How is June already halfway over?

Hello all~

Here I am unable to believe that time is flying by. Each day feels kind of long but suddenly everything is going so fast. I can't believe it's the end of June. Whoaaaa



First of all BEAST IS HAVING ONE MORE COMEBACK BEFORE I GO HOME YASSSSSSSSSSSS

So excited

It will be weird to see them as a group of 5 instead of 6 but still. So stoked! Maybe they'll have one more concert before I go~

This week was long and complicated. On Wednesday we had a teacher bonding day and we were split into groups. Mine was a bunch of young teachers I like, so I was happy. We had 15,000 won to spend on each person and couldn't spend it on food, so we went to Mustoy in Hongdae where you can make a little ceramic doll thing. 

I'm not very artistic so I was like oh no but it was really fun.

Some examples like characters from Kakaotalk (The popular Korean texting app) and Inside out!

So many!

All so good

I got the girl model that had a hair flip on the side, but I used ll my artistic knowhow to make it so my character was facing the side. I made No Face from Spirited Away~

First you draw it on paper then with marker. There's rubbing alcohol if it doesn't work well or if you mess up

So Jung is reeeeeeeally good at artsy stuff so she made Alice!

Shinae made Captain America and I can't remember what Seul made but it was also awesome. We also got complimentary teas and coffees~

No Face is a simple design, but coloring the whole thing black was it's own problem. You have to let the marker dry or else it will come off on everything, and sometimes the marker makes weird lines. So mine took longer than expected.

Coloring~

I just wanted it to be recognizable 

No face, no problem

No Face, Captain America, Alice, and Ponyo 

We looked for a restaurant but all the ones I knew were on the other side of Hongdae, so we opted to look near the studio. But the place we found was closed. They were set on Japanese curry, and were like "oh this one really good place is close!" And we proceeded to walk... to the other side of Hongdae... 

On our way, we found a Ghibli Store!

The theme from Howl's Moving Castle was playing while we were inside and I got really emotional about going home. Ghibli stuff reminds me of home and Ronnie's house so it hit me really hard that day.

All aboard! 

Cat bus to Hongdae please~

We made it to the restaurant but I had to leave a bit early since I had other cool arrangements to meet Lauren, Grace, and Tina to see an acclaimed Korean movie: Agashi, or The Handmaiden.

All I knew about this movie beforehand was "lesbians" but to reduce such a spectacular movie to just that is a sin.



Plot: "Korea, 1930s. Con man Count Fujiwara hires a pickpocket named Sook-hee to become the maid of the mysterious and fragile heiress Lady Hideko, in an attempt to seize her wealth. But the story takes a twist when the lady falls in love with her maid."

There are so many plot twists and turns in the movie that my head was spinning. It was seriously such a good movie. 

We got home really late so Thursday was a bit difficult. Fortunately I had some plans to keep me going: a date!

A guy messaged me and said he had met me on Tinder, which is weird since I do not have a Tinder. Upon me saying this, he confessed that he had met a girl named Francesca on Tinder and tried to find her on facebook, but found me instead. My profile is hella private, so you can't see much except my profile and cover photos. I must remind everyone that my profile picture at this particular moment is this:

So I find all of this hilarious. Turns out this guy is in graduate school for translating and interpreting, so his English is pretty impeccable. We went out for chicken and beer and hung out at the Han River where my profile shot was taken. It was really fun! 

I'm not looking for anything serious but it is fun to see how these things turn out! 

Saturday Lauren, Tina, and I went to Hyehwa to see Tina's co Young Ah have a drum performance!

Here with the spinny hat and the janggu, which I like playing

She's playing the gwaengari, the small metal drum that I hate.

After, we got food and drinks at the amazing Mix and Malt, and had a good time. 

On Sunday Tina and I watched a new discovery of hers: a British show called "Would I Lie to You?" where contestants read a card and the other team questions them to figure out if they are lying or telling the truth. It's amazing I love it so much. 

Sometimes there is even a prop possession.

The players don't even know until they read the card if they are telling the truth or a lie. Or sometimes they have one person come on and one team lies about how they know them and the other team has to decide who is right.

The stories are so absurd that it's really hard to tell when they're lying and telling the truth, but it's funny all the same.

