makes me realize how many distractions we have nowadays.....internet, entertainment, drinking, smoking, sports, and everything else. but hey we should have the willpower to resist all that stuff and study hard, right?

after that we went to buy some octopus and some fish from a local market. i ate some of the octopus and i didn't like it too much...too chewy lol. a different type of chewy than the shark, but still chewy. after that we walked across a bridge and quickly saw an area where a korean drama had been filmed. we had to leave a little hastily because my aunt wanted us home before midnight and was worrying about us. we got home around 1am...so not too late. ;)

lots of pics taken...we'll see when i'm able to get them up.ㅜㅜ

i spent the night at my aunt's and in the afternoon went to church with a friend (지영이) . it was my first time at this church, and it was a little bit of an experience. i thought that the salmon folks were charismatic but this church definitely tops them...a little uncomfortable for me. and it seems like the sort of church really focused on the end times. at least from today's sermon. the pastor was funny, and had some good points. but he also seemed condescending at times...i dunno not the sort of pastor i could listen to sunday after sunday. shit i don't know if i'm just too picky or what...but none of the churches i've gone to seem like a place i would like to go to long term. maybe because i am struggling with my faith, church in general seems hard to like, but i really wouldn't mind going to new community (church back in spokane) right now. but maybe i'm supposed to be out of my comfort zone... which i am. i dunno. i just hope God doesn't give up on me.

KFC afterwards for lunch. :)

then back to the dorm to study...but i didn't study that much....at it's finals week this week, until next monday. oh my. ><

first day of my four hour block of craziness.

2009-06-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

so yesterday, i found out that i was wanted to work at a new job. a job for today. the pay's pretty decent, and it's not too far away, so i said why not. well, let's just say i hope i get adjusted to it.

the place (a 어린이집) is in 방배 (bang-bae) and it's a sort of after-school program place for kids. i had no clue what i was going to be expected to do...so i was a little nervous when i got there. hold on, lemme backtrack a little bit first.

i also wasted a perfectly good 29,000won today. :( plus the money i spent on clothes yesterday, except that wasn't a waste. i bought a nicer pair of pants, a shirt, and the shoes today for the job. well, the shirt and the pants are worked out...but it turns out that you take your shoes off when you get to the place...so the shoes don't matter. and it also turns out that the shoes absolutely suck because i bought them for cheap on the street. that's what i get... >< i live and learn.

back to the job. the first thing i did was basically overview kids while they drew lions and giraffes (in two different groups, one for each animal). well, it was more like me doing my best to keep them from going absolutely nuts breaking the classroom. man....how do they have so much energy??!! i wish i had that much...

the kids got progressively better (i think they got progressively older as 4 hours went on) so it did improve. it's weird how the system works though, every 30 minutes i got a new set of kids. so in total, i had 8 sets of kids. one girl cried, one girl refused to do any work and sat by herself, a lot of them ran around, and many more didn't quite follow the directions.

all that said, overall it worked out all right. :D at least i can speak korean...but that's both a curse and a blessing cuz they want me to use it as little as possible. that'd be just fine if the kids understood english decently...but most couldn't. anyways, it was an experience and i will get roughly 8 more of them (8 more 4 hour chunks) before i head back to the states.

i watched "the curious case of benjamin button" tonight to relax. it was an alright movie...a little too long i think. but it made me think a little bit, which is always good. what are we doing with our time? and how does our lives affect other lives?

tomorrow is another busy day...and a busy weekend ahead....one of these days i'll be able to rest. -.- i'm going on a little trip on saturday with my cousin and her friend to 안동 (an-dong). i'll write about the rest when it happens i guess....i'm tired......."."

update.

2009-06-02T06:50:00.000-07:00

i was trying to think of a creative title...but i'm tired, and i failed to do so. i haven't written a real update in a while. (side note: i'm eating some really delicious bread right now with walnuts and beans in it...mmmmmyummy)

anyways, last weekend was pretty like usual.

friday:
1. went to ex. president's funeral. well, i didn't go to the official one but i went to the public part of it. more on that in previous blogs.
2. hung out with friends. we ate dinner at a sushi buffet (which i'm also going to tomorrow ^^), went to baskin robbins, and went to a norebang afterwards. man i ate a lot that night. too much....
3. chilled with another friend around ewha campus.
4. oh, i went to 2 classes too. ;)

saturday:
1. slept in. :)
2. went to the kyobo bookstore to buy some books for volunteering. there were riot police there again (well, they're always there...) so i took some more pictures of them.
3. went to the prayer meeting for volunteering. it was alright but i felt a little out of place... maybe because i'm new to that group of people...

sunday:
1. church at yonsei university. sermon about "sleeping loose". basically about relaxing and getting along better with other christians.
2. went to lunch with the ewha photography club at outback steakhouse. the meal was on them and it was delicious! actually my first time
3. went with the club to a presentation by a professional news photographer. it was actually pretty interesting, and i think i understood most of it though it was all in korean.
4. winded down...

yesterday...was a monday you know. i volunteered in the evening and it was a little unorganized..and hard cuz i was teaching alone. thankfully there will be another person next week!! yay....

today was pretty normal too, i got bit my a mosquito, went to class, ate, hung out with a friend/got dinner, and tutored. a good full day. :)

that's it for now....BUT i am working on a poem right now. i will hopefully finish it tomorrow~

my poetry readings inspired me. plus i haven't done any writing like that for A while.

till then!

hope you are all having a good, thoughtful week~

struggles

2009-06-02T00:28:00.000-07:00

faith can mean loyalty,
believing in something unseen.
but to break that faith,
is not at all hard really.

what does it take to become disloyal?
how does one cross the line?
why do we mock the hypocrites,
when we walk the tight rope ourselves?

there are many on the fence,
or does the fence exist at all?
we all go one way or the other,
but are maybes allowed at all?

is it harder to disbelieve a miracle,
or easier to trust an unseen God?
is it harder to take part in the suffering,
or easier to make fun of the world's troubles?

the way is as clear as you want it,
or as hard as you question it.
question it, we question it,
well some do, the rest just accept it.

really what is the ultimate goal of life?
don't we just work, make babies, and die?
maybe throw a little laughter and tears in the mix,
if we're lucky it all ends happily ever after.

so is then luck the master of you and i?
it decides who survives and who just dies?
what a sad fate we have if that's the case,
might as well face the end times right now.

might as well face our worst fears right now,
quite the task but it's never too early.
never too early but it's always too late,
to figure out what we need to figure out.

ex. president roh moo-hyun's funeral.

2009-05-29T08:58:00.000-07:00

today i went with two friends to participate in the funeral for ex-president roh moo-hyun. although i don't know a lot about him, i felt that today was an important historical event, and i also felt that from what i had read about him, he seemed like a pretty decent guy. there were a LOT of people around city hall, along with a LOT of police. there wasn't any violence...at least none that i saw. i read on the news that there is sort of a stand-off going on right now around city hall, but still no real violence. which is good. i think it's good that people respected the fact that today was his funeral, and didn't do anything too crazy.

here's my opinion on the matter. do take into consideration that i do not know a lot of about the ex-president and the situation surrounding his suicide. the whole situation is kind of ironical. there seemed to be a lot investigating going on before the suicide (into the allegations of bribery). there wasn't a lot of public support for him then. however, when the ex-president commited suicide (supposedly over guilt of the situation) everybody (seemingly) felt really bad for him and whole-heartedly supported him. there were a lot of people crying during the walk towards city hall today. at least where i was. i don't really know how people felt before and after the suicide, but it seemed like people were being genuine. well, hopefully if they felt that strongly about him today, they keep feeling that strongly about him (and the situation)...and not just forget about it.

having said that, please understand that i do not know a whole lot about the situation....

here are some pics:

lots of riot police.

a little uncomfortable?

picture of the ex-pres at gyoung-bok-gung palace.

burning incense for the ex-pres.

tv on the cell.

the two guys looking at me are the two friends i went with...

random foreigners in the starbucks i was taking pics from...

the funeral car.

the following mourners...

rough translation:
"you are forever our president"

cleaning up the mess.

the painting (made by several people) of the ex-pres. i have pics from yesterday that show the people actually painting it.

p.s. yellow was the ex-pres' campaign color back in the day... more pics to come on facebook!

ex. president roh moo-hyun 노무현 memorial at 덕서궁

2009-05-28T05:44:00.000-07:00

as you may know (if you read international news), ex president 노무현 (for some weird reason translated "roh moo-hyun" when it is actually "noh moo-hyun") commited suicide on may 23rd, just last saturday. it seems that it was the result of guilt/stress having to do with bribes he received while he was president (esp. stress from the continuing investigations after his term). that is a pretty short summarized version of it, check out http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8065101.stm for a better story.

there is a public memorial set up for him at one of the palaces in city hall, and a couple friends (ewha students) and i went to pay our respects. although i do not know a whole lot about him, from what i have read, he seems to have been a pretty good president. of course, no president is perfect. i also felt that like this is history right now (kind of a sad way to look at the situation i guess, but it's true) and i wanted to take some sort of a part in it. that is why i am going to hang out and shoot some pics in the city hall area tomorrow around the time the official funeral is going on. that is at 11am. there is also supposed to be a public rememeberance at 1pm at city hall. apparently violence is a possibility, but we'll have to see what happens tomorrow.

i also found an interesting blog discussing the effects of roh's suicide, you can check it out at: http://roboseyo.blogspot.com/2009/05/ex-pres-rohs-suicide-wrong-in-so-many.html

pics from today:

more pics at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2030409&id=59401921&l=f015436bc4

honestly

2009-05-26T06:41:00.000-07:00

not sure why, but i kept waking up last night. then when i woke up, my jaw was sore, i had a headache, and i was really tired. bad combination. i've never had problems with teeth grinding during the night, but it sure felt like i had been doing that. so i took a 2 hour nap in the afternoon. a great way to waste a nice sunny day away....i felt better after that, but i'm still puzzled as to why i was like that in the first place.

next, about internet honesty. when you have a blog, or a facebook, you know that certain people are reading. for example, parents, relatives, friends, siblings, people who aren't as mature as you, and other people who aren't as close to you. i've had a couple instances where i was told not to use certain swear words, talk about certain topics (such as drinking), and other similar things. of course all these were told to me by family so i can deal with those things.

however, what about me wanting to really talk about what's going on? shoot, i don't feel as if i can express what is really going on in my life because i have to filter myself so that certain people aren't possibly offended. to me, the point of a blog is to be able to express myself as i am, not as i want people to view me. if people don't agree with something i post, they can let me know in a personal message, or just not read my blog.

because i know that family is reading this blog, i can't necesarily go off about certain family members and how lousy their cooking is (though that is definitely not the case with any of my family :) and similar matters... but i guess that's what facebook is for. i can write notes and block however i feel like blocking. but that just feels kind of ridiculous. the online world is a wierd place that i feel that we're not quite adjusted to yet. or maybe it's just me. and my family. i dunno.

i don't really feel like filtering my life out so that i look like some perfect christian saint. i'm struggling with my faith now, and it's not solid by any means. i drink once in a while, but not a lot. i'm not smoking cigars now because i told someone that i wouldn't while in korea. i swear once in a while but i'm gonna try cutting down a little and see what happens. i have problems with lust but that's something i'm trying to work on too. i'm also lonely most times and feel that most people can't relate to me.

anyways, what i wanted you to know, is that i'm a messed up person just like any other person out there. i have the capability to murder, steal, rape, do drugs, and whatever other horrible thing you can think of....but so do you. nobody is that innocent. i think i am saved, but i'm struggling with that and trying to figure out whether that is a reality or not.

we are all tainted beings trying to find truth.

a decent monday.

2009-05-25T05:48:00.000-07:00

today was mildly busy, but not like last week at all... went to class, got lunch with peeps, took a nap, prepared for my volunteering, volunteered, worked on some pics, did korean hw, and tutored. not bad...

i'm on my own volunteering for a couple weeks cuz the other teacher went on a little break to the US. it wasn't too bad today, but i ran out of enough stuff to do...plus it wasn't the most organized. the kids actually paid decent attention, but i think that's because i used a lot korean compared to when austin was in charge. i think that can be a good thing, but i don't want to use korean too much..cuz then they wouldn't learn much english.

i'm tutoring an ewha girl 4 times a week at 10pm now, so that's one thing to add to the schedule. it's not too bad though, cuz the 30 min. seems to fly by. :)

well, time for some sleep............and tuesday. bring it.

finally. pics from jecheon are up!

