and he said::::take my hand...live while you can
Mood:  lazy
so much has happened since i last wrote. it's been a pretty busy few days!

On monday my family informed me they were going to taejon and i was not coming. fine with me. So they arranged for me to go to roses house for the night. all day i pretty much spent the day sending e-mails. i feel so lazy!! i finally got around to checking tracys blog. she got to bring friends to the airport with her! thats unfair!! i was told nooo, its a family thing. what bs! haha. i'v been studying korean a lot still, everytime i learn a new word they're soo impressed! i love it. they laugh at my korean a lot too. for the longest time i didnt know there was a difference in saying hello and good bye. but apparently there is, and i was always telling people hello when they left. oops. anyways, rose lives with ri, her host sister. i met her on the trip around korea. when they came to pick me up they talked for a long time.

sitting on the floor is only fun once in a while. my ankles dont like it very much. i mainly talked to rose cuz everyone else was speaking in korean. after a while it just starts to sound like jibberish. like back ground noise. wow i have been so deprived of talking to people in english

ri and rose don't live in seocheon they live in a close by town called beun (?) its a lot smaller than seocheon but its nice. they live in a house, not an apartment like ji-eun. ji-euns family is pretty well off money wise. but Ri's home is so much more homey and more laid back. her mom is a piano teacher, rose warned me, 8 in the morning i would surely be woken up by the kids poor attempts at learning piano. lol they have a piano parlor, it has like 4 or 5 tiny rooms with no door, with just a piano and a seat in each, thats really all that will fit. i'v seen that before at the place where ji-eun takes flute lessons. I met Roses dog, apple. i forget the word for apple in korean. apple, its whats for dinner! I also met Ri's brother ba.ng (pronounced BONG) that is so kick ass. His friend was there, min-young, who has claimed rose as his girlfriend. its so cute! (quiyopta!) lol minyoung only stayed for supper then left.

me and rose talked for the longest time! we talked about everything... EVERYTHING! just speaking in english to someone was such a relief, she showed me her art work, I AM SO AMAZED its incredible...i want to put some of it on my yahoo photo page. makes me wish i were creative. she is someone i can really relate to, too. there are things that have happened to her that happened to me and i felt like i could tell her my deepest darkest secrets! she reminds me A LOT of maxine, the things she says, i'd swear her and max are related. shes gotta get in touch with max some time. she has this saying "rose just is" and that was like, so maxine-ish! "max just... is!" and she's got me saying "oh you're a cute one!" in that old lady kinda voice. its really catchy, try it. :) after we were done confessing everything we had to go to the store for chocolate. yes a girl after my own heart! oh i miss chocolate, i should have brought my stash with me to her house, she would have appreciated that. lol. it was late when we went to the store, Ri was iffy, she doesnt like walking in the dark. sEriously, girls here are not sure of them selves at all. me and rose assured her though, we're beastly women :D the store was really close too. thats so awesome, i'v never lived anywheres close enough to a store that i can walk to! we bought 1 of every kind of chocolate they had. thas only about 8. the jenne chocolate was the best. i'll stock up on that when i run out of hersheys.

roses host family is so great, i think i'll be there a lot more often! bong has really good english so we talked to him about his trip and everything. his mom was right in the room, but she doesn't understand much english, nothing more than the basics, so we were free to say anything we wanted, it was nice. their host mom made snacks, then at around 11 at night, totally out of the bue, asks if we wanna go to the beach. hell yah. it was like 20 minutes away, maybe more. it was like old orchard beach, with the town right next to the water and everything. we went down on the beach and me and rose went wading. first time i had been in the water since i had gotten to korea. the water is a lot warmer than in maine. even at 11 AT night. they bought us fireworks and we got to light them off on the beach. koreans love fire works. people were lighting them off all around the beach, it was a sight. me and rose collected some shells and sand, so we can say "we got this sand IN SOUTH KOREA" all sophisticated like. 8)

the next morning i slept until 10:30! my fam usually wakes me up at 8:30 so that was pretty cool. then roses host mom made me FRENCH TOAST! mmmmm! me rose and ri all headed to the beach. on the way there they gave me my korean name! it's che min. :) i feel so special! rose ahs a korean name and its a lot like mine. we just can't escape it!

when i got there ji-eun had brought my dig. camera i ordered a few days ago. its really nice, i was so excited to use it. doesnt hold much though, stil needs a memory card.

