You Can Call Me Monster~

Hello hello!

It's a requirement for you to view this video before continuing this blog:

That's right. EXO's Monster is a highlight of this week. It's over 30 million views!

Okay first of all the weather is shit.

look at this god damn rainy forecast

also OMG GAME OF THRONES BLEW MY MIND APPLAUSE FOR SEASON 6 OMG.

Random other things:

Tina and I have been experimenting with eyeshadows from Banila (where we got our awesome face cleanser) and I love the results.

I really appreciate makeup and my face's ability to transform since coming to Korea haha

Random things I found funny

This newspaper is for the kids and teachers at school and I cannot stop laughing. 

Grading tests is fun. The first answer should read "May I help you?" but "May I have you" has quite a different connotation.

In our club activity So Jung was trying to capture the image for what questions we had already done and I was in the way. But I look so skinny so idk how I could possibly obstruct a view. 

In other news, I'm still obsessed with Show Me The Money, and it is in large part due to the producers on the show. My favorite teams are the AOMG team (Simon Dominic and GRAY) and the YG Team (Zion T and Kush).


First: "Comfortable" the producers (GRAY and Simon D) with their member ONE.

Love this song. GRAY also always does that thing where when he produces a song it says "GRAY" in the beginning. Also he's just adorable. He sings first in the song. The "If somebody loves me~" part. Simon D is sitting with him on the couch and ONE is the last one to appear. 

I love the lyrics to this song too. 

And here's Zion T from the producers performances earlier in the season.

This one is "Knock"

And here's Machine Gun ft. Song Mino (remember I met him at the taco place), runner-up from season 4 of SMTM.

I love this performance so much.

Zion T.  I have no words. He is literally always wearing sunglasses. He has braces. He wears the most random shit. But damn can he sing, rap, and make music.

I really dig his sunglasses habit.

He is wearing this giant cast and it makes everything even better.

Thankfully it's not hard to understand the basics of the show without subs, but the raps get pretty intricate. I watch with Grace and Jonghyuk so I can keep up. I love survival shows. 

I'm all about EXO these days, so I spend quite a bit of my evenings embarking on a project.


I have both versions,Monster and Lucky One, of the album EX'ACT. The only problem is that the posters kind of suck and I have no use for them.


There's a lot of negative space and small pictures.

all the album covers... couldn't you work a little harder, SM?

I had seen that EXO-L's (official fandom!) were unhappy with the photos and did some DIY projects with them, so I did too!

So Jung and especially my Korean soulmate Moon Jung love EXO, so I took it upon myself to make cool gifts for them.


I cut out the photos and words from the Lucky One and Monster posters, then the album covers from the other poster. I arranged them as they were in the original poster but alternating.

A-like so.

 Then I tied the words to their respective member.

I think he looks like Ronald McDonald, but whatever. 

 For Lucky One I used a light and fun silver ribbon, and for the much darker Monster I used red.

You can see Sehun's concept photo for Lucky One and the style that turned me into a Baekhyun fan.

I don't really get the words, "Complementariness" isn't a word, but keep trying. 

After tying all the word squares to the members, I strung the albums and the photos together.

My apartment floor was covered in EXO and ribbon and poster scraps. It was a mess. But a fun mess. 

Finished Lucky One

Completed banners. 

I'm actually hella proud of these. Like, for real. I'm not super artsy or crafty, but I was almost sad to give them away since I'm obsessed with this album. But my reasoning is the same as the poster: I have no space to take them home and no real use for them.

So I gave them to my coworkers and they went BALLISTIC. They absolutely loved them. Moon Jung kept raving that it was the best of all the different ways people crafted the posters, and she kept saying it was so pretty and awesome and the best present. I know it's a silly boy band, but it's really fun to get excited about things with people who are also excited about the same thing. Who cares what that thing is (within reason...) when it was so fun on a rainy Friday afternoon to surprise my wonderful coworkers with a present that took nothing but my time to make.

I'm gonna miss EXO fangirling with my coworkers. I'm gonna miss them a lot. But Tina said something to me that made a lot of sense: I'm happier that I got to meet them and spend time with them than sad that I will miss them. I will seriously cherish all the time I had here with them and in general.