2009-05-23T05:47:00.000-07:00

yay....i finally have some free time this weekend. so i'm doing what i wished i would have done a long time ago...uploading some pics. i just uploaded a bunch from when i visited jecheon (5/1-2). 138 pictures to be exact.

i still need to upload pictures from the singing contest, the frames concert, pics from when some of us from class went out, and other misc. pictures.

here are the jecheon pics.

p.s. today has been amazingly relaxing....cleaned my room, worked on pictures, ate, took a nap, and exercised. makes me happy. :)

what a day..

2009-05-22T09:39:00.000-07:00

man, today was another one of those packed days. except with a couple major events packed into it. three things: mini olypmics, singing contest, and salmon worship concert. plus all the normal day to day things too lol.

the mini olympics were pretty fun, i just wish i had more time to enjoy more of the events. i had to leave a little early to prepare for the singing contest. i took part in the soccer game and relay race, and our team won both events...it was good to play soccer again, i haven't played in a while! or exercised for that matter...i've been so fricking busy...

next was the singing contest. what had started as not much a deal had turned into a contest with multiple cash prizes. i had no clue when i signed up for it, i just thought it was some fun thing where we are sang, but weren't really given any major prizes. to summarize it all, it went pretty well. i only screwed up one word...and my hand was shaking like crazy, but people liked it and said it sounded good. AND i got a sort of second place prize!! i was pretty stoked....the prize equals about $165, definitely the most i've won for such a seemingly small thing (singing one song). i don't know, i think i was pretty blessed to get to participate in the contest and manage to do well enough to win a prize. i think having a bunch of people there supporting me helped a lot too. some of my friends even made some signs for me....that was really sweet of them. :)

next, was the salmon concert. which was right after the singing contest. i was a little worried cuz it was raining a little but the weather actually worked out nicely. the whole event overall went very well, there were a couple issues here and there, but it really worked out nicely. i forgot some lines/chords again...mainly because i didn't put enough time in because i didn't have the time to put in. but there were a good number of people...i don't know how many of them were non-christians, but hopefully there were some there that saw something different about us and stopped to listen. but really, it worked out well. other than one of the girls' wallets being stolen though...ugh, stupid thiefs. whew, i'm glad it's over because it took a lot of time and energy. but i can say it was worth it.

now is sleep time. now.

ewha performance, more salmon practice, 팥빙수, tiredness.

2009-05-21T08:35:00.001-07:00

so i'm pretty tired, but i don't quite feel it cuz of the the caffeine drink that i had throughout the night tonight.... lol, korea doesn't sell any real caffeinated beverages/energy drinks/mixes/etc. i have some zipfizz i brought from the states and i had one of those tonight... usually they're not that potent but since i haven't had much caffeine, it's kinda potent...hopefully i don't have trouble falling asleep in a little bit.

today was the mini performance at ewha, and it went pretty well. pretty. at least for me...i forgot some words/chords again...but people still liked the performance (cuz the rest of the band is good not me lol..) and i think they think it's cool that a foreigner is singing, though i don't like feeling like the interesting object everyone comes to see. and the salmon group picked three songs that i sang in, which was about half the performance. anyways, it's an honor to sing/play with them. and they still keep me on even though i'm not the best at memoring... ://

after the performance i had a little time to get some random stuff done, before i got some pat-bing-su with the two ewha students who are studying at whitworth next semester. it was cool because we hadn't met together (all three of us) yet. pat-bing-su is a korean dessert with shaved ice, sweet bean paste, ice cream, and fruits. the beans might sound like a weird addition, but it's actually really good. even on a rainy day like today. i had a good time hanging out with them....i think their personalities are pretty different (mijin and jooyun) but they seem to get along well. it'd be cool if we all became good friends. :)

from 6:30-11:30pm i was with the salmon club...eating, praying, practicing, and chilling. this is their first year combining ewha and yonsei students so it's kinda unorganized. however, it went pretty well, minus the fact that it end late.. i think we're pretty much ready for tomorrow. even me, surprisingly. it'll be a God thing if i manage to remember all/most of my chords/lyrics. i'm not saying that lightly cuz i really am not the best memorizer (mostly because i have been lazy in the past and never really had to memorize much, and cuz i have low self-esteem in that area..)

so i'm going to go to my korean class late tomorrow because of sleep..

here's what tomorrow will look like:

8:10am: wake up
9:20am: go to the 2nd half of korean class
11:10am: take part in the mini olympics ([for the international students and buddies] soccer and a relay)
1:30pm: get ready for singing contest
3pm-5pm: singing contest
5:00pm: get ready for salmon concert and head to location
7pm-10pm: salmon concert
10pm-not sure when: tear down and probably hang out with the salmon peeps

an exciting but tiring day is ahead of me. emphasis on exciting. :D

a packed but good day.

2009-05-20T06:46:00.000-07:00

today was definitely not as crazy packed as yesterday....but i still had my fair share to do. it was definitely nice to sleep in and skip my korean class. man, it's nice to get almost 8 hours of sleep :P

the rehearsal went very well today...i'm feeling pretty good about the song. i just gotta practice a couple more times and work on the pronunciation. i don't expect to win the grand prize but i WILL try my best.

after that i helped out the photography club sell some donuts/postcards. the donuts sold pretty well, but not so much the postcards. too bad cuz they're pretty cool.

i tutored two people tonight, and both went very well. especially well, so i was happy. one of the girls said that her friend is interested in being tutored too, so that'd be nice if it worked out.

unfortunately i didn't make it into the dorm for the summer break. :( i sent in my app a couple days too late i think. well, my next option is to stay with my relatives. i haven't asked them yet, and it might be kinda awkward. well, i can try at least. there's also another guy who didn't make it into the dorms for the summer so maybe i'll try to find a place to stay with him. we'll see. trying not to think about that stuff right now, just focusing on this week.

time for sleeeeeeep.

some of the postcards being sold. mine are the one with two locks and the one with balloons.

me at the rehearsal today.

uggggggggggh...

2009-05-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

i'm sure other peeps have it worse than me, but today was a busy fricking day. just because i feel like venting a little, i'll let you know how my day went.

6:55am
wake up to get ready for the day
8:05am
go to korean class
10:50am
korean class ends, go get lunch
11:45am
get back to room, talk to sister on skype, send emails because of a food stupid stipend problem
12:40pm
lay in bed for a slight nap/break
12:55pm
get up and go to singing contest rehearsal
2:50pm
rehearsal finishes, head to a slightly far away building to meet with a new tutoree
3:20pm
wrap up the tutor plans with her and then head to the club to room to, well, what i thought would be a short practice on my own
3:30pm
arrive and end up practicing for the salmon meeting later that day with some other salmon peeps...not entirely a bad thing cuz we needed to practice
4:50pm
finish practice and head to poetry class
6:18pm
finish class, tell teacher i can't be at class on friday, stop at dorm, go to salmon meeting
6:40pm
arrive at meeting location and have the salmon meeting (consisting of worship, almost falling asleep several times during the sermon, and long periods of prayer [where i felt sorta lost])
9:15pm
finish meeting and head back to club room to practice the worship concert music
9:40pm
start practice
11:55pm
finish practice, start talking about a problem that came up
12:35am
finish talking, head back to dorm
12:45am
arrive and get on the computer
1:12am
now.

now........i decided to skip my korean class tomorrow (first time, so i don't feel that bad). it's either get some adaquete sleep or lose my sanity. i chose keeping my sanity. :D

so that's why i'm still up, updating the world on my crazy busy day. tomorrow is looking a little like today though, maybe a little more free time.

hey, at least one good thing happened today. i found another person to tutor!!! that might not seem like much but i've been getting down because i hadn't found anybody for a while and i need to find some ways to make money to survive the summer and hopefully make some extra cash for the next school year. money sucks.

i also found out that the best singer at the international student singing competition wins almost $300. so it's a pretty big deal i guess. that would be a nice amount of cash. i don't know if i have a chance...maybe a little....not because i totally suck...but because my song isn't all that upbeat....it's a ballad.....but maybe if i make the teachers swoon (they're the judges).....i can win.............umm............we'll see.......it's not a huge deal if i don't win cuz i'm not expecting to......or maybe i should have the mentality of winning.........maybe that's what my problem is.....i never want to win enough.........arhghsglkshgds.dg.s.........i want to win.

anyways. tomorrow, i have another rehearsal, i'm helping out the photography club sell postcards, tutoring two people, and possibly working out....yeah right.

i think i'm drowning in business by my own choice....i need to learn from this situation and not do so many things! well, and i didn't know that the salmon club would be this big of a commitment when i signed up. 나 미치겠어.

quicky update

2009-05-18T06:37:00.000-07:00

another frickishly long day.... fell asleep once in korean class today. luckily, i had enough time to take a 25 minute-ish nap. i think it helped just enough to get me through the day. this week is festival week at ewha...and it also happens to coincide with the salmon performance. so that equals a busy week of practice for the salmon performance, practice for the international student concert, and spending some time helping with the photography club. the ewha salmon photo club is selling postcards to make money for the club, and i was honored for them to use two of my photos. :) unfortunately I don't get any of the profits lol, but it's still pretty cool... they're also showing off some of the better photos and two of mine are in there too. hopefully peeps buy my postcards...!

well, i have to get the fricking laundry now and go to sleep asap. gah, i don't like being this busy. this upcoming weekend is going to be my chill/restful weekend. it's gonna happen cuz i'm gonna make it happen. it NEEDS to happen.

제삿날 (day of je-sa), busy week, ending with the frames

2009-05-15T08:24:00.000-07:00

what a typical korean je-sa looks like. it's a traditional ceremony where deceased ancestors are remembered..

some of my cousins i hadn't seen yet.

safe pork is used at ewha! no danger of swine flu. lol.

some of the salmon folks after our mini performance at yonsei
it was festival week there (apparently yonsei has the largest college festival week in korea)
and the place was bustling.

sweet rainbow on ewha campus.

frames concert!!!!

the opening act. this dude played four different instruments and was pretty lively.
notice his lack of footwear... ^^

the frames!! plus marketa of course.

cute duet songs...

one of the invited guests (there were 3 total)
this boy seriously played guitar better than anyone i've heard in my life. he's crazy good.

all the performers together! :D

man, i really really enjoyed the frames concert tonight...it helped put a good end to busy, stressful week. the frames and marketa are so great live. they have an amazing attitude. it was really neat to hear the guest artists too. in my [somewhat limited] experience, bands don't usually invite many guests, especially foreign guests who aren't really well known. the guests must have been stoked to play tonight.... the concert hall was packed too. i'm guessing at least a 1000 people were there...good stuff. :) i took plenty of pics even though [i'm pretty sure] they weren't allowed.

doubting thomas.

2009-05-12T08:30:00.000-07:00

i realized today, that at the present, i am a doubting thomas. i guess my christian friends/family know what i mean, but for the rest of you that might not know, here's what i mean. thomas was a disciple of Jesus who wouldn't believe that Jesus rose from the dead until he personally saw Jesus alive (with his wounds inflicted from when he was on the cross). basically, i guess i feel like i am very skeptical at the moment, although i still believe, i think. i think that thomas was still a "christian" while in his doubt, but he doubted.

i'm not sure when this doubt or whatever it is will clear up, but that's the way things are right now. it's pretty hard cuz i'm participating in a christian worship concert next friday and i've been taking a lot of time (along with the rest of the salmon members) to practice for it. i feel wierd because i don't quite know if i believe the words that i am singing, but i sing them anyway. i can't let the salmon peeps down, because they're great people. i just hate to look really into it, when i'm not. it's not like i'm faking it, because i still love music. maybe i am faking. maybe i'm just a hypocrite like a lot christians. was i even a christian? i'm pretty sure. but i feel like you can't be a christian by just being pretty sure. i know that people doubt, and maybe this is just a temporary thing....i dunno.

and then the speaker at the salmon get together tonight was talking about how she saw certain things when she prayed, all throughout her life, and that showed how great/faithful God was. i don't not believe her but then i don't quite believe her either. i dunno, it's wierd like that right now. and shit, i'm up later than i want to be up...tomorrow's another fricking long day. from 7am-12am, almost no time for rest. what i have gotten myself into.... sometimes i wonder.

that's it for now.

