Every day I shock (shock!), every night I shock (shock!) ~ Classical Music Concerts, MV's, and BEAST!!!

Hello hello hello!

Our dance class got changed from 2-4 to 3-5 so my timeline was messed up last night. Hence, no blog.

Even as I write this I was practicing this week's dance, Shock (by B2ST/BEAST), so I'm rather exhausted. 

It's an old song but damn is it good. And hard. Not as hard as last week's dance by Infinite, but really tough still.

Anyway, my week started off really badly. I lost my class ring, probably when I was coming home from last week's dance class. I took a different way home and had my headphones and rings in my wallet because for once i didn't have pockets, and we had to practice for an extra almost 2 hours after dance for this week's highlight of Miss A, and all of it resulted in me carelessly losing my ring. I'm pretty upset still, but life goes on.

After suffering through Monday trying not to cry because of my ring, I went to Costco with Tina and Lauren. It was stressful getting all the stuff back home, but we got some good deals.

In other things to cheer me up this week:

This dude from that weird show I Can See Your Voice was awesome and Tina sent me this to cheer me up.

EXO's repackaged album for Call Me Baby, Love Me Right, had this hilarious teaser image. Having seen them in person, they are so tiny and only a few of them actually pull of the look. ALSO THE YANKEES HATS. THE YANKEES ARE A BASEBALL TEAM, NOT A FOOTBALL TEAM. NICE TRY, SM.

I bought rainboots! Alas, my muscles are too big to sip them up all the way. This is what I get for online shoe shopping in Korean, getting $10 boots, and also not having stick legs. Oh well. 

Hard to see but my one strand of hair is like parallel to the floor. WHY.

So my normal routine of Korean class tues/thurs and nothing MWF got hella interrupted this week. On Saturday we were shooting a MV with the dance studio, but we had to practice and get our concept nailed down. First she told us black and white, so we lugged a bunch of black and white dresses to the studio. Then they told us we had to not wear white since we were filming in a place with white walls. But we never got clear on our costumes. We practiced for over an hour and, exhausted, decided to continue the discussion over text.

More on that later.

Friday was "Market Day" at school. The kids brought in things to sell, the classrooms were changed into "stores" and all the kids got to run around and buy things. The money gets donated to some charity or poor people or something that's for a good cause, so I used all my change to buy random things, especially from the kidlets who looked dejected that no one wanted their things. Hence I have a Christmas picture frame.

Anyway here is my haul.

I named her Sansa because she is a wolf and queen of everything.

My lucky golden pig, Pygmalio. 

One of my babies couldn't sell these so he offered them to me for 100 won together. How could I resist the pink and purple?

My 6th grade girls were so excited I bought this from them. And for the rest of the day when the other teachers asked me what I bought this is the only thing I would show them and I dramatically pulled it out and yelled THIS. I actually don't know who is on this postcard... Chanyeol and ?????????????? But it was really funny 

So one of the 4th grade teachers at my school does the dance class that I sometimes go to with the 4th graders. It's like kid zumba. Thursday was awesome cause she had the kids sit down and she was demonstrating a new dance, so she had me in the back just following her. Since it's easy and for kids and I used to have a job literally doing the same thing when I taught Zumba, I was pretty good at it. The other 4th grade teachers and the kids were like OMG WHOAAAA and I got to be a superstar. Now if only I can sneak in doing a kpop dance to really impress!

Friday evening I got a special treat: the same 4th grader teacher has a son who is a famous concert pianist, and he was having a concert with a Japanese violinist and a cellist (Chinese... maybe?) so all the young teachers got invited. She specifically asked So Jung to ask me along, since I did some translating for her when her son did a broadcast and the commentary was in English. So of course I went!

So Jung couldn't go so I hung out with Su Hyeon, my old co, and the younger teachers. We got pizza and went to the show.

My ticket was $100. I hope her son got it comped.

My view of the stage.

The songs.

That's him! Kim Sun Wook. He's an 88 liner - same age as Ted.

The concert was really good and relaxing. I like classical music so it was nice. It was a bitch to get home from, but overall I had a really good time and the teacher seemed really appreciative that I came. I even got to say like a sentence in Korean to her! Woo! 

Returning to the never-ending saga of since-I-joined-this-studio-dance-has-taken-over-my-whole-life, Saturday brought a lot of ups and downs. 

We hadn't gotten any more info on our costumes, just snippets of bring this and that and bright colors. So I packed a lot of things I thought would be appropriate and headed out to the studio.

So heavy. I was stylin though.

I literally needed like the two pairs of sandals I brought. We got to the studio and our teachers provided most of us with dress IN BLACK AND WHITE WHY.

The only person wearing her own clothing is Tina.

They wanted us to have a sexy concept SO HERE WE FUCKING ARE. We had to walk down the street like that. We got so many stares.

Muggin while we waited for our shooting time.

We practiced and waited around, then headed over to the stupid much to the delight of every male within like a freaking mile.

We only got to shoot our song twice, so we had to make it count. Except the room was really small, and like a bedroom/house setup? And our formations had to be made really small. And Annie's dress and our overall whiteness with all the white were concerning, as we thought they would be. Oh well. It was fun!

Action shot! Annie, Grace, Tina, Me

I kind of never want to hear Miss A's "Only You" ever again, but also I will fucking slaaaayyyyyyyyyyy that dance anytime the song comes on. 