I had had a stressful week with a sudden job offer at a high school here, so it threw me for a loop. But I ultimately decided against it and that really signaled to me that I want to go home. At least for now.

Friday continued to be awesome. We headed out in the rain to meet Helen, who has all the food hookups.

Accidental blue and white fraternal twins. 

 This time was to Brooklyn Burger Joint.

Tina got a burger with chips on it.

And a delicious Peanut Butter Chocolate milkshake.

So good. 

 I got something with lots of cheese and bacon and then also cheese fries. Helen and I were crazy about the cheese fries. Like we freaked out when we saw them on the menu.

So much cheesy goodness.

We sat for a while and let our food settle, then headed next door to FRZ. We were so full but ice cream is a must. 

I got a "Frozen S'more" where they have some graham crackers and chocolate and ice cream inside a marshmallow then they torch the marshmallow.

Served like this

Skeptical

How do I eat this

It was seriously amazing.

So delicious.

My body is like whyyyyyyyyyyyy did you eat all of that but my heart is so happy. 

Friday night it pooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuured rain. Monsoon season is here.

Saturday I slept til like 2PM due to many sleepless nights during the week, then watched Tina play a new game, Stardew Valley, and watched Show Me the Money. 

Tina was meeting Lauren for a makgeolli thing, but I'm still on medicine and can't drink so I opted to see Tarzan with Grace and Jonghyuk. 

Tarzan was... entertaining. I had no clue of the plot before going in, and it wasn't super clear in the movie. It was a pretty entertaining 2 hours but I was like "I don't think that's how animals work" most of the time. 

After we got pizza and ice cream and watched the most recent episode of Show Me the Money. I usually wait til the subs are up but that puts me a week behind. If I watch with them they can explain things I miss, but it's pretty easy to tell who is doing well on the show. Or all of us don't understand the voting rules so we all enjoy together in confusion. 

I headed home to where Tina was waiting, and we got ready for a stellar Sunday.

We chilled and got ready, excited for the dance this week.

Heart in my Subway cookie half from Tina <3

This is it. I have been waiting for this day since June 8th when the song was released. We were finally learning Monster!

SO MUCH EXCITEMENT AND COORDINATION IN ONE PHOTO

Since the video got enough views, SM released the practice version of the song.

As you can see, there are 9 people doing different things, so our teacher (A guest teacher!) decided the parts and taught us her cover version. She did a great job; her version was dope!


It was the easiest EXO dance we've learned, since up to the chorus is a bit slow and really deliberate on the beats. Then the chorus was like what omg hard but it was so fun. This is honestly my favorite EXO song ever and I am so so happy we learned the dance.


Here is the first time our group attempted it without her right in front of us:

Tina and I are seldom in the same team but I love when we are.

After, she wanted to do a video for her channel and asked Tina, Shannon, and Stella initially to join, then wasn't sure how many people to have and so our normal teacher suggested me to go. So with the 4 of us, she filmed a video for her youtube channel. Here you have a behind the scenes view of the video, which will be out later:

We all mess up (even her!) but for such an intricate dance in 2 hours, I think we did a freaking fantastic job. I cannot stop smiling thinking about this dance. 

I am in such good spirits this week. So tired, but so happy. 

BEAST releases a new album tomorrow!!! 

So take a listen to their gorgeous single "Butterfly."

If I haven't bombarded you enough with this song, listen to it now. It's so so so beautiful and the video is amazing. Seriously. Just look at the video image and you can see how stunning it is. One member left the group so there are only 5, but oh man do they make up for it. It made me cry the first time I watched, and I still tear up when the intro starts. It's THAT good. So relaxing and sad and exquisite. I love it so much. 

I've never liked music so much as in Korea... I wonder how following it in the USA will go... Like it took me a minute to remember tomorrow is Independence Day and not just Beast's album and Beast's leader and my ultimate bias Doojoon's birthday.

Happy 4th! I hope there's still time for cookouts when I get home!


Here's to a few more weeks in Korea. Let's make them awesome.