연등 축제 사진 (Lotus Lantern Festival pictures!)

2009-05-11T06:37:00.000-07:00

here are some minimally edited, hastily uploaded onto facebook pictures.....

i am way behind on pictures... ㅜ.ㅜ

part 1

part 2

part 3

eNJOY.

hanging with korean teacher and itaewon..

2009-05-09T06:56:00.000-07:00

friday night was pretty fun, even though i was tired. we had decided in our korean class to go get dinner together and go to a 노래방 (kareoke) friday (well, those that could go). for dinner we went to a place that served a meal called "shabu shabu". basically you cook vegetables and meat in boiling water at your table. i actually ate in the dorm so i just watched/ordered dim sum/stole food from the people who actually ordered food. next we went to get dessert and ending up getting some gellato (sp?) which was very good. first time for, and i really liked the texture of it.

next, we found a 노래방. our teacher had not joined us yet (he had a night class) but we just booked a room and sang as we waited for him. it was fun, other than the fact that i didn't know that many songs that were there. we sang disney songs, japanese songs (because there were japanese students there), crappy american pop songs, coldplay, songs from korean dramas, and other korean songs. our teacher arrived and we sang for almost two hours. it's pretty cool when you get to hang out with your teacher...i've never really done that with an american prof.

after we finished up our singing, our teacher treated us at a traditional sort of drinking house. we got some drinks, korean seafood/veggie rice pancakes (전 lol), and some other korean dishes. it was fun talking with our teacher, and we even learned some more korean...always time for learning. he's the teacher who keeps our korean classes interesting, too bad that he only teaches half of our classes. i don't remember anything i learned though last night though ㅜ.ㅜ

today, saturday, i went shooting with some of the photography club girls in 이태원. we were mostly shooting on this street with a bunch of antiques. it kinda felt like i was in the u.s. or europe somewhere because the antiques weren't really asian. well, maybe they were, they just didn't look asian. anyways, that was sweet too, and i took mucho pics. we ate at KFC for lunch. not bad food haha...

got back and took a nap cuz i didn't get enough sleep the night before.....tomorrow i'm going to my oldest uncle's house to hang and then check out what the korean 절 (ceremony for ancestors) is like. time for sleep.

pic i uploaded on flickr from 제천

class, lunch, shopping, movie, dinner, meetin cousin, worship practice

2009-05-07T07:57:00.000-07:00

= my day
also = almost no breaks
which then = me tired ㅠ.ㅠ

that's alright, cuz it was a full, but good day. :)

class was hilarious, and informative.

lunch was delicious, 칡냉면 (chik-neng-myun - a cold rice noodle dish).
perfect for the hot day (over 80 here).
though not the best food to eat regularly, it's good to have once in a while.

shopping went alright, i was getting birthday presents for two of my cousins.
one of the cousin's birthday's (선진이 누나) was 4/22, so it was a little belated.
one was supposed to be today (선경이 누나), but it was celebrated on the lunar calendar so that was belated too.
but i still got cards and presents for the both of them.
cute little cell phone dangly things, i'm not sure what to call them.

next, was the movie with 미진이 (one of the two students coming to whitworth next semester).
it was basically a korean version of mr. and mrs. smith, except funnier lol.
more of a romantic comedy :)
it was fun...

then i got a hella quick dinner...

then i thought the practice started at 7pm.

but apparently a text was sent out that i didn't get that said it was starting at 8pm.

which was the time i was planning on skipping out and meeting my cousin.

so i just met my cousin, had coffee, bought her a little piece of cake.
and she decided to buy me loads of bread and pizza/chicken for the whole club practice.
she's definitely the adoring cousin. :D 너무 잘해줘...
i went to the worship practice after meeting my cousin, with the pizza/chicken, which everybody loved. especially the shrimp pizza. delicious....

worship practice went till like 11:15pm....so that's why i'm up now...late...needing to sleep....but writing a blog instead...and doing other non-essential things....that are essential to me.

sleep!

soon.

pic of my cousin and i at the cafe tonight.

i have so many more pictures to upload to facebook!!! argh......

insadong, jeachon, and more ponderings

2009-05-04T07:53:00.000-07:00

so it's been a longish time since my last post. i guess i've been pretty busy for the last week. last wednesday i went to 인사동 with 주연이 누나 (ju-yun, one of the ewha girls coming to whitworth next semester). it's a popular place for tourists to go to, evidenced by the number of foreigners i saw there. we had lunch at a delicious 된장찌개 place, toured insadong a little, bought a cheap "korean soccer jersey", and had some traditional tea to finish it off. it seems like a pretty cool place, other than the abundace of touristy items. but hey, those things gotta be somewhere :)

on friday i left for 제천 (jeachon). spokane is sister cities with jeachon, and they gave me a $500 scholarship, so i was told to go visit them sometime during my stay. i had never been there before, but it wasn't too complicated. i boarded a bus at the 고속버스터미널 (express bus terminal) and it took about 2.5 hours to get to 제천. i was treated very well during my stay there. the two men who picked me up were employees of the city and first off they gave me a tour of city hall. they even gave me a private showing of the city's video (it basically showed off the city). i felt like an important person haha... after that we toured one of the college campuses. next we went to a reservoir to meet the host family i would be staying with and hanging out with. the family was composed of mom, dad, and two boys. at first the boys were really shy, but as time went on they quickly became much more friendly. it might have been easier because i was able to speak korean with them... that night we had a delicious meat dinner. gotta love 삼겹살 (boned rib) and 갈비 (marinated ribs). and of course some soju too. after we got back to the host family's house, i played with the two boys at a local park. when we at the park this korean dude was staring at me (while walking) and fell into a opening in the ground. he didn't get hurt and it was kinda funny lol...

the next day i was basically shown all the highlights of 제천. it's a very nature-focused city. i visited a site where some korean catholics hid during persecution, a buddhist place of worship, and also a place where a korean drama was filmed. for lunch i was able to try a variety of raw seafood and fish. it was alright, but my stomach felt a little weird after that ㅋㅋ (a common korean way of showing laughter, similar to our lol). raw food is good once in a while. for dinner we ate at a delicious 돈까스 (don-gga-su) restaurant. 돈까스 is basically meat fried in a batter. however, this one was more fancy, with sweet potato and cheese in the middle. mmmm. i left 제천 around 9 and i got back to my dorm a little after midnight. sucked cuz the subway stopped working at midnight and it left me stranded a couple stops away from 이대. and the taxi costs a certain amount more after midnight. but hey, i paid almost nothing for my 제천 trip so i couldn't complain.

tomorrow is a national korean holiday called "children's day". the name pretty much describes it. it's cool cuz it's a day off for everyone, children and non-children. we need to have something like that in the u.s.! i'm excited cuz i can sleep in....but i still won't have too much free time cuz i got some hw to do and some pictures to upload! and i have an extended salmon practice tomorrow.

speaking of which, i feel a little weird doing the worship stuff right now. i've been having "faith struggles" (i guess you could call them that) and i don't quite feel right leading others in worship, singing songs like "i'm not ashamed" when i don't know if i truly believe that right now. i feel that a worship leader should be someone who really believes what he/she is singing, and i'm not that person right now. the reason i'm sticking with it is because it's a prior commitment and because the salmon members have treated me really well. i don't really want to talk to any of them about it though, cuz i'm not sure how they would respond. plus the slight language barrier and all. i know that they care about me, but i don't know quite what to say. so i guess for now, i just push on and the do the best i can. definitely trying to keep a humble attitude aout it.

that's it for now.

short blurb.

2009-04-28T07:16:00.000-07:00

for some reason i went to sleep late again last night...and for me that's like 12:30-1am. sucks when you have to get up at 7am. some people can function with that little sleep, but i can't.

some theological wonderings of mine. as Christians, God would rather have us hot or cold in our faith. not lukewarm. well, i'm definitely not hot right now, and i don't really think i can be at the time being. and since He doesn't want me to be lukewarm, then should i be cold? i'm still going to church and meeting with the salmon club, but i don't quite feel all there. do i just need to take a giant step back and figure out where i really need to be. that doesn't seem like a viable option for the salmon club because we just started practicing for an outdoor performance we are having on may 22nd. i'm the kind of person who doesn't want to do something just because i always have, even when i'm not feeling it. and being lukewarm doesn't appeal to me. it's weird cuz there isn't even really any major events going on in my life, it's stuff that's been rolling around in my head recently. maybe i'll expand on all this later, when i actually have time. till then...

by the way my laptop screen seems to be going....going.....not gone yet. but when i opened it, it used to have this one line across the screen but it would disappear when i straightened the screen. now the whole screen is going bezerk instead of a line, and so far it clears up when i readjust the screen, but i have a bad feeling that it may become permanent. i hope it's not soon...i don't have money to buy a new laptop now, even though i was planning on getting on sometime soon...........soon as i have the money lol. and when windows 7 finally comes out. please, laptop, please last till then. prayer might help. maybe.

short update. lotus lantern festival weekend...

2009-04-27T07:29:00.000-07:00

i should be sleep now...! but i wanted to write a short update. i spent a pretty good chunk of the weekend at the lotus lantern festival this weekend. i was hired, along with some other exchange students, to evaluate the festival from our point of view. i'm basically getting paid for taking some pictures and filling out some paperwork. good deal. i took almost 1800 pictures...hopefully at least 10% of those are good. :) i'm posting some below, but of course there's a lot more. the LLF is a festival celebrating buddha's birthday. apparently this year was his 2,553rd birthday. i guess that makes him older than Jesus? lol.... this week is busy, plus we are starting the salmon rehearsals (which is good cuz that's why i joined the club) too.. gonna make a pb & j sandwich for breakfast tomorrow and get some sleep now. nite/good morning!

friday. day of flickr uploads, indian food, and essay writing.

2009-04-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

my title pretty much says it all....yeah.

i met ben and liz torrey for lunch today. there are sorta friends of my parents, although my parents were actually much better friends with ben torrey's parents. they are americans currently working at a christian community in 강원도 (gang-won-do) that my family grew up in back in the day. they took me out to lunch (hence the indian food) and ice cream.. the indian food was pretty good, but not very filling. and expensive. but still delicious.

i have a essay for my poetry class due next tuesday and i finally wrote about 3/5s of it today. hey at least i have like 4 days haha...it's on a poem titled "the unknown citizen" by w. h. auden. you should check the poem out if you get a chance. maybe i'll post my essay when i finish, i think i pose some thoughtful questions. we'll see. ^^

flickr uploads. speaks for itself. CLICK and see.

me with the torreys

girls soccer / a little down

2009-04-23T06:24:00.000-07:00

i mentioned in one of my posts a little while back that i helped out at a ewha girls soccer practice. like i said, it's an intramural type team so it's pretty fun. apparently, i am the "coach". lol, it's pretty sweet. this time they scrimmaged against another team that was practicing. technically they lost, but there was one girl on the other team who's not usually on the team and she scored most of the goals. anyways, some of the girls had ordered chicken and beer during the practice and i got to join them after the practice. that was pretty sweet. we ate and drank right there on the field...good times. it's really cool that they let me help in their practices like that, even though i'm a foreigner and a guy. well, hopefully it's not just cuz i'm a guy lol... i think koreans are more friendly than americans. especially when you get to know them.

