hello hello

I almost didn't want to say anything, but I'm getting all antsy about the upcoming weekend. I'm going to be in HK biatches! hahaha.. ahh it feels good to be in Asia! And Korea, what a prosperous country in so many ways. What all of those ways are exactly, I'm not really sure, but it's apparent in the way people do buisness, to the way people communicate, to the way people spend, to the way...well, to the way I feel living here. It's easy to put a light spin on living in Seoul because it's a country that sends people text messages that end with, "Have a wonderful day!" and people talk about "our country," and a whole slew of other propagandaish sounding slogans...but they're still pretty harmless. It makes me wonder what kind of censorship bloggers in China are enduring.

What am I doing at the moment...The dog in the apartment next to me is barking up a storm so I decided to play Ultra Blue for the umpteenth time super duper loud. Ahh..love it. Well, my first tutee called me and rescheduled, what luck~ I was anxious about our first meeting, she is my first and all, but it's lucky that she cancelled. Now I have all of this time to chill out in my apartment! All by myself! Wonderful! Ah, too bad I'm not really making friends at school. Everyone keeps asking me about friends...do I really seem that loser-ish? Am I starting to sit in corners, grumbling to myself? O_o Luckily, I do have some friends down the street, but it's nothing near the intensity with which I saw MK. It's an odd blip in my life....the whole mk thing...I think I'm not in denial after writing away my loneliness..

Without having someone around to hang out with on a daily basis, I'm afraid that I'm going to be bitten like craigy by mosquitos. Darn pests. I reallly do have REAL mosquitos in my apartment. My apartment has this large window that takes up a good size of one of my walls. BUT! It has SCREENS that are covered by sliding doors that don't necessarily lock! How wack is that? It SO old school, seriously. That's what villa life is like in Seoul. Yes, you have a lot of villas in the Hongdae area that are old as heck, and really could be renovated, even just a bit. They have stained ceilings, warped floors, weak washing machines, if they have one, and barely any TV stands. I've seen a few TVS on the floor and maybe it's just an art student thing, this free-flowly style of living..That could be it.

It was fun checking out apartments around here and seeing how other people live. Yes, a bit reminiscent of my brother's apartment in Brooklyn a few years back. My brother likes to live 'alternatively' with book shelves made out of cinder blocks, wall decorations that range from a bra, to paintings, to sculptures...all original pieces by his friends who taught themsevles over the years. I remember staying with him for a week, back when I took a year off. He was getting a biopsy done, and my mom and I went to go take care of him for a bit. She did his laundry, bought groceries, and cooked meals for us while just hung out and went to the hospital with him. That was back when he was heroine-shek thin.. I think I remember breaking the bong on his living room table b/c I was doing some aerobics to pass the time. He was pissed. I've always done stuff like that...break something or other of his, or borrow something and return it broken. Guess I'm just that type of little sister..the one who cried if he didn't read her a bedtime story in his squeaky voice in elementary school, and squeezed my blanket in the crack between his bed and mine, when I was the middle schooler afraid of the dark. I'm surprised it didn't have an enormous impact on his ego and his outlook on girls later. He seemed fine when it came to bagging the red heads.

Anyways..my shoulder hurts and I no longer feel blahish. ..

ok. so i've been avoiding the idea of redefining my asian/asian american identity while living in korea, sort of, because many times it's already been labeled. i was introduced to the word "Asian American" in college and heard that it was a political group created in response to the word Oriental...but it's different these days. Now that Asian Americans know that they are Asian American and aren't caught up in getting angry over being considered Oriental, it's a different playing field. Is it a playing field that is even race conscious in Korea? Well, yes. What IS also very interesting is the amout of Japanese students who are studying Korean in Korea, as well as the amount of Chinese students, and other Southeast Asians in Korea. Now I'm an American, when someone asks where I'm from, or I'm quickly placed in the "WayGook" category as a sign of purposeful negligence, until I chime in, "I'm a gyopo." Then someone is like, "Oh, GemiGyopo?" as if it's ok to say gyopo after that, and I'm like, "hehe. yea."