One of my many annoyances is guys who come off way too strong.
The instant a guy starts making suggestive comments, any thought I may of had of getting to know them diminishes.
Maybe I'm strange (that's a definite), but that really does nothing for me. More than anything, it makes me anxious.

I'm much more attracted to guys who are a bit shy and reserved, and don't feel the need to exert their masculinity and sexuality.
I really need to find myself a sweet, awkward guy.

Another thing that bothers me is when they give me a compliment. I say thank you, and then there's a long pause.
I know that they are expecting my to reciprocate the compliment, and I don't want to be rude, but I always feel really awkward commenting on a stranger's appearance. And what if I don't feel particularly moved to make a compliment? I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

I guess this all comes down to the fact that I'm a very, very awkward girl.

I wouldn't want to be any other way though.

 

 "Well, the story is in the soil, loose leaves cover the ground. There's volumes in the forest no one reads out loud. If I could take them down off of that mountain shelf we used to climb, but no one tries to go up that far now. Yeah, we're all too busy working entertaining ourselves. 40 hours television and prescription pills....."
Bright Eyes - Loose Leaves
( ...keep your ear to the ground... )

Another year....

( Read more... )

These are pretty much the same as every year. I might as well give them another try.

- Eat healthier (I've been doing pretty well with not eating junk the past couple days.)
- Practice yoga daily.
- Read more books
- Study at least one hour a day.
- Do a lot of volunteer work when I return to America.
-Try to live more "green"

Btw, I got another tattoo yesterday. I'm a bit crazy, I know. I'll explain it in the next post.

Happy New Year!!

A new Pepsi logo.
Developed at a cost of more than $1 million, the "more dynamic and more alive" soft-drink logo will likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars to implement worldwide. (Reader's Digest)





Fuck you pepsi.
You spend millions to change your logo (which pretty much looks the same as the last one), and people are dying from poverty.
I just don't understand.

Yesterday my co-worker, who is like a surrogate mother to me, presented me with a winter coat for Christmas. It's a really awesome coat and I love the style and color. There is fur around the hood of it, which I just assumed was fake.

But after while, I started to get the suspension that it wasn't fake. I asked my friend about it, and she assured me that it wasn't real.

Well, tonight I decided to check my dictionary just to be sure.

Lo and behold.........it's fox fur.

Crap. At first I was really worried, because I knew that if I took off the whole hood of the jacket, my co-worker would notice and ask about it. I have a terrible fear of upsetting people, so I didn't know how I'd be able to handle the situation. Most likely, if I just told her the reason, she would be cool with it, but I still have that fear. Luckily, when I was inspecting the hood to see if I could possibly cut the fur out, I found that the fur is actually buttoned on the hood and quite simple to take off. For some reason, it makes me feel a little bit more at ease if I have to explain to her. I don't know what I'll do with the fur, although my heart tells me that I should bury it somewhere.

This also led me to check the jacket that my friend let me borrow. Sure enough, it's made of duck feathers and raccoon fur. What the hell is going on with the clothing industry here?! Anyway, I'm going to return her jacket to her tomorrow. It also is an awesome jacket, but there's just no way I could feel comfortable wearing it now.

Moral dilemma solved, although I'm still sad that an animal was killed to make my clothing.

I told my family not to get a new puppy until I came home, but they didn't listen......



My father made some extra money at work and was going to use it to buy my mother a video camera for Christmas. Then he found an ad in the paper for Siberian husky puppies. This is my mother's dream dog, and she has wanted one for years. Luckily, my parents were the first to call, and got the 'pick of the litter.' My mother is ecstatic right now. We have never spent so much money to buy a purebred before, so it was a bit shocking when she told me.

He doesn't have a name yet, as my mother is still deciding. So far, he's getting along with my other dog, although she's a bit scared of him. The cats are not happy though. I thought that at least the younger one would be happy to have a new playmate, since our older dog died last month.



Now I'm even more excited to go home for Christmas!

Today I went to a concert at the MBC tv station with my coworker. My coworker had sent in an email to get free tickets, which are supposedly hard to get, and luckily we were chosen. All I really knew about the concert was that a famous guitarist was going to be playing there.

This is who I got to see play:

 </lj-embed>His name is Lee Byung Woo, and he's been a famous guitarist in the Korea for the past 20 years. He is best known for composing the soundtracks for Korean movies, "The King and the Clown" and "A Tale of Two Sisters," just to name a couple. The title of this song is "Bird."
I was pretty much blown away while listening to him, and I honestly almost started crying while he was playing this song. Needless to say, I became an instant fan.

During the concert, he had a singer come up and perform a couple songs with him. I was pretty impressed with the guy's voice and the emotion that he put into his singing. I think his name is Jang JeHyeong (I suck at romanizing Hangul). Here's a video of a performance that they did together at an earlier concert:



 </lj-embed>They did the same song, but I think he sang much better at the concert I went to today, even despite having been in a motorcycle accident just a couple hours earlier and limping up onto the stage. He also looked a lot more like a hippy; sporting long hair, a beanie, and ripped up pants. I was all for it.