that was fun, but now i'm a little down. there's still the slightest bit of a cold hanging on to me..and even though the day had some good points (i bought my ticket to see "the frames", met 미진 on my way to the bookstore and rode the bus with her [i rarely see ewha students i know on campus cuz it's pretty big], and hung out with the soccer team) it's the end of the day, and i wish i just had some more time. then i was reading a news article and it was talking about how people in the richest nation in the world (aka the u.s.) need food aid. man, i live in the richest nation in the world. and i mostly don't even realize it. even as a lower middle class american citizen, i am spoiled. and i still complain about my life. and now i'm complaining that i'm complaining. shit. then there was another article about how a suicide bomber blew himself up while some police were giving away aid to homeless families in iraq. how messed up is that? is there a way to get the suicide bombers to stop? to just stop? maybe it's all the u.s.'s fault. but it can't be, the blame is shared by all of us. all of the human race. no one is innocent. no one. i am fallen. you are fallen.

achoo, achoo.
we all fall down.

it's kinda hard to tell, especially cuz it's in korean...but this is my ticket to see "the frames" on 5/15 at 8pm!! too bad i'm on the third floor of the concert place though...hey maybe i can sneak into a closer seat. we'll see. i would've gotten a closer seat but my ticket cost $33 (the cheapest ticket) and the prices only go up from there. i'll definitely be trying to get autographs after. .. :)

poetry midterm. 태극기 휘날리며 (Taegukgi: Brotherhood of War)

2009-04-21T09:01:00.000-07:00

today i took my poetry midterm. ugh... i'm not sure how i did. for a test in english, it was pretty confusing. frustrating. i was fourth from the last to leave the classroom, out of like 60 ewha students (and a couple other foreigners). seriously. the worst testing environment i think i've been in. i swear every time one of the ewha students got up i got more frustrated cuz i wasn't done yet. and most of them were wearing heels so i could definitely hear when they got up. oh man.... you would understand my frustration too if you were a half-korean, junior, male taking this test.

koreans place so much importance on education. ok not every single one of them, but pretty much all of them. the test only seemed to remind me that i don't value getting an A+ as much as most koreans do. i respect them, but i don't want to be exactly like that. i dunno...maybe i need to learn from their attitude. us americans, don't understand how blessed we are. i want to be somewhere in the middle of the american attitude and the korean attitude.

one of my korean friends suggested i watched 태극기 휘날리며, and i'm glad she did. such a powerful movie. i might have watched if before (according to my mom) but i don't remember watching it. and definitely not having the response i had when i watched it tonight.

i cried. several times throughout the movie. and especially at the end. i don't know too much about my korean history and in my mind, this movie just seemed to click for me. the korean war seems to be very similar to the u.s. civil war, except it happend just over 50 years ago. i can't imagine the north and the south killing each other just over a half a century ago. and for what?

before i came to korea this year, i didn't feel as much of a connection to korea. i never communicated with my relatives in korea, i didn't like talking to my korean grandma (because i was too embarassed cuz i couldn't speak korean very well, and i still am kinda embarassed), and i just generally didn't feel much of a connection. but since arriving, seeing my relatives, living in korea, eating the food, experiencing the culture, making korean friends, hearing the language over and over again, speaking korean, i feel like i've changed.

and then seeing this movie, i really seemed to feel the pain and the sadness that koreans experienced during and after the war. shit, i don't really know a thing about the korean war, other than what i've seen in this movie. war is such bullshit. sure the movie was dramatized, but war really does screw people up. and yet that shit happens over and over again. i cried because koreans went through hell, just like americans did during the civil war. war sucks. my grandma's generation fought this in this war. i want to find out more about it...yes i'm only half korean but this stuff still matters to me. now i kinda wished i looke more asian and not so white. i wished i could fit in and just talk with koreans without them wondering why this white boy can speak korean. who knows, maybe i'll end up marrying a korean girl. who knows.

well, i've stayed up too late, and i still have a full day tomorrow. thank God that i can sleep in. and thank God for letting me see this movie, even though it was a little violent. but hell that's war. and war fucking sucks.

more editing. 2nd day of volunteering..

2009-04-20T08:27:00.001-07:00

today i volunteered for my first full one hour session today. hopefully i was of some use, because i feel like i didn't do much. mostly because the kids were so disorderly...i'm not very good at keeping order, even though the the head teacher is there too. again, the kids were wondering about my earrings, and after the hour ended i finally took out one of my earrings to show some girls the hole in my ear. the girl called me a 괴물 (monster) after that lol. i thought it was funny...i just don't want to be too distracting. i think it'll get better as i'm there longer.

i hadn't had dinner yet, so after the volunteering i looked for a restaurant to eat in. my first try didn't work out. i walked into a place thinking they served chicken as regular meals and it ended up being more of a beer + side dish place. so not really any real meals there. then i found the perfect place. the restaurant was a mini-buffet and it only cost 4,500 won. there's basically 3 main side dishes, 4-5 smaller side dish items, 2 types of rice, and 1 soup you can choose from. for someone like me who likes a good deal and good food, it was perfect. you can't find many places that fill you up for 4,500 won. :D made my night. ah food......i will be going back there again for sure.

after i got back i did some studying for my poetry test, it should be moderately difficult but who knows. after i did some more photo editing and man, i wish i had more time to do it. i've been playing with the "curves" settings and it's been fun. and i created my first diptych, it turned out decently. check em out on flickr. more to come....

nite. or good morning. have a good 24 hours. how about that?

bread. bananas. soccer. pics.

2009-04-19T09:18:00.000-07:00

i got lots of bread and bananas from my cousins. it's pretty sweet...and i'm stocked for a while. :) only one possible negative thing: the cholesterol level of some of those bread products. sky high lol. that's alright, i'll still eat it all (and share with my roommate of course).

i played soccer for 2 hours today even though i'm still sick.. it was so fun. good times. hopefully it doesn't hamper my path to getting over this disease of a cold. and i got scratched up some more, that mostly dirt field is brutal.

i finally had some time to edit some pics and put them on flickr! finally! and by that i mean i uploaded 3 pics. not much i know. i keep posting pics on facebook but what i really want to do is edit some and put em on flickr....but that always get pushed back. check em.

i also uploaded pics from the jazz bar so check those out too. thanks for checking out the blog folks. :D

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2029303&id=59401921&l=c221197da1

i'm gonna see the frames (and marketa too) on 5/15!! it's gonna be amazing...well, i haven't bought tickets yet but i will soon. too bad they didn't come to WA...well as far i know they didn't.

jazz bar

2009-04-18T04:47:00.000-07:00

i think i'm finally getting over my cold/disease/whatever this thing is. but i'm still coughing. ugh, it sucks. not really, cuz i'm almost better. it's all about the mindset...

yesterday i went to a jazz bar with a friend and it was pretty sweet. i've never been to one and i wasn't sure what to expect. i was hoping the jazz would be good....and it actually was. actually, the jazz was amazing. it was a jazz combo called "second nature" and was composed of a electric guitarist, bassist, pianist, drummer, and alto saxaphone player. all of the members were male except the sax player, which was kinda cool. and she could play...man. but not just her, all the musicians were extremely good individually. one way to know you're listening to a good band is when they are really tight. and yes, they were very synchronized. like jazz combos do, they all did their individual solos and they were outstanding. one possible con is that they played almost all upbeat music, but i mean it's a bar, so what do ya expect. supposedly they have their own club. it was really nice to have a couple drinks, sit, and enjoy the music. good stuff. hopefully i can go check out some more jazz soon! oh, and the place was called "club evans". i would highly recommend it. it was very clean and there's no smoking allowed (surprising for a korean bar). i've heard it's one of the best live jazz bars in seoul, and although i haven't been to any others, i'd say it's definitely up there. the price wasn't bad at all either, entrance was 7,000 won and drinks were around 7,000 won each. i'll have to try out some other places and see how they compare.

right now i'm at my aunt's house in 신림. waiting for one or two of my cousins to come home so i can say hi to them before i have to leave. i have to go to church earlier than usual tomorrow so i can't stay the night...well i guess i could've but i didn't bring anything to stay the night....but they might not come home in time so i might just leave.....bummer. i'll have to see them some other time. the next couple weekends are looking pretty booked for me. next weekend i'm going to be a monitor at a lantern festival, the weekend after i have to go to jaechon, the weekend after that i might go visit my hometown, the weekend after that one i have some sort of salmon club retreat, and the weekend after that one...i might get my wisdom teeth removed. which would probably put me out for that weekend. and the weekend after that is june...i think. sorry that's a lot of weekends. :P

well, that's all for now. hopefully i can play some soccer tomorrow, depending on whether enough guys show up. no korean class next monday through wednesday!! so glad to sleep in for once during the week...

new pics

2009-04-16T08:35:00.000-07:00

1st album
2nd album

picturas nuevas.

2009-04-15T08:01:00.000-07:00

i think i'm getting over this cold...slowly. i don't think i'll have to take extra meds today, just the usual health center concoction. i had just enough time to post some pics today, but i'm still behind!

coming to a facebook album near you (soon):
pics from the cherry blossom festival
pics from black day 짜장면 lunch

pics uploaded today today

sick once again. on black day. perfect.

2009-04-14T05:50:00.000-07:00

in korea, there is this informal holiday on april 14th. it's called "black day" and it's when all the single people are supposed to "get together and eat Jajangmyeon (짜장면), white Korean noodles with black bean sauce (hence the name), to commiserate their singledom." (quoted from wikipedia, cuz they explain it better than i could at the moment). alas, i am single, but i got to celebrate it with some friends by eating a delicious black bean noodle dish with seafood. and try out some very strong chinese fruit wine too...fun stuff.

i'm not as bothered with my singleness (at them moment) as i am by this stupid cough/sore throat that started bothering me last night. i thought the antibiotics would finish off the cold i had a for a while the last week and a half, but no, it had to come back even stronger and force me to get more antibiotics/pills from the school health center. however, the three pills plus the cough syrup i am supposed to take after every meal was not doing the trick. i went to a local 약국 (yak-guk) (after the salmon meeting) to get some more powerful meds. they gave me a ridiculously foul tasting powder and some more pills. hopefully the coughing subsides, if at least temporarily, so i can sleep. that's where i'm headed now....can't think straight so this post is a little disorienting, sorry. hope you had/have a better day than i did. ;/

volunteering.

2009-04-13T06:16:00.000-07:00

over the weekend i had been emailing with a man from an organization called jerusalem ministry. it is a NGO that helps with with orphans and children in lower class homes. i heard about the organization from a friend in the u.s. and it sounded interesting. basically, the organization is looking for volunteers who are willing to spend time teaching english to the children. i can't do the usual 6 month volunteering commitment, but the guy in charge said that i could help out a head teacher for as long as i could on monday nights.

my first night was tonight and i was supposed to be there by 6pm. well, somehow i thought it was seven so i left ewha right around 6pm. i'm usually right on time or a little late...but not usually 45-50 min. late. i was kinda pissed at myself, but i guess it was just the first night. that shouldn't happen again.

as i said, i got there late and was there for about the last 7 minutes of teaching. i think i kinda distracted the kids though, because they were more interested in finding out who i was than i learning the months of the year. one girl kept asking me if i was korean or a foreigner (because i was speaking korean) until she finally understood that i was half and half. the next interesting thing they discovered about me were my earrings. the same girl kept asking me to take my earrings off so she could see my ears but i refused. lol. next week i will be earlier and not make cause such a disruption.

the teaching itself seemed a little unorganized. i kinda expected that, i just hope that it's not too unorganized. i don't think the head teacher has much teaching experience. ha, well, neither do i. it should be fun...and probably a little frustrating at times. anyways, i guess i'm there to show love to the kids, and not necessarily to get them speaking fluent english. there's only so much you can do in two hours a week (i will be there for 1 of those two hours).

after that i rushed to a movie theater near shinchon to watch a movie for my class. i arrived late for that too and then found out the tickets had sold out. sucks. oh well, i'll have to watch a different movie tomorrow. i have to watch a movie (chosen from the international women's film festival going on in seoul) for my family and gender in korean society class and write a review/analysis of it. not a big deal, i was tired anyway.

i went to grand-mart after that to get some groceries. found some "bbq" lunch meat, we'll see how that actually tastes. also some cheese spread, we'll see how that tastes too. what else did i get...oh butter. yup.

time to make a sandwich for tomorrow's breakfast and get some sleep. have a good monday folks in the u.s.!