After filling our heads and hearts with laughter, we headed off to dance class to learn a BTS song.

Here's Boys in Luv as it should look:

And omg us:

Um. We did our best.

Here you can see our teacher show us what's up since she's a legit dancer. 

I like this song a lot, as I like a lot of BTS songs, but the dances are not my thing. I find the moves to be too fast and more style over substance, and it all feels flashy and gimmicky to me. I can't do it so well, and I don't like getting discouraged in dance class since it's supposed to be fun. It was a fun class, but I didn't feel much of a workout since there wasn't enough time to really get the moves. It was fun, but even our teacher said the boy groups are better to do over the week and the girl groups in a two hour session because the styles suit each one better. 

Anyway, I am still dying to learn EXO's new song, Monster. At this point in time, the original MV has over 20 million views in less than 10 days since it was released, and if you don't think that's impressive well then... it is really a lot. Kind of crazy a lot. 

This week the performance video was released and I SUUUUUUUUUUPER want to learn it. I love it. 

Will not stop listening to it.


Simultaneously, EXO released another song from the album called Lucky One. The album is called EX'ACT but there is the Monster version (black) and the Lucky One version (white). At first I didn't like this song as much, but now I like it a lot. Released at the same time, this one still has an impressive 9.5 million views.

No one knows why Kai is dancing the dance to Monster, but still. The video is whack but song is catchy and when Suho looks at you at like 40 seconds you will feel things. In the video still Suho is looking at you right now. How have I not remembered him til this point? I always have to name the other members to get to him as "not anyone else in the group." Baekyhyun and Suho got me catching feelings this time around. 

Anyway, this week should be chill. We have speaking tests and such with the kids, and on Friday Tina, Grace and I are going to see a musical, Mozart!, with Kyuhyun from Super Junior!!!

Kyu~~

My throat hurts again... hopefully it will pass without medicine, as I went again to the hospital and got more pills to seemingly no avail. I cannot wait til I am in a country where the air isn't actively trying to kill me.

Hopefully I can get through til payday on Friday! First, Game of Thrones tomorrow!!!!

Love you all. Not like, Boys in Luv love, but love all the same~

Loving U Monster (creepin, creepin, creepin)

As I sit here relaxing with a foot mask on, I really feel like it was a great weekend, and I'm sad it will end but I feel better and rested for school.

Foot mask fun!

We'll see how long that holds up.

The three day week was packed with pressure, namely that I suddenly had to have a full camp plan done by Friday and was told at 4:30 on Thursday because my principal is... sigh. I don't even know. I had already started planning, but it was a bit of a rush on Friday to get everything submitted for budget purposes. 

It turned out not so bad since there were only 3 days of work, so the week went quickly enough. We have no more breaks til the end of the semester and I'm almost done, so we'll see how things go from now on. 

I was in good spirits Friday because one of my classes had a snack party for getting enough class points.

This is actually my most difficult 5th grade class but they are hella adorable and still better than my best 3rd graders to manage. 

So cute. Also the ONLY class of 5 classes to give me and So Jung snacks at the beginning of class with NO prompting - then some of the girls snuck around during the movie and gathered snacks from everyone to give us later and I'm not crying you're crying.

 I teared up because they were so cute. They were like "LET'S WORK HARD TO GET 50 MORE STAMPS SO WE CAN WATCH MORE OF THE MOVIE." They're so innocent and easy to please, man. Moments like these make it hard to leave.

Also my ego is crazy big here since I get a lot of attention. For instance, on Friday my outfit was on point and I got so many compliments:

I am the purplest princess.

One of the other highlights of this week was music related. EXO released a new album, and I am in love with one of the title songs: Monster.

Seriously, give it a listen. It's so addictive. It also managed to break the record for getting 5m views - the video managed it in about 25 hours since the MV's release. Since June 8 when it was uploaded, it has achieved a staggering 11,500,000 views. 

I'm obsessed and have been listening to little else. 

One of the most astounding feels: one member, Baekhyun, has never been on my radar. I think he looks like a child.

look at this smol bean

Then the teaser images came out for the album and his hair was black, so I was like okay what's-his-name (I literally had to remember all the other members to get to who the missing ones were) looks better with dark hair:

A-like so

But then the MV came out and OH DAYUM

Um. Excuse me. Where do you get off being so hot????