After shooting, we hung around the studio to wait for everyone else to finish so we could have a 회식, or like a staff dinner like when we have them with our school.

We were like the only foreigners there, so we got a lot of attention. Tina impressed with her Korean, and we made a lot of new friends and got to chill with like all of our Korean friends from class.

Chelci, on the end making a duck face, changed our lives by bringing us to this class.

So we drank a lot of beer and all did our dances once more time to show everyone.

I cannot even begin to express how much fun it was and how awesome my life has become since joining this studio. Instead of watching 5 hours of TV on a Monday, I watch 1 and practice the dances we've learned. I feel better. I'm sleeping better. I have to listen to and speak Korean in class, which is giving me more confidence. I've met some awesome people. I almost didn't go back after the first week was kind of a disaster. Once I let go of the perfectionist "I'm not good enough" attitude and realized that this is for me and my benefit, things got better. It's such a good workout and so much fun.

I am actually getting really emotional because it feels like I'm making a little family here at the studio, Our teacher told us she loves our class. She told Grace, our resident gyopo (Korean American, so she speaks more Korean than the rest of us) that she's not joking: she reeeeeeeally loves our Sunday class. Probably because she can let loose and have fun too. Koreans tend to be really serious and perfectionist, and since a lot of the people who come to the studio are idol hopefuls hell-bent on perfection, it is exhausting to be a teacher. Enter our ragtag group of foreigners who just love kpop and who can't dance for shit compared to some of these people, and suddenly you get to relax too. Last week when she tried to make us do Infinite, Grace and I literally crawled to our spots. I lay on the floor yelling "I quit" at least once a class. At first we thought she didn't like us much 'cause we suck, but now we know her shrill, "TASHI" (it means "again") is out of affection haha. 

I'm so lucky this class popped up. And I'm about to be famous! The MV will be on their website and NAVER so I can be a Kpop star yet!!

After finally dragging ourselves away from our beloved studio after being there for like 11 hours, we went home. I finally got to sleep in a bit and after tidying up my apartment I headed out to Omokyo for brunch at Pancake's Original Story with Janell, Lauren, Gahyeon, Sarah, and Tina.

NOM NOM NOM

APPLE CINNAMON BANANA PANCAKES

FRENCH TOAST. OMELETTE. BACON. SAUSAGE. POTATOES. GET IN MY BELLY.

After a thoroughly satisfying brunch, Tina and I headed to our dance class with Janell and Sarah. They've been wanting to come since Tina and I gush about it literally all the time, and they love kpop too, so it finally worked out that they could come!

My workout clothes are awesome. 

This week was "Shock" by Beast. Now, I FUCKING LOVE BEAST, so I was HELLA excited. Plus, it looked way easier than Infinite. What could go wrong?

EVERYTHING COULD GO WRONG. Beast choreographs to like literally every possible beat you can move on, and even though there are only 6 members versus Infinite and EXO's higher numbers, its hard to follow everyone so we had to just follow like all of them. Some parts that would have them split we just did both parts. It was exhausting. The chorus is easy though so once we got to it it was really exciting and fun.

I have been practicing so I hope i can show off to someone soon lollllllllllllll. It was fun. I love it. I love Beast.

I'm sad we can't go to class next week since we're going to see the ballet Giselle, which we booked when we were sweet summer children long before dance class started. It will be nice to have a break from it, I suppose. And I am super stoked to see Giselle. It's one of my favorite ballets.

We now have a list of like a million songs we want to learn the dances too. Woe is me that the class is only once a week!

In other news, I'm OBSESSED with Big Bang's new song BANG BANG BANG and especially this performance:

First of all, HOW DARE YOU. How do they all look so good? Taeyang with his pink hair? G Dragon killin it with the red hair? Seungri slaaaaaaaaaaayyyyys with the white hair, and TOP's cowboy hat and Daesung's "I cannot possibly see" haircut are also awesome.

Second of all I love clever lyrics such as "B. I. G. yeah we bang like this" cause Big Bang hahahhahaha.

Ugh I love this song and it makes me want to party. And they all look incredible. Big Bang doesn't do too much dancey stuff so this is really fun to see. PUT THIS ON THE LIST OF SONGS I WANT TO LEARN THE DANCE TO.

And also I love this song, which translates to "too very so much" and is by the group MYNAME.

 Grace's coteacher had the maknae (youngest) of the group as a student and they still keep in touch, so Grace introduced us to the wonders of this group by casually mentioning to us one day, "Hey, do you guys know my name?" And we all thought she meant her actual name but was referring to the group, and it has since been a joke. But still, some of the guys in the group are hella attractive. We want to learn one of their dances too!


I always kind of regretted not doing more dance things when I was younger, but now I get to make up for all that with Kpop dancing. It's awesome.


Hopefully things are nice on your end too, dear reader. I'm off to practice Shock, (The lyrics are part of the title of this blog~ sometimes Beast nails it with their English and sometimes they miss), do some housekeeping, and sleep.


Also, I am not in an area infected with MERS. Don't worry. I hand sanitize and have shown my kids how to cough into their elbows. My school is not closed for MERS. Everything is fine.

Have a good week, everyone! For me, Monday is already over, so it's easier for me to look forward to the rest of the week!!

Peace out, Sailor Scouts.