4/10-12 weekend update

2009-04-12T06:54:00.000-07:00

another busy weekend. filled with not enough studying... on friday my poetry class teacher asked me (in front of the whole class) if i had started the paper yet (due in a little over a week) and i said no. that was kinda embarrassing but at least he asked some other people and they said no too. basically, i need to do that paper, write a movie review for a midterm (should be very easy), and study for my korean midterms and poetry class midterm over the next week and a half. not too much at all, especially compared to my ewha counterparts, who have between 6 and 7 midterms. that sucks.. i just gotta work a lot on reviewing my korean.

i just finished watching heroes, it's been pretty good lately. very riveting. i'll be interesting to see how it all turns out. i mean, of course, the heroes will win in the end, but still, it should be interesting. i just used four commas in one sentence.

friday night i didn't do much...and i felt pretty lonely. saturday i slept in a little, had some brunch, and then headed out to 여의도 (yuh-ewi-do) to see the cherry blossoms with some other international students (and some ewha buddies). it was alright, other than it being a little monotonous and crazy crowded. however, we were expecting it to be crowded so that wasn't too surprising. i think at least a quarter of seoul was there. took lots of pics though so that was good. i haven't uploaded in a while (and by while i mean 4-5 days) so i will get on that, hopefully tomorrow.

after the cherry blossoms, i went to dinner with some international friends, then left for my aunt and uncle's house in an-yang. i went to their house last week, but i was going there again because my aunt from canada was visiting and i haven't seen her for i don't know, maybe over 10 years. it was cool to see her and talk to her in english too. of course, i got more food from my wae-sook-mo (my mom's brother's wife) so i should be good to go on kimchi for a while. it's pretty sweet that she always gives me food....

i went straight from there to church (just like last week) but i got there like 20 min late so i was kinda frustrated about that. plus i feel that this church emphasizes being on time and since i suck at being on time i feel a little worse about it. i'm actually thinking about going to a different church, preferably one closer to ewha. this one is almost an hour away from ewha so it's a little tiring. plus i don't know anybody there so it's lonely. not that i try to get to know anybody...it's all my fault.

today was easter sunday, so of course we talked about the resurrection at the service. i actually started questioning myself about what i believed. why do i believe that Jesus was raised from the dead? do i REALLY believe that? do the other people at church REALLY believe that? or are we all just coming to church because it's what we do on a regular, scheduled basis? i don't know, just questioning and thinking through some stuff. like prayer. does prayer really matter. i sorta started looking at some bible verses having to do with prayer but i only got through like 8 verses before i unconsciously gave up on it. maybe i should continue with that. are there any instances in the bible where a prayer is not answered? i can't think of one at the moment so i'll have to keep looking or maybe someone can tell me. cuz there are definitely prayers that aren't answered. well, you could say that all prayers are answered, just not in the way that we expect, but i think that's just skirting the issue. what is the issue? i don't really, i'm just going off again.

after i got back from church i changed into some soccer stuff right away to play some soccer with some international peeps. at first it was a little boring, 4 on 4 with mini goals. then some koreans asked us if we wanted to play 9 on 9 and we said hell yes. that was pretty fun and challenging too. i feel like they had more energy than us in the end (well, they were all young, and our team was mostly adults) so they won by a goal or two. but we kept it close. i scratched my knee up on the dirt field, so that sucks. but hey, battle scars right?

shizz....it, it's time to sleep. make a breakfast sandwich (aka pb&j sandwich or ham&cheese), wash face, brush teeth, and then sleep. hope you all have a good and thoughtful week.

one full day.

2009-04-09T05:53:00.000-07:00

i need to go to sleep soon...so i will write this blog AFAP (as fast as possible).

today was a really full day. add not enough sleep, a little bit of a cold to that, and you get one tired dude. i got up, went to korean class for 2 hours and 4o minutes. right after that i rushed off to 남대문사장 (namdaemoon market) to buy a camera bag. i had looked around once before and found one that i liked. i thought about buying in online but it just looked too complicated. i thought i remembered how to get to the camera shop i went to last time, but i got a little lost...and ended up finding a larger camera shop/center where i found a pretty good deal on the bag i wanted. it's pretty sweet, i'll post pics later. next, i got lost trying to find a subway station...and i arrived back at ewha just in time for buddy lunch.

we went to this restaurant where the speciality was a dish where you can wrap meat in kimchi. there were also various side dishes, rice, and bean paste soup. it was delicious (will post pics later) but there was not enough meat!! :)

next, i went to the salmon club room because the leader of the "cell" i'm in texted me earlier and told me to come. i wasn't sure why...turned out she wanted to wash my feet like Jesus had done with the disciples. i was pretty humbled that she did that...especially when she asked me if i knew what day today was, and i didn't know. it was cool.

next, i had about half an hour to relax before i had to go meet another ewha student who is studying at whitworth this fall. it's pretty cool, there are two ewha students coming to whitworth next year! i'm pretty psyched to get to know them and help them out at whitworth. we met at 3pm and went to a cafe called "migo". they has some pretty fancy cakes there...we basically got to know each other a little and i also talked to her about classes because she has to register soon.

after we met, i went back to my room for a little bit before i had to go help out at a girls' soccer team practice at 5pm. i met a girl yesterday at the photography club meeting who was part of a sort of intramural soccer team. i don't think they play very often, but there's a ewha soccer tournament in a couple weeks. she asked me to come help with the team, so i said yes. it was actually pretty fun lol... i was basically the goalkeeper and the team scrimmaged against each using half the soccer field. i especially liked it because it was pretty low key.

well, after that i had one more thing to do. i went back to my room and ate dinner in my room, then left for the starbucks near the ewha main gate. today was my first day tutoring a korean in english. the woman i am tutoring works at a target office and she wanted to improve her conversational skills. it was my first time ever doing that, and i think it went pretty well...she is paying 30,000 won each time, so it's pretty decent pay too. i just need to find more people to tutor.

i'm finally back in my room with just enough time to write a blog....and go to sleep.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.................................................

nite folks.

for you peeps in the u.s., have a good thursday!

partying, drinking, and general social probs (and other things)

2009-04-06T05:41:00.001-07:00

partying/clubbing

so, i would like to know the benefits of clubbing/partying. anyone care to help me out on this one? i don't really want to hear why it's bad, because i've heard all that before. i want to hear why it's good. please, somebody enlighten me!! maybe i'll try enlightening myself eh?

ok, the negatives:

1. you spend a lot of money
2. when you're drunk you do dumb things
3. then you spend more money
4. you get horrible facebooks pics
5. you don't get enough sleep or end up sleeping in too late
6. if you suck at drinking, then you get hangovers/vomit
7. you "accidentally" get laid
8. you get hit on by random people that you would never hang out with outside of a club/bar

ok, enough with the negativity, let's try for some positives now:

1. you hang out with "friends"
2. you make new "friends"
3. sometimes "friends" buy you drinks
4. you take funny facebook pics of other peeps doing stupid things
5. you meet a new "girlfriend" or "boyfriend"
6. you get "popular" and obviously have a life
7. you get to forget about life and how much it sucks (well, at least until you wake up in the morning feeling like shit)

ok, so i realize that people don't get totally wasted, have wild sex, and get high every time they go out.... but to me, the general club scene is just lame. you sit around drinks and talk. more of an emphasis on the drinking. oh, yeah and you "dance" too. is the reason we go out to clubs and drink the night away because we have nothing better to do? nothing more constructive? i mean, i like doing crazy things. like climbing things, trespassing, and other related stuff like that. to me, sitting in a club with loud shitty music blaring in your ears and strangers rubbing up on you holds no appeal for me. it's not that i'm better than anyone of the people who do go clubbing, i'm just as much of a sucker as they are. i just don't get it. so someone enlighten me please. thank you.

p.s. i'm not against drinking just against drinking in a stupid manner..

general social probs

i am not good at socializing. probably why i hate the club scene so much. i need to be doing something fun and active. i mean i can do small groups or 1 on 1s, but large groups, not so much. i'm working on it. if you got any advice let me know. or just ask me to hang out. i think it's something to do with my personality. i've been getting better at it, but i don't still have really good friends. or maybe i do and i just don't realize it. maybe i'm just proud as hell and don't want to admit it. i see myself as humble, but maybe that's where the problem lies. i know this blog is starting to sound like a personal journal entry, and it kinda is. i just want people to read it and give me their thoughts if they feel so inclined. you don't have to agree with, just let me know whats up. i've never considered myself cool and i'm pretty sure i don't want to be. i just want to have some good friends.

problems with opening yourself up to the unfeeling internet world

no comment

other thoughts

i met up with one of my childhood friends (찬홍이 chan-hong-i) today for lunch/coffee/hanging out. it was pretty neat, especially since i haven't seen him for like 6ish years. we ate lunch and then i gave him a tour of the ewha campus. he seemed to really like it, especially because it is a, ahem, a girls school. haha.... he said he wanted to be an exchange student here lol. while we were walking, unfortuntely he got shit on by a bird. i felt pretty bad for him...at first he was pretty dumbfounded, then kinda pissed, but he took it in a good natured way. ugh...i hate getting pooped on by birds. it happened to me once, and i hope it never happens again. curse you birds. i know you all look cute, but you're all actually devilish. lol...

after the "tour" we went to starbucks. 찬홍이's first time, and my first time in korea. we got a frappucino and shared it. guy friends usually don't share drinks like that in the u.s. it was cool to talk about when we were younger and the place where we grew up. we might even be able to go back together to go visit. that'd be cool if it worked out.

time to sleep, i need to get some rest to kick this mother of a cold....it's almost gone. thank you Lord. nothing too hard that i can't handle, with you. that's what you've promised us.

newpicsnewpicsnewpicsnewpicsnewpics

2009-04-05T07:36:00.001-07:00

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028936&id=59401921&l=f799f161fc

weekend update!

2009-04-04T23:47:00.000-07:00

ugh, still sick. i'm going to give in and get some antibiotics if i still have it tomorrow. which i probably will. been a pretty busy weekend...right now i'm sipping a "sweet potato latte" in a cafe close to the church i go to in gangnam. the latte is actually pretty good. i'll have to come by more often, especially cuz they gave me a punch card. the sermon today was about facing the strongholds in your life, like david did with the jebusites. the addictions/patterns of our lives that we get caught up in and just can't seem to get out of. i have plenty of those. like trying to do things on my own. except that i keep getting shown that i need other peoples' help. i think of myself as humble but i still gots to learn.

yesterday (saturday) i went shooting pictures at gyoungbok palace with the ewha photography club. well, it was more like we met at the palace and then we all went our separate ways, cuz it's a huge place. i wandered around taking random pictures here and there. i dunno...korean palaces aren't really my thing. i like urban stuff more. but still, it was pretty neat. some of the girls were shooting film and i don't think they used more than one roll. i don't know how you can do that...i'm just used to shooting digital and shooting as much as i want. which is sort of a bad thing, in a way, but also good because you get to experiment so much more. some of the girls even wore heels, they didn't really look like they were out shooting. very fashionable clothing for shooting some pics lol. but shoot, these girls wear heels everywhere so i guess they're used to their feet killing them...sorry i just don't know how they do it. one of the international students was supposed to come with me but he didn't because of a cold. i'm not sure if that's for real or if he just didn't want to get up early haha. we had lunch after shooting some pics and that was nice cuz i got a little more comfortable with the girls there. it's still a little awkward. whatever though. ;)

i went back to the dorm for a little bit after to take a nap and pack before i went to my uncle's house. i've decided that i like my aunt's food there the best because she makes a lot of different 반찬 (ban-chan - side dishes). the older cousin came home from college for the weekend so that was neat too. it's actually my uncle's birthday next wednesday so that's partly the reason why he came back too. we had a little birthday for him, that was fun too...we had some fancy cake, fruit, and some wine. sunday morning the two male cousins and i woke up early to go play some soccer with some kids bumgi (the younger cousin) knew. that was fun, though it was a tad bit early. after that we went to a public bath/sauna/massage place. those aren't the norm in the u.s. but i've gone before so it wasn't that weird. it was pretty relaxing sitting in the hot water, going in the sauna (for like a minute cuz it was so hot), going in the cold water, and generally getting clean. koreans have this bath cloth thing that they use to scrub your skin with, and all your dead skin particles come off. it's pretty refreshing though..and bum-sung-i (the older cousin) and i scrubbed each others backs. that would seriously never happen in the u.s. two 20 year old male cousins scrubbing each others' backs? we like our individuality too much...

man i'm tired now. i was hoping to play some more soccer when i got back to ewha. i'll have to see how i feel when i get back. i guess north korea launched their missile today but apparently it was a satellite. still, i guess a lot of countries are worried about it and the implications that it could have. well, at least nothing too bad has happened yet. yet....

well that's it for now.

still getting over cold...but still keeping busy.