The internet in Korea is literally feeling some kind of way like I am:

http://www.koreaboo.com/netizens/fans-cant-stop-talking-about-baekhyuns-lip-piercing-in-monster-comeback-mv/

There is literally an article about it on one of those trashy Korean entertainment websites that I def never check ever in my life.

Look at you, smol bean, being the center of the song and having a look to compliment your awesome voice. You got me goin' crazy.

In conclusion:

This song will be creepin in your heart, yo. 

So Jung and a couple coworkers and I talked about it at all of our breaks, and it was really fun to be so excited about it and have people to share it with. I'm sad that I know when I go home I'll have things I'm so excited about that no one will understand, but that's a concern for another time. 

Anyway, lunch was weird this week. Some good, some bad.

God bless the homeroom teachers who had to deal with kids making chicken wraps.
Also seen here: tomatoes are my dessert/fruit item, which I hate. 

Thursday we had some peanut sauce thing that was good for about half of my meal then my mouth was like no these flavors do not combine when I ate other things. 

Friday we all had shitty lunches and wanted some good food, so I met up with Tina and Lauren and we headed out to get some smoked chicken and boy were we impressed. 

We were too excited and dug in before remembering to snap a pic.
Anyway, we also got a truffle burger, amazing onion rings, awesome cheese sticks, and incredible fries

Seriously everything was so good.

We three small females absolutely destroyed the meal. It was SO good. The one chef had had a bbq joint in my hood of Mokdong, but a fallout with the Korean business partner meant he moved on to other things. And it seems like he found a great place! I will definitely be going back before I leave!

On the way home Tina needed blush. so we stopped at Skinfood to get some. While browsing, we found some interesting masks:

Me: Bird's Nest
Tina: Horse Fat

Mine had extract from a bird's nest. Tina's just had fat.

They felt as weird as they sounded. 0/10 would not recommend even for the instagrams.

Actually my face has been breaking out like crazy since Friday night, so I have a sneaking suspicion that my face does not like having a fucking bird's nest on it. This is the first mask I HATED and it hated me back. Try things that you want on your face, like strawberries and roses. Not horse fat and bird's nests. Lesson learned.

Saturday we chilled until the evening when we went to see the Warcraft movie.

For those who don't know, I was a big Warcraft junkie for most of middle and high school and even into college. I used to play all the games, read all the books, played World of Warcraft for hours on the weekends and in the evenings instead of meeting friends, etc... I love the lore and storylines. 

I loved the movie and stayed up til like 1:30 reading up on all the expansions and info on my favorite characters since I quit. Every once and a while I download the game and start again, but it was a dangerous addiction to have and I try not to get too involved in it again. I will always love it though!

Sunday finally brought us back to dance class. I was really sick and missed class then there was the holiday weekend, so it took a bit to get back into it. 

This week, SISTAR again! I loved "Shake It" and this week we did "Loving U"

Their videos are always so much fun!

Dance version!

My group!

Tina's group, including our teacher and her impossibly long legs I am so jealous of and Pau's awesome shirt and SISTAR look. Tina killed those hip rolls, yo

Our whole class looks so cute together doing it too! Watch the video here!

We also got our prize for winning the MV contest! Our Bang Bang video got the most views!

Love all these lovely ladies so much!!

Now back to a full week of school! Somehow I already have all of Monday and Tuesday planned and we have a market day on Friday, which means I have even less to plan for towards the end of the week. Better start a new drama or find something else to do! 

I'm allllllllllmost better. I promise I'll be healthy again soon!

Love you all. Stay well~

Long Weekends Are Amazing

I spent most of the week recovering. Nothing much happened at school. Lots of classes cancelled and moving around and other random annoyances, but I was in a bit of a daze since I'm STILL not 100%.

So Jung took me to the hospital on Monday so that she could make sure they were telling me everything, and was surprised to find out that they knew nothing and were just giving me medicine to treat a few different possibilities. I also shocked her with healthcare scares from America and how expensive it all is (my IV trip to the hospital cost me about $30, which is unthinkable in the USA) for medicine and stuff.

