Rhythm Ta~

Phew! I am so tired this week! It felt so long to me and after an extra long dance practice I am wiped.

What even. My face mask is even like what?

Fall is super here though! Woo! This is on my walk home:

So pretty~^^

Here is a video of our class doing last week's "Miss Right" since I liked it a lot and you can see how it should look since our teacher kills it:

Woo!

It is very cold in my classroom despite it not being suuuuuuper cold yet. And up until Friday, we couldn't use our heater. So I took it upon myself to gear up. I bought a USB heated mousepad since my mouse hand it always freezing.

om nom nom

My wrist rest and my mousepad haha

This week was a bit crazy. It should have been relaxing but it was not.

Monday I had another staff dinner, this time with the young teachers since the principal wanted to get to know us better. We had some noodles and seafood and cheese mandu, which were both delicious, and then... it finally happened. I had to go to noraebang with my coworkers.

Seunghee (my 3/4 co), Young Shik (sports teacher) and I are the youngest teachers, so we all had to sing solos. I sang "Lost Stars" from the movie Begin Again because I knew all the teachers loved that movie and they sang along instead of listening to me warble through it. Young Shik is actually an amazing singer so he kept getting asked to sing a lot during the hour. The VP hates noraebang so he demanded we get no extra time (sometimes if it isn't busy they tack on like 15 extra minutes... or like 2 hours...) so it only lasted an hour.

Some highlights: I got to dance Bang Bang Bang since everyone was excited about that, and AOA's "Heart Attack" since the teachers all desperately want to distract from the singing. And I also got roped into singing "My Heart Will Go On" since my principal is really good at and loves English. It was memorable. It was pretty fun, honestly. We have some really good singers, and the young teachers like songs that I know. Will we go again? No clue. But it was a good experience. 

I was close enough to walk home so I did with the other teachers who live near me.

Tuesday was uneventful.

Wednesday was 11/11 which means Pepero day! Pepero is a chocolate covered biscuit stick and it is delicious. If you've had the Japanese version, Pocky, it's almost the same. I prefer Pepero. Anyway, peopl go nuts and bring in tons for their teachers, friends, love interests, passerbys, whatever. I got quite a few despite only having 2 boxes, so I was stoked. 

Not shown, the box I already ate. But still, this is like 6 more boxes than I got last year!

 I was not so stoked when I had my 3rd grade class. Now, their homeroom teacher told them not to bring in pepero. But that did not help. They were CRAZY. Could not sit still. Bouncing around. Not listening to me or Seunghee. I thought my throat would burst it hurt so bad after all of our techniques proved fruitless. I had them lay with their heads down for like 5 minutes to get them to calm down. No dice.

 Thankfully I had several boxes of pepero to help me after class...

Wednesday evening I hung out with Tina and Grace for Grace's birthday. I got her VIXX's new album, since she and I love VIXX. And their songs kept coming on in the restaurant so we suspect the owner saw us with the poster haha.

VIXX's concept, "Chained Up" got me feeling some kind of way...

I like the dance even more than the MV. 

Anyway Grace is amazing and we had so much fun just chatting and chilling. Thanks to Dance Joa for uniting us!

Thursday proved to be a bit eventful as I had one student refuse to listen in my worst 6th grade class and I went off in English and So Jung decided not to/couldn't translate since I was yelling so fast. It scared the shit out of my students since I am not usually the discipline teacher. So Jung told me when she yells at them in Korean they get used to it and can say "oh she's crazy I didn't do that. Why is she yelling at me?" But when I yell in English they don't understand and think "Oh it must be because I did this" so it was newer to them and scared them. They did do well after I yelled. I don't like yelling but damn English class isn't turn around and talk to your friends in Korean time. Rage.

I didn't have my language exchange on Thursday so I took to pinterest for a DIY project. Namho won me a Dance United shirt from my studio, but it was a 2XL. How can I jam in that? So I took to fixing it:

Actual fitting size.

Cool back

Far away view

post dance class pic

I'm pretty proud of how it turned out!

Friday my classes were calm until 3rd grade again but I am used to this class being crazy. Then it was the weekend!! Yay!

Tina and I went to where I take my Korean class so she could take the test and get into a class for more practice. After, we got dinner at Tomatillo:

Tina got a quesadilla and I got an enchilada. Yummy!

After, we headed down to Gangnam for Shannon (our dance friend!)'s birthday party. It was so fun! We got to talk to lots of new friends, Korean and otherwise, have a good time, have plenty of drinks, get Tina's number to the cute Korean busboy who lived in New Zealand for 3 years and said things like Nahhh in the cutest accent, and in general be amazing. The rain couldn't dampen our spirits!

Saturday was a rainy day so we chilled around a lot. We got brunch with Lauren, who I haven't seen in ages, then went back to my place for some much needed chill time. 

The street lights were messed up again.

I hadn't been able to see Namho much this week, so we decided to meet up in my neighborhood. This is great, but I have no idea what there is to do here. I usually go to Hongdae or something, so we wandered a bit before using our phones to find something to do. We tried to find a cat cafe, and found the alleged location, but it was all lies. It wasn't there. Sad.

Instead we ended up at a board game cafe. I've been wanting to go to one for a while. You buy a drink, then play board games. Namho and I played 4 games so it was like $17. but we were there for like 3 hours and it was really fun.

I got to relive my childhood and play Connect 4:

weeee

I don't mean to brag, but I absolutely schooled him. My competitive nature and childhood nights of playing with Ted and Tina combined to make me a champion at this game. Seriously. After he'd had enough of losing, we played a game he likes: Jenga.

Not a bad tower!

The next piece made it topple.

Then we played this game with monkeys and sticks and it was really fun.

Basically you randomly stick all the sticks through the tree then drop the monkeys on top. Roll the dice to determine what color stick you pull. Starting from the top layer, pull the colored sticks out. If the monkeys fall out of the tree onto the bottom, whoever pulled the stick gets them. BUT YOU WANT TO HAVE THE LOWEST NUMBER OF MONKEYS. It was super fun. 10/10 would play again. Wish I was playing now.

Then we played a random pirate game where you stick swords in the barrel and whoever makes the pirate pop out of the barrel is the loser. I am unlucky so I lost a lot, but we went all or nothing on the last one and I won!

I made my way home to relax before dance class on Sunday, where we learned iKON's "Rhythm Ta."

iKON actually was the losing team on a YG Entertainment show called Win. The winning group, WINNER, debuted and is active. iKON was the losing group, but they were popular enough and eventually also got to debut! Bobby, the main rapper in the group with the really raspy voice, won Show Me the Money, a show for rappers, and grew up in Virginia. I like the really little guy in the group. I don't know their names and they are all hella young, but I like the dance a lot.


Here's the dance practice:

I don't usually like the more rap based songs, but I love the beat and dance of this one. At first glance it's a lot easier than Teen Top, but I can assure you it was not. The slow, deliberate movements were certainly easier movements, and on countable beats, but you're moving the whole time and it has to look sharp and clean. It was easier than Teen Top. but not quite easy.

Here is me and Tina and our group doing the dance:

There are no words to describe how much I love this dance. It was so fun! I'm hella sore though.

After class we had more practice for a charity event and the 10 year Dance Joa anniversary, and it was hard to do after iKON. But we powered through!

Me and my new socks be chillin.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/eugeneyang/one-man-transformed-into-a-k-pop-group#.unMZY0D8v

Buzzfeed also killin' it with Kpop again as Eugene, the Korean guy in the Try Guys, transforms into an entire Kpop group and gives a lot of info about the way they work!

On to another week! Hopefully things will be less rainy, more calm, and not so cold!

Stay well, all!