2009-04-02T06:33:00.001-07:00

stupid cold! i still have it...but i'm able to function in a mostly normal manner. seems like forever since i've posted a blog but it's only been two days. let's see, wednesday i dropped my ceramics class because i decided it was boring and it wasn't really doing anything for me. plus i didn't really have any friends in the class so i said screw it. i also went to my first photography club meeting on wednesday evening. it was pretty awkward cuz the girls didn't really talk to me and i guess i didn't try to talk to them much either...we took care of some basic business and then went to get some dinner together. hopefully when we go out shooting it'll be a little less awkward. and i think i got another guy to come with me when we go shooting so that should be good. the weekly meetings are on wednesdays and we go shooting on saturdays. should be fun! i need to take more pictures...

some of you know this, but i'm trying to get this part-time photography job/project. some u.s. tourist agency wants someone to take pics of buildings/locations in seoul and i saw the ad for it on flickr. i emailed back and forth with the guy in charge and i thought it sounded like i might get it...but now i'm not sure cuz i haven't heard back for 3-4 days. i just sent him an email to see what was up so we'll see.

today i met with an ewha student who will be studying abroad at whitworth this fall. it's pretty coincidental that while i was here at ewha, a girl would decide to go to whitworth the very next semester. we talked about whitworth and other things...it'll be cool to meet up with her here and there.

i wish i had more time in the day...when i feel like i have a lot of time, time flies by. and it's gonna be a packed weekend. till next time then!

a couple recent uploads on flickr

sick.

2009-03-31T05:54:00.000-07:00

so i contracted a cold sometime late last week and it seems to be hanging on to me. i'm still able to normal things but it's definitely weighing me down some. currently at the headache, sinus pain, and swollen throat stage. was coughing some too.. i went to the ewha health center and they gave me some pills...they offered me an antibiotic but i refused it. maybe i should have taken it! i thought i could tough it out but i hate anything lasting more than 3-4 days... :(

i finally got my food stipend deposited into my bank account today, so that was a relief. basically how my study abroad fees work is that i pay whitworth the normal tution/room&board fees and then everything (well, almost everything) is covered at ewha. except for the fact that it takes them a month to give me my food money. fortunately my parents and relatives gave me enough money to survive on for the last month. food is cheap but the money adds up.

we had our first salmon group weekly meeting today. it was pretty cool, we had some dinner together and listened to a message about who Jesus is. it was a little bit boring though...i don't feel like i learned anything new. but i guess it's good to hear what i know one more time. who is Jesus to me? well, he's someone who reaches out to the people that the cool people don't want to hang out with. he's a friend. do i act like him? i hope that i do, but most times i feel like i don't. i like my comfortable bubble. i'm trying enlarge my bubble but it's not easy going...

i had one of my usual questioning moments tonight. why am i at ewha, should i be here, should i be somewhere else, why am i such a loner, why do i doubt, the usual questions i ask myself. i think i ask these questions when i feel like i don't have a purpose. i know that my general purpose is to love God and other people, but those words are words to me. i like specifics. but maybe it's all plain and in my face and i just can't see it.

time to finish up some korean hw and get to sleep. sleep, the one place where i should feel peaceful at, but i wake up feeling tired.

short weekend update

2009-03-28T03:06:00.000-07:00

hey everyone. i am tired out of my mind right now... i went to an orientation for the salmon club last night and i got around 4 hours of sleep. plus i'm sick. the orientation was really good though. i got to meet people from the brand new yonsei salmon group (which actually has guys) so that was neat. there are now two official "salmon" clubs in korea. the leader is hoping to spread it to at least 10 other schools in korea. if you're not sure what i'm talking about look at my march 19th blog for an explanation of the "salmon" club. i felt really welcome there. i'm still not used to people praying out loud, but it's not like they're pressuring me to do that, we can pray however we want to. i hope that this club will really help to strengthen my faith, because i feel that it's at a stretching/molding/growing/examing point right now. i'm not the sort of person who wants to wear christianity like clothing, i want my faith to be something people feel through their interactions with me. even if i don't say a single thing about christianity while interacting with someone, i want my faith to show through my actions. i don't really feel called to "evangelism" per se, i just feel called to love on people, at every point i get. maybe that will change as time goes on, but that's what i've been feeling recently. or maybe i'm just "feeling" the wrong things. i don't think that i am, but it's always possible.

that's it for now. i'm gonna watch an episode of "boys before flowers" (a korean drama) and get some sleep.

hmmm...

2009-03-25T06:09:00.000-07:00

so i'm feeling a little sick, my throat feels a little sore, and i have a headache. my throat was feeling a little weird in the morning and i thought it would go away...but it didn't.

today i went and met with some of the ewha photography club leaders (called "trace") so they could tell me a little more about the club. sounds like it will be fun, we'll meet once a week to share pictures and also on saturdays to actually go out and take pictures. one of the girls mentioned that they mostly shoot in film, i thought that was interesting...it'd be nice to try that out (with a decent flim camera of course) but it's just so much cheaper to shoot digital. :P

speaking of pictures, i uploaded a couple more on flickr: caleb's flickr

so i washed a zip up sweatshirt i recently bought in korea. for some reason, it was all warped when it came out of the dryer. slightly shrunken, misfitting, etc. it was perfect before i washed it. and i swear i asked the guy if it would shrink or not if i dried it. i swear he said no. looks like i'm gonna have to go back to the guy and try to get him to give me a new one. i guess that's what you get for bargaining for something in korea....

good night folks in my time zone, good day to those in other zones.

chicken feet and frustration

2009-03-23T06:32:00.001-07:00

chicken feet
today i bought some chicken feet on the street with my neat friend and rocked out to the beat. minus the rocking out to the beat..... lol, anyways, here are pics. my conclusion at the bottom.

chicken feet conclusion:
i won't be buying chicken feet again. there is seriously nothing to eat on these feet! maybe some skin? basically all i tasted was a lot of hot spices and a little bit of chicken skin.

[thanks to marloes for taking the action pics for me...]

frustration
i had four different bouts of frustration today.. i'll list them in the order that they happened.

1. frustration with popular news. i saw that one of the news headlines today was about a u.s. plane that crashed. it resulted in the death of 7 adults and 7 children. well, i felt kinda depressed about that when i saw the headline. but then when i thought about it, i realized that this particular story was making a big deal out of the fact that kids had died in the crash. i then realized that there are probably hundreds of kids dying all around the world every day from preventable causes. are these kids getting news coverage? i don't mean to belittle the horrible plane crash, that just sucks. but what about the rest of the kids out in the world? well, i guess the news companies have to talk about something, but it just seems that we focus too much on pure accidents. we tend to forget about preventable situations where human life is lost; situations that could have been prevented if only we as a collective ignorant society had paid attention to them. any solutions anyone?

2. fricking sound on my computer stopped working. at least on my xp partition. i thought it was a temporary problem and i tried disabling it, unistalling it, updating it, enabling it....but alas it's not working!!!!! pissed me off because i was using my xp partition because i can use the school wireless on it and do other things that i can't do on my windows 7 partition. fortunately the sound works on my 7 partition....so i guess i will have to make do with that until the sound in xp works again.. reformatting hard drive and reinstalling xp? no!!!! i really don't want to do that. :( i'm not really a techie expert, so it's probably some simple thing i haven't realized/don't know.

3. korean. i'm frustrated that my korean is not where i want it to be. i lived here for 9 years and it's just not coming back as fast as i want it to! sometimes i feel pretty good while speaking it, but then more recently i feel like i'm getting clumsier. it's like as i study it academically, i get worse and worse at it. maybe i'm not trying hard enough. maybe i should do more of my non-required hw. i wish i would have continued speaking it after i left korea, i think that would have helped a lot. but what's done is done, and i just need to focus on it now i guess....

4. acne. i'm 20 and i'm still dealing with it. it's not as bad as some peoples', but i feel like i'm dealing with it on a daily basis. and i hate it when my face bleeds, especially when i don't even try to pop a zit or whatever, it just starts bleeding and blood gets on my clothing and stuff! sorry if that is too much information for you but it pisses me off! (ok calm down man, it's just acne.)

5. i thought of another frustration as i was typing the last four up. sleep. as a result of writing this blog i will not get as much sleep as i wanted to. well, maybe getting these frustrations off of my chest and out into the impersonal, black hole of the internet will help me. maybe somebody will comment this blog and give me an answer to all my frustrations. and 250,000,000 won. free money always helps! just kidding. other people seem to function well on 7 or less hours of sleep, why can't i? is it psychological? do i just need to tell myself that 7 hours is plenty and then i'll wake up feeling nice and relaxed after 7 hours of shut eye?? does my body just require more than the average amount of sleep? am i actually sleeping like crap and just not realizing it?

ok i'm going to bed now. enjoy your life for me please, because i obviously am not.

$(

:p

shopping at dong-dae-moon, jump, and nam san

2009-03-21T06:41:00.000-07:00

it's been a great weekend so far! i spend some time uploading so i will keep this short and give you the link to the photo album so you can see what i did...

friday night i went shopping at dong-dae-moon with my buddy and another exchange student. i was looking for a couple things and i wanted to check out the shopping center too. it's basically a huge area composed of several buildings and street markets filled with clothing and shoes. and you can bargain. i got a sweatshirt for 25,000 won ($18), shorts for 6,000 won ($4.5), and 5 pairs of socks for 2,500 won ($2).

today (saturday) a bunch of international students and buddies went to see the korean martial arts/dance performance called "jump". it's adequately titled because they all do a lot of jumping...it was absolutely fabulous. it was hilarious, but at the same time so impressive. these actors/performers did some pretty amazing acrobatic/martial act stunts.....wow. and everything was choreographed so well... i definitely want to see it again sometime. it blew me away.... the best 35,000 won i've spent yet! (and probably ever will)

after the show we went to a korean restaurant to eat lunch, and what do you know, the actors happen to show up there also. my two friends and i were the only ones from ewha who happened to go to that restaurant so that was amazing too... we asked them if we could take pics with them and they happily agreed. i'm sure they were famished though, after completing close to an hour and a half of extremely strenuous work.

after lunch the three of us went to nam san, one of the famous "mountains" in seoul. i put "mountains" in quotations because it's more like a very large hill than a mountain... that was really fun but the pictures do a better job of explaining it than words...so check out the album!

pics at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028577&id=59401921&l=0f3ac719ca

another busy day..