I had a staff dinner on Tuesday (for open classes) and was supposed to go hiking and have another one on Wednesday (moved teacher's day trip), but at the dinner on Tuesday the principal told me she thought I should skip the hiking since she was aware of my respiratory issues and hiking seemed like not a good idea. Score!

I helped So Jung finish her thesis - she's done! Congrats, unni!

Thursday we had some time to kill before a viewing party for our dance video, and I had wanted froyo but was thwarted. So Tina and I went to a cat cafe because it was long overdue.

No cats love Tina

None.

Especially not this one.

Dat death glare dooooooeeee

With food, all the cats love her.

And she loves them 

Yasss our derpy-face friend joined us 

I love this cat

Outside the cafe... Pretty sure that is not correct.

One more time for good measure:

So our video came out! Check out how you can barely tell I was in the hospital the day before the filming! Haha

BANG BANG!!

Screenshot of my rockin body that I am quite proud of

Here is the live performance.

This was a weekend for the books in terms of food.

I bought So Jung some macarons from a store near me to celebrate finishing her thesis.

Saturday we went to brunch and I got Banana Nutella French Toast with Bacon.

Amazing.

So delicious. 

Spicy mac & cheese

Then we went to see Young Ah play the drums for a Taekkyeon fight demonstration. It's a Korean martial arts form. The rules are: you win if you either knock your opponent down, or KICK THEM IN THE FACE.

Young Ah had to play the intros, victory music, outros, etc.

One team of younglings came from Suwon and they were pretty good!

They had an Australian guy on their team.

It was cool?

Here's a video:

To me it looks like a lot of feigning and flailing but I had literally never heard of it before. It was really fun to watch, and it's always nice to see Young Ah!

We met up with Grace for my first BBQ dinner since being a zombie, and then we got ice cream and went to her place to watch Show Me The Money, a really famous Korean survival show for rappers. It was so fun! I got to see so many people I love in one day!

Sunday we had brunch again at my place, then headed to Tina's to relax. I've been wanting to try a cafe near me, and it was good!

I got a ham & cheese panini 

It came with a million things

Monday we chilled and saw a movie!

So good. So sad.

We saw a poster for another movie I want to see!

Brings me back... 

I also had Tuesday off so I skyped Megan in the morning and then tried to get my watch fixed (my Burberry watch battery stopped) but it was to no avail, as no one will touch it. I have to go sleuthing for another option. Alas.

I went grocery shopping and I always buy more than I intend, so I had a big bag. An old lady helped me bring it to the bus stop because "It is so heavy and you are so little," so that was nice.

Sometimes when you buy things you get awesome freebies. And sometimes when you buy milk you get more milk. 

Then I rested at home and chilled. Made some dinner to last me for 8 years because everything in Korea is family sized. Watched a drama. Did my nails all pretty. It was great.

Now Wednesday is already over for me so I only have 2 more days til the weekend! 

Musically, I'm into the Korean rap scene now because of Show Me the Money, so I'm listening to the songs from the producers on the show. 

My personal favorite song right now is called Simon Dominic and it's by... Simon Dominic... 

Part of the record label AOMG (with Jay Park, Simon Dominic is one of the more prominent members), Simon D is pretty popular here. I hope to one day love myself enough to name my own song after me.

Paired with Simon Dominic on the show is a rapper called GRAY who is newer to the scene but is also hella popular and talented. He's part of AOMG too, along with Loco who is featured in this song.

Metronome, which is Jay Park (perhaps the most famous member of AOMG, as he was the leader of JYP group 2PM and said some negative things about Korea during his early trainee days and ultimately left the group) with Simon Dominic and Gray.

Unrelated to AOMG:

From season 4: Minho of WINNER (I met him!) and producer on the show and Block B rapper Zico's song Okie Dokie will literally be stuck in your head forever.

 Is that true? Yes. Okie Dokie yo.

I don't understand Korean hip hop well. I understand it even less than normal Kpop. But if I like the beats, I love it. Show Me the Money is a wildly biased show, but since I am not a Korean rapper I do not know what they're looking for. 

Off to enjoy my short week and hopefully not get more sick! Byyyyyyye