And finally, here's Sungha Jung performing a version of Lee Byung Woo's "Bird." I completely adore this child. I definitely recommend checking out his other videos. He's only 13! If he's this amazing now, I can't even imagine how much talent he'll have ten years from now.


 </lj-embed>I really want to play guitar right now, but it's midnight. I need to sleep.

I was thinking today.....
I can't imagine what it would be like to be someone, say a businessman for example, who puts work before all else. Someone that is always serious and rational, and never has time for dreaming and hoping. Someone that would find it absurd to get lost in a daydream. Someone that has no time for joy and fun. For me, that would be the saddest way to live. It depresses me just to think about it.

I was also thinking that, no matter what, people should never give up their dreams. What fun is life without dreams? I don't advocate neglecting one's responsibilities, but I think there should be a good balance between doing what one must do and doing what one wants to do. I really hate the idea of someone going into a profession that they don't even enjoy just because their parents push them into it. No matter how much your parents have done for you, and how much you feel you owe them, you have your own life to live however you see fit. It's not theirs. I also hate the idea of someone giving up their dream because they feel like it's foolish or that society would look down on them for it.

You want to be a musician, but your parents are completely against it. Who cares? It's not their life. One example I can think of is Tablo from Epik High. His father insisted that he stay out of the music business and focus on his career instead, afraid that his song would fall into hardship. After many disputes with his parents, he almost bowed down to his father's wishes. But the death of his friend made him realize something important, and ended up following his dream anyway, becoming a well respected musician.

Lately I have been thinking that after Korea, it would be cool to just work at a coffee shop  for a while and do volunteer work in my free time. Then I heard some friends joke about a friend of theirs who now works at a coffee shop. "Dream big," they laughed. I said nothing, but inside I was a little ashamed. I've graduated from college and now I have this huge honor of working under Fulbright, and all I want to do is work some small, meaningless job? Does this mean that will have wasted my education? Am I a failure? I've thought more about it, and I have come to the conclusion that it really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what kind of job I get into, as long as I enjoy doing it and I can accomplish my dreams.

I guess what I am getting at is that life is far too short to constantly worry about impressing people or making others happy with your life choices. Dreams are important, and living out those dreams is what makes life really meaningful. I don't really care about being rich or successful, I only want to be happy. That's all.

At about 2pm today (Korea time), I decided to check msn.com to see if there was any news about the election. The minute I saw the headline on the main page, a huge grin spread across my face.
( I certainly wasn't expecting a result that early... )

I mean, it's only been less than four months, and I'm already getting homesick and considering returning home next July.

( Read more... )

I haven't written anything in about three weeks. I just been so lazy busy.

A quick summary of what's been happening:
- Passed my Korean language classes with awesome grades (surprisingly).
- Performed in the talent show with my roommate. I played and sang "Song for the Dead" by Nell, while she sung backup vocals.
- Left Chuncheon and had an awesome weekend hanging out in Seoul.
- Yonsei Day. Met up with representatives from my school (one of the English teachers and his wife), had lunch, said goodbyes, and departed to Gwangju (four hour car ride).

I've been in Korea for four weeks now and I'm still alive!

I have been in Korea for about two days now. Yay!

Since I've gotten here, it's been a whirlwind of activities and information sessons, and so it has been kind of hard to get any real downtime. But other than the unbearable heat and humidity, I love it here and I'm having a lot of fun.

Tomorrow we start taking Korean lessons, so I'm super excited. We had our placement tests today, and I was put in the intermediate level. It's going to be a lot of hard work, but I'm all for that.

Tonight there's going to be a party with the university English club. I'm tired and sore, so I probably won't stay too long, but it should be fun.

Okay, that's all I'm going to write for now. Maybe I'll put in a little more detail later and post some pictures.

Take care everyone!

In other news, everyone should check out this band: MoT

 Inspired by a night of binge-eating sugar (Damn you James and your awesome cookies!!) and waking up still feeling like crap, I have decided to go on huge health diet. 
I have really been slacking in eating vegetables and working out in the past couple weeks, so right now I feel like a walrus.
So from now on, I'm going to try my hardest to avoid all the bad foods: anything fried, refined sugars, refined grains, and imitation sugars.
This will be especially hard when I move back in with my parents, but I'm determined to make this work this time. I'm getting older, and it's becoming increasingly apparent that my body won't stay in this good of shape forever, especially if I eat nothing but crap. 
So for the sake of being in semi-awesome health when I'm all elderly, this needs to be done. 
Wish me luck!

In other news, school is almost over!
I just have two finals to take and then the graduation ceremony where I have to walk in front of hundreds of people with that stupid gown on.
I'm kind of ready to go home now. Not so happy about leaving all my friends, but I think it's really time for a change.

So, in the past couple days I had the crazy idea of getting another tattoo.