2009-03-19T06:27:00.000-07:00

a little bit of a long day.... the beginning of the day was a little tough because my stomach was bothering me pretty bad, i think it was because of the spicy food i ate last night. i'm pretty good at eating spicy food, but my body seems to dislike it and complains in very annoying ways. let's leave it at that. i felt much better right before i ate lunch so that was nice. for lunch i got something that was not spicy. i need to work on my tolerance! or maybe some people's body are just not made to handle spicy foods? that would suck cuz i like the taste of spicy foods....

after lunch i helped out at a mini concert (more of a jam session) for the salmon club in the student union building. i don't know if i mentioned this before in previous blogs, but the salmon club is a worship band on the ewha campus that i applied for last week. i was accepted, which is nice of them, because i am the only guy in the worship band/club. they could have just rejected me because they felt it would be awkward with me being the lone dude, but they accepted me. i didn't really feel awkward at all, just blessed by them, so that was cool.

after that i had to run off to city hall cuz i forgot my hat at the building we watched a movie in yesterday, then had to find the kyobo bookstore to meet david ross, a friend of my parents. well, i found my hat, but i realized that i didn't really know how to get to the kyobo bookstore. fortunately i had david ross's phone number and i called him up and we figured it out. we decided to go to dunkin donuts to talk, i think this is the first time i've sat down in a dunkin donuts. ever. and it happens to be in korea and not the u.s. it was great talking to him, especially hearing him talk a little about the north korea. he thinks there will be some major changes soon (within the next several months/years)....it'll be really interesting to see what happens. hopefully good things, but north korea hasn't been acting too friendly recently (especially towards the u.s.) so it's still hard to tell. he gave me the name of a person who should be able to help me visit north korea, so that was really neat. i would really like to, even though it would be a very strange trip.....it would be fascinating and depressing at the same time i think.

after i met with him, i hung in my room for a little bit before having to go to the first salmon meeting. we had dinner, introduced ourselves, prayed, sang some songs, and listened to a sermonish thing from one of the leaders. it was really cool and they seemed really accepting of me, even though i look a little out of the ordinary (beard is unusual for koreans, and plugs for i guess anyone). most of them speak out loud while they are praying, which is a little different for me. i definitely have not done any of that yet... there was also some speaking in tongues, and i'm not sure how i feel about that...but they all seemed very sincere in their faith, so overall it was a very good experience. it's definitely out of my comfort zone, but i feel that it will be a great learning/growing experience.

well, that's longer than i was planning on writing and it's time to sleep now. a busy weekend ahead!

pics at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028551&id=59401921&l=2455fe6c89

poetry class and more pics.

2009-03-17T06:16:00.000-07:00

a very short post for today.. today, at the beginning of my british and american poetry class my prof found out that i could speak korean. he let the whole class know right away, and everybody said wow (well a korean version of "wow") all at once. it's not something that is a huge deal for me so i was a little embarassed... but i guess i get used to it cuz i don't really look korean. then at one point in the class he asked if anyone was older than 25. and when nobody raised their hands, he said, "well except for caleb and i". and i was like, "uh, i'm not over 25". i guess he really thought i was at least 25 lol.. so a mix of embarrasment and funniness all mixed together in class today...it's been an interesting class so far, who knows what'll happen next class.

more pics from the "bau haus" on facebook! check it.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30903398&l=4fbac5e37f&id=59401921

hanging with 선경이 누나 at the dog cafe

2009-03-16T07:16:00.000-07:00

this is when we first started giving the snacks away, you can't even see her lol

this dog was just chilling, i think he/she was pretty tired.

cute!

the dog cafe. the actual name is "Bau Haus". imagine almost 20 dogs (maybe more) in a cafe, waiting for new people to come, because new people meant snacks. as soon as we bought some doggie snacks, they were all over us. craziness ensued until we had given all of the snacks away... these are just some of the many pictures that we took, i'll post more when i have some time. my cousin and i got dinner after the dog cafe, and then had a second dinner at another cafe called "ding dong". that was a regular cafe, no dogs lol. good times.. :) i'm stuffed and i need to get some sleep. till next time......

church, soccer, and korean hw

2009-03-15T06:03:00.000-07:00

today i finally went to church in korea. the last two weekends i had been busy with relatives and getting settled in at ewha. i went to "new harvest ministry" an english branch of "Sa-rang Community Church" near 강남역 (gang-nam subway station). it was so weird, yet cool, because inside the church i felt like i was in an american church. i knew most of the worship songs, and it really felt like home. other than the fact that over half of the attendees were korean, but that's kind of a given when you're in korea lol. two amazingly weird coincidences happened during the time i was there. 1st, the person that gave the sermon (well, actually, it was a video tape of him because he could only be there for the 1st service) was david ross, a friend of my parents. i heard the regular pastor say his name, and i was like, hey, i know this dude. well, not out loud but ya know. he's visiting from washington state and it just happened that he preached at this church the day i happened to first attend. crazy. but something even more crazy happened....i met a girl from my hometown at the church. for those of you who don't know, my hometown is pretty small, about 30-40,000 people. it's called monroe by the way. it just so happened that there is a part of the service where the visitors are introduced and i had to say my name and where i was from. the girl heard monroe, and talked to me after the service. turns out she graduated from monroe high school in '04 (i graduated in '06). i didn't actually know her, but it was amazing to talk with someone from my hometown, in a random church, in seoul, south korea. bizarre!

when i got back to ewha, i noticed there were some people playing soccer, so i joined them for a couple hours. that was a lot of fun....i haven't played soccer since last fall! apparently they are playing every sunday afternoon so i will have to join them for sure. i played goalie for most of the time, especially when they figured out that i had been a goalie before and nobody wanted to take my place lol... fun stuff.

not too much else happened today, other than me making a delicious ramen dinner. i mixed in potstickers, spam, and mushrooms with the ramen and it was delicious. and not the lame plain mushrooms, but these cool long, thin, white, chewy mushrooms. soon, i will be a famous ramen chef. all of this in the microwave by the way. :P

a new week is upon us, and i'm pretty excited! there's gonna be a lot happening this week, and i'll keep you all updated! please comment me if you're reading this by the way, cuz i have no idea how many of you are actually reading it... :)

more pics posted here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028446&id=59401921&l=7ab583205b

some of my faves (touched up on photoshop) here on flickr: my flickr

oh yes, korean hw. basically i wrote about how to make delicious scrambled eggs in korean. oh that makes me miss scrambled eggs...i'm gonna have to find a american style breakfast place here somewhere!

flickr fotos!!!

2009-03-14T06:27:00.000-07:00

today i went on a photo shooting spree...check em out at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/misfitphotography/

today was also "white day" in korea. i'm not sure how old the tradition is, but apparently this is the day that guys give the girls they like gifts, chocolate, etc. this was definitely apparent cuz there were more than the average number of couple walking the streets today. this was also apparent when a couple starting making out in a store i went in to lol. too bad i currently have no girl.. :::P

today i also ate a fish. actually three fish. well, fish made out of flour and bean paste. not fishy at all and wholly delicious. try em out if you ever come to korea. 3 for 1,000 won!!

microwave cooking and finding a laundry basket

2009-03-13T05:56:00.000-07:00

i figured out the coolest thing today. you can cook food in the microwave. like ramen and potstickers. it just never occured to me because i have always used the stovetop oven to make those kind of things. but we kinda learned about it in korean language class and i decided to try it out tonight. it worked splendidly. yes, i know, it sounds a little simple, but it was a big deal for me. here's a picture of my meal...

next topic: poetry class. today we discussed more of w. b. yeats' poetry, specifically "the second coming" and "a prayer for my daughter". the "second coming" was a pretty depressing poem. it was written right after world war I so that's understandable. there were a lot of possible religious connotations, but apparently yeats wasn't the most orthodox christian. so, the poem could be read in several different ways. "a prayer for my daughter" was partly about his daughter, partly about yeats, and mostly about beauty and innocence. basically about beauty is a curse more than a blessing. and not just physical beauty. however, that's a gross general statement, so check the poem out for yourself if you're interested. it's definitely good stuff, but you have to get into it and analyze it a little in order to understand it. not your typical poems...

one last thing about poetry class. at one point the teacher (a male) asked the students what attracted them to guys. guys, because i am the only male student in the class and i'm a little outnumbered. i'm pretty glad that he didn't ask me what i found attractive...but i took notes when the girls answered the question..haha. ^^ nothing new though, same old thing that i've heard before: physical aspect, inner aspect, etc...

ok, so one of my goals was to find a laundry basket today (preferably a collaspable/cloth one). i went shopping with joa, one of my friends here at ewha, and it's a good thing i did because i wouldn't have found one without her, i think. we first went to this large grocery store/clothing store/electronics store/everything except a laundry basket store called "grand mart" to do some general shopping. i looked everywhere and couldn't find a laundry basket. apparently people here don't really use them....what do they do with their dirty clothes then?? anyways, i bought some korean spam, some ramen, some freshly made bread, soy milk, and a korean comic book. i bought the korean comic book cuz i want to read it to improve my english. however, when i say comic book, it's not your first impression of a comic book. it's more like a funny cartoon book. well, it's funny if you can understand the korean in it lol. so far i think i'm understanding the gist of what i've read.

so, after the 그랜드마트 we went to a store in the subway station. i didn't know it existed and they had all sorts of things that college students need. like laundry basket thingys. however, we didn't see them right away, and i bought some garmet washing bags that resembled laundry bags, but were not. as we were walking out, joa spotted real laundry bags by the front door! made my day lol. the simple things are what matter when you're in a foreign country. or anywhere actually. so yes, that is all the excitement i have for you today...

random note:
you know you're in a girls school when there are mirrors everywhere in a school building.
[i'm serious. there's this one building where they have huge mirrors on every level near the staircase. and other places in the building. and sinks outside classrooms.]

other random note:
it's cold and windy outside. it's currently 30 degrees F but with the wind chill it's 18 degrees. i can hear the wind...sounds kind of ghostly.....

a couple more pics on:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028446&id=59401921&l=7ab58

a male minority in a female institution

2009-03-11T05:57:00.000-07:00

so those of you who have been following along on this blog know that i am currently studying abroad in seoul, south korea, at ewha womans university, one of the largest (if not the largest) female institutions in the world. is it because of the girls that i'm here? well, i like girls, but that's not why i'm here. for those of you who are laughing at that, think what you want.... okay, maybe there was a slightly unconscious force behind my choice for this school...i dunno lol.

anyways.. one of the classes that i'm registered for is called "Gender and Family in Korean Society". well, ewha being a woman's school, you might have guessed, this is a class whose goal is to view the issue from a woman's perspective. well, i am obviously not a woman, but i'm pretty excited to be in the class. the reason is that i'm really interested to see the issue of the family from not only a korean perspective, but from a woman's perspective. i like to learn about issues from different perspectives, especially perspectives that are not the majority.

everyone in the class had to post an introductory post online talking about themselves and i posted mine a couple hours ago. i read everyone else's introductions and i noticed that other people had commented on them. i'm kinda anxious/interested to see what people will say in response to my intro. it basically explained why i'm at ewha, why i am in the class, and a couple things about myself. we'll see....

on another note: pottery. today was our second class and we started making our first pieces today. first off we made a couple practice pieces. they turned out half way decent but then again they kinda sucked because they were my first two pieces of legit pottery ever. the third piece i made was a plate and it actually turned out all right. i'm excited cuz we are firing (hardening) all the pieces that we make. at least we'll be able to see what they look like finished, even if they are kinda crappy. hey, and maybe i can still use the crappy pieces, maybe to hold pencils or something. or maybe i could sell some of them on ebay as modern pieces of interpretive art. who knows. the possibilities are endless.

switching topics again, this time about my personality. so i've decided that i'm extremely picky about the people i hang out with. i'm not sure if it's shyness, not willing to risk myself-ness, assuming things about other people-ness, or whatever, but i feel like i'm not doing as well as i should be in making friends here at ewha. sure, i guess it has been only a week and a half since i arrived at ewha, but i still feel a little down about it. i'm not much a partier and it seems like most of the peeps here are partiers. there's so much other stuff to do other than drinking...but it's hard to find people who think like that. i'm not saying that all people who party are bad people, they just don't jive well with me. i can always make things for myself to do, but it sucks when you don't have someone to call up when you want to do something. at least i have some family here, i think that's been a life saver.

alright, time to do some last minute korean hw, make my breakfast (pb&j sandwich or ham&cheese sandwich haha), and get some sleep.

p.s. one thing that was sorta funny. i bought bread and some other groceries from the store a couple days ago. i had my backpack with me so i put most of the groceries in the backpack but i couldn't fit the bread in. i didn't get a plastic bag cuz i'm a cheapskate (they're 50 won (umm.. yeah only 5 cents)) and cuz hey, it's good for the environment. (though, theoretically, someone else is going to buy that plastic bag and the plastic bags will keep getting produced on a mass scale, etc...) anyways, the funny thing was that i was walking through the campus with my backpack on and my loaf of bread in my hand. just a great image i'm sure. "oh there's a white dude! wait, is that bread in his hand? must be home sick or something... maybe he can't handle the korean food?" lol, anyways, bread is super easy to make breakfast with so take that all you assuming fools!! haha.... sorry if ya thought that was a lame p.s.

mas picturas.

2009-03-09T06:14:00.000-07:00

check em out.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028348&id=59401921&l=f820e

a nice weekend with the relatives.

2009-03-08T07:09:00.000-07:00

so it's been a couple days since my last post... i feel like it's been forever. i spent the last two days at my aunt (my mom's sister) and uncle's house. i wasn't sure what to expect, but i had a great time! they have three kids but they're all older than me. (mid to late 20s to early 30s) however, it was great hanging out with all of them. i feel really blessed to have family here while i'm at school because it's so nice to just be at their house and not have to worry about food and whatnot. and my aunt made sure that i was fully fed. (emphasis on FULLY) haha... she can cook up some delicious food. i think that is one thing i will never have to worry about while i'm here in korea.

friday night was a little awkward because we hadn't seen each other for a long time (more than 10 years) but soon enough i was comfortable with them and vice versa. we watched a lot of tv together while i was there lol... however, it wasn't just staring at the tv the whole time, it was more of watching, then talking, then eating, then watching, then talking some more. we watched harry potter, the simpsons, casino royal, some korean dramas, korean soccer, korean singing contests, and other korean shows. i've haven't seen the harry potter movies yet and they kinda sucked me in lol..

saturday my two female cousins (선경 and 선진 [sun-gyung and sun-jin]) took me out to see "watchmen" and dinner. watchmen was alright, but i wouldn't watch it again. it was a long, thought provoking film, but too violent. i felt that it could have gotten its points across with a lot less gore. but apparently they need to satisfy our lust for blood. my cousins didn't like it much at all and i can totally see why. it's too bad that we have to turn a comic-style movie into a R rated "thrill" movie with an over abundance of blood. i understand that violence is needed to make points in movies, but only when it makes sense to. i think a central question that the movie asks us is "If a smaller evil is needed to defeat a larger evil, is the smaller evil then permissible?" in this case, is it okay to kill millions if in the end billions are saved? anyways, enough about watchmen.

after watching the movie, we went to a department store where one of my cousins bought me a warmer jacket for the cold-ish weather here in seoul. none of my relatives have really ever done that for me so that was really cool. next, we went out to a restaurent called the "sky salad bar" (i think). it had some pretty amazing food, especially sea food. a lot of different kinds of raw fish and meat too. i tried a little of everything.. i especially liked the rice baked in bamboo sticks and the marinated shrimp. and pretty much most everything cuz i like food haha.

on sunday 선경누나, 현규형 (hyun-kyu), and i went to walk around seoul university, i think the second largest school in korea. it was huge, it took us over two hours to walk around about maybe 3/4s of the campus. i took a bunch of pics so i'll have to upload them when i have some time. it was a lot of fun just walking, talking, and just having some good old fun. on our way back we stopped at a kids playground and acted like kids for a little while. cuz we're all kids at heart. even the coldest of us. we just have to realize it.

after we got back we had some dinner and i got ready to leave. i was sad to leave them because it'd been a really good weekend, but i had to get back to some stuff before monday. i also felt really loved because i hadn't seen this family in such a long time, and they took me in as if i was one of their own; like a son, like a brother; even though i was just a cousin. it was a good feeling. as i was coming home, i had the thought of, "now, i'm coming back to real life, to reality". but i realized that what i had experienced this weekend was reality too, there is goodness in real life. real life is not just about the sucky parts and the necessary parts for survival. real life is about the whole picture, about the good times and the bad times. there won't always be good times, but in the same way, there won't always be bad times either. it's an encouraging thought. it also reminds me that God is still taking care of me.

at seoul university

back at the house (my aunt and uncle)

me, 선진이누나, 선경이누나, 이모, and 현규형

(translation: me, sun-jin, sun-gyung, aunt, and hyun-kyu)

more pics on facebook tomorrow....

new pics.

2009-03-05T05:23:00.001-08:00

not too much happened today. i did go to an amateur orchestra concert though. they didn't sound very amateur though, it was very good. check out the pics i added to the facebook album...

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30895121&l=aba39&id=59401921

pottery class

2009-03-04T04:01:00.000-08:00

today i had my first day of the korean ceramics class. like all classes, pretty much all we did was go over the syllabus. we did do a little tour of the building we would be working in. i think it will actually be a fun class. i've never done pottery work before, so it'll be a brand new experience.

not much else new today.. i did go back to the hair salon to get my hair cut shorter than i did before, and they did it for free. that was nice of them. i went shopping at the "orange mart" after that to buy some more food for the room. i found starbucks doubleshot americanos for 1,350 won each! that's about 90 cents each american. that was exciting. i might go back and buy the rest of them cuz that's a good deal lol. i think i'll do some korean language hw now. i thought we didn't have any but i guess we're supposed to do stuff in the workbook. makes sense...it's a workbook. peace.

Ewha Campus Center

see a couple more pics at:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028263&id=59401921&l=37675

poetry class

2009-03-03T03:38:00.000-08:00

today i got pretty frustrated because i couldn't find the fricking poetry class location. i had the room number on my info sheet, but all it said was HAK506. apparently, that was supposed to stand for the humanities building. 학관 is the korean name of the building and it is pronounced hak-gwan. makes sense. not. fortunately my buddy got out of her class early and she helped me to find the building. it turned out that i had already gone in the building but gone out cuz i couldn't find the 5th floor. i know it sounds ridiculous but you would understand if you went in the building. oh well, i was only 30 minutes late. haha. the teacher seemed cool though. and i'm the only guy in the whole class. but when you go to a womans school, what can you expect?

[buddy lunch today]

[eating 호떡 (hoe-dduck) --chinese honey pancakes]

hair cut and korean language class

2009-03-02T04:39:00.000-08:00

today was the first day of class. fun stuff. just had my korean language class... it was a little boring, and a little easy, so hopefully it gets harder so i can get more fluent in the language. i still feel like i'm stumbling when i speak, and it sucks because i used to be fluent, well, a long time ago that is.

i hung out with a german for a while today, he had just arrived the day before so he was a little disoriented. seemed like a pretty nice guy. he spoke very good english..

i went shopping for some basic stuff today, took me forever to pick out a laundry detergent. they have some weird laundry detergents in korea. mostly just the containers looking weird. whatever works i guess lol.

i had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich today!! i bought some bread, some jam, and some skippy peanut butter from the grocery store and made the sandwich in my room. mmm....delicious. gotta love the simple things in life.

uhh... i'm tired so i'm gonna end this now and just have two pics from tonight. the peeps there were really nice. and the girl who cut my hair (on my immediate right) was cute. :) the dude was cool too, he was my shampooist/stylist. haha, it was cool.

p.s. a couple more pics on the same facebook album as before.

another low key day

2009-03-01T05:15:00.000-08:00

today was a nice, simple day. i got up around 10am. i was pretty hungry since i didn't have much to eat yesterday. i still only had 4,000 won so i wasn't sure how i was going to buy enough food for the day with only that much money. fortunately for me, the ATMs on campus let me withdraw money from my bank back in the US by using my atm card. and they only charged me 6 cents to withdraw 10,000 won. just enough to get me through today. perfect. that made my day.

for lunch i decided to go out by myself and try to find a relatively cheap restaurant to eat at. there are all kinds of restaurants in the area so i definitely had a lot of choices. i finally found one that had the menu outside with the prices displayed. the food looked pretty good and cheap too, so i decided to eat there. it was called "azit steakhouse". nothing like a steakhouse in the US, but still it had some good food. i ordered a rice dish that had various seafood mixed into it...delicious.

let's see, i didn't do much else today... oh, i worked out in the workout room in the dorm, that was nice. i haven't worked out for several weeks now. haha, gotta get back into shape. the workout room in the dorm isn't the nicest, but it's free. they have this wierd massaging machine that i saw somebody use, i'll have to try it out later.

random note about something from yesterday: don't blindly follow instructions on the outside of korean foods/drinks. i bought this orange juice drink on campus and on the outside it said "shake it, drink it!" well, i shook it, and opened the bottle. and what do you know, the drink is carbonated and it overflowed. apparently, they meant something else by "shake it" lol... oh well, just gotta be more careful next time.

for dinner, some of the guys and i went to a korean bbq place. so much for saving money cuz i spent exactly twice the amount i spent at lunch. even though stuff is cheaper in korea, that's a bad mentality to shop with, because before you know it, you'll be broke. the food was delicious though, so i can't complain. this is the type of restaurant where you cook your meat on the table. one of the women working there took personal charge of our table, mostly because we didn't have a clue what we were doing. i'm pretty sure everyone else at the restaurant was cooking their food just fine...but not us. she even knew some english, so that was cool. mmm...delicious. and we got ice cream for free after the meal. i'll just have to watch how many times i go out and where i go out while i'm here....

i found a "1/2 koreans unite" group on facebook so i was pretty stoked about that. i don't know a lot of 1/2 koreans so it's cool to see a bunch of them in one facebook group. well, that's about it for now. i'm gonna get some sleep now so i can get up for my korean language class tomorrow. laters.

korean phrase for today:

머리 아파 [muh-ri ah-pa] -- my head hurts

P.S. NEW PICTURES ADDED TO THE FACEBOOK ALBUM I POSTED YESTERDAY!

misfit fotography [back at whitworth]

i've moved my blog.

antibiotics [for acne]. crush [from the past].

i got my blurb book today.

a packed day. invisible children.

download songs at 14 cents a pop. soundsbox!

vote. please. (you have to register, but it's for a good cause!)

ref. 71, photo book, life stuff.

many next time.

house of charity journal (part 2)

house of charity journal (part 1)

photo book preview!

new photoshop filter! [286|365 Too much filter? ~ 인물사진]

temporary dog, pancakes, and new-ish speaker system

losing, multimedia project, etc.

lieutenant jeff

donate to kelvin garner, burlington coat factory, shopping, photo book, etc.

weather, senior thesis (again), a dream, and the fitness center (article).

newish camera, senior thesis, work, etc.

sore neck, pics for whitworthian, antibiotics, 50mm lens, etc.

in oregon.

today.

moving in, first week of work, and etc.

my good ol toshiba and other stuff.

museums, food, and walking around

in DC! (well, actually virginia, but DC sounds cooler)

maybe final post in korea...ㅜㅜ

more than 2 weeks since last post?????? sad. ㅜㅜ

is immortality what christianity comes down to?

department stores, seoul rain, and other misc. things.

short update and some thoughts.

Advent Post: How I Almost Decided to Hate God, Authenticity, and why One Sufjan Stevens does More Good Than The Entire CCM Industry... Part 2

hanging at grandma's.

mosquitoes and crazy kids.

studio wedding photography. hot HOT summer days.

first shot at wedding photography tomorrow.

movie. already thinking about missing people.

a surprisingly busy day.

weekend update!

6.19 demonstration.

hmmmm....

done with the semester :) and :/ but overall =D

one more test. almost there.

hangout/study weekend

finals week update.

안동 weekend

first day of my four hour block of craziness.

update.

struggles

ex. president roh moo-hyun's funeral.

ex. president roh moo-hyun 노무현 memorial at 덕서궁

honestly

a decent monday.

finally. pics from jecheon are up!

what a day..

ewha performance, more salmon practice, 팥빙수, tiredness.

a packed but good day.

uggggggggggh...

quicky update

제삿날 (day of je-sa), busy week, ending with the frames

doubting thomas.

연등 축제 사진 (Lotus Lantern Festival pictures!)

hanging with korean teacher and itaewon..

class, lunch, shopping, movie, dinner, meetin cousin, worship practice

insadong, jeachon, and more ponderings

short blurb.

short update. lotus lantern festival weekend...

friday. day of flickr uploads, indian food, and essay writing.

girls soccer / a little down

poetry midterm. 태극기 휘날리며 (Taegukgi: Brotherhood of War)

more editing. 2nd day of volunteering..

bread. bananas. soccer. pics.

jazz bar

new pics

picturas nuevas.

sick once again. on black day. perfect.

volunteering.

4/10-12 weekend update

one full day.

partying, drinking, and general social probs (and other things)