the weather was so hot and sticky, i couldnt wait to jump in the water. i put sunblock on, but it didnt do too much good, i got a sunburn anyways. but it isnt too bad. it was nice and calming at first, just floating around. (we were in the yellow sea...doesnt sound that apealing. ) then everyone started a war over tubes, and it got prety rough. me and rose got the worst of it cuz people could just pick us up and dunk us really easy. me and rose started a mud war too. my new white shirt got so covered! it was everyone against me at one point, (rose ditched me toget some soju with emilio.) thats a rugged sport. then rose went and changed in the guys bathroom! it was all in korean so how were we suppose to know!? when we left i left my damn sunblock there. that was 10$ sunblock, i'm mad about that.

me and rose got married to the twins, at the chapel across from the bus stop. i wish i had pictures!! julian was the minister. rose married yeil and i married yeamin. haha they're so fun. crazy christian boys! no worries back home though, ;)

we took the bus back to seocheon for some pizza! yumm! i ididnt have a clean shirt (mine got completely covered in the mud war) and i felt really akward in just a bikini top (since most girls dont even wear shirts as skimpy as a tank top.) emilio lent me his shirt, since he had 2. it was really big on me, i felt like a toddler again :) the pizza was so good. its the pizza place right down the road from my apartment. then me and emilio got into a huge waterfight, made me miss waterfights with jack, lol! :) good times.

next door to the pizza place is a karaoke place. i'm really amazed at how common those are. it had a good selection of music, and me and rose sang to 2 :) you can just imagine how that sounded! :O haha but it was fun though. we stayed for about 2 hours. girls and guys sang! everyone was planning on going back tonight, but i guess things fell through.

today when we went to bring ji-eun to spanish lessons i convinced oma (host mom) to stop at the guitar place i had seen a few days ago. i selected a black guitar and they accepted my cash card, yay!! and the man their tuned it for me. its a family business, and we had some troubles with the language barrier, so they called their daughter over, who can speak english really well. shes only in elementary too! it was 180,000 won, about 160$ its a cort (?)electric guitar. but its a pretty nice guitar, i like it :) and oma got into a long conversation with the family which ended up in the girl talking me out for ice cream. i love it. then we sat down and had a long conversation. the girl is palnning on going to the us some time to study english. they asked me all about where i live and if i needed to call home i could use their phone cuz its free, which is soo awesome since i just bought an international fone card and they're extremely expensive. like 13$ for an hour! the whole family was really nice, and their daughter is going to come visit some time in seocheon!

we went back to emart today to get my film, cuz they only gave me 5 pictures from the last time and that really pissed me off so i made them reprint them, and i got them back today to find that there we're any that were so bad they had to be deleted. so that guy is full of shit and i wont take my film there ever again!!

finally i am done, its about 9:45 i'm gonna play some guitar before bed. school tomorrow!!! i'm excited. i even get to wear a lil uniform :) i have to get up at 7 in the morning though. in the us i use to get up at 6, so HAH!! :)

-lori-

food for the seoul
Mood:  a-ok
on the 20, friday, my teacher called and said i had to have the money for the trip to the school today. i couldn't get into my bank account because it is for bank of america's only and there aren't really any of those here. duh. we tried several banks, and my host mom set up a new account for me but we couldnt transfer any of the money until i got to seoul, which we had already planned on doing. i was kind of worried, but i ddin't let it bother me for the rest of the day.

for lunch me and my host sister went out to eat with julian and his host brothers and host mom. she is really nice. the camera men who are doing the film on the exchange students were there too, and video taped us practically the whole time. i get so freakin camera shy, and i hate being watched when i'm eating so i didn't enjoy the meal as msuch as i could have. i did have fun though, they tried teaching me some new korean words. i remember, pabo, stupid but in a teasing way. julian taught me that. haha. :)

the camera people brought us back to my house, and julian and his host brother, ji-eun 1 and 2, and me all stayed there. we mostly just talked, ji-eun 2, my host sister, is obsessed with julian! haha its sooo cute. she has a ton of pictures of him on her camera phone. sooo sweet. i talked to julian a lot while he was here and i like him more now that i had the chance to get to know him. i dont know where rose and emilio where, they didn't come to lunch. the camera people taped us talking and stuff. i think its going to be a boring video, but we'll see. maybe some sort of drama will happen and they'll get it on tape, i can kinda see that happening with ji-eun and julian ;)

i went to ji-euns flute lessons, her and ji-eun 1 take flute lessons together. there are piano lessons goin on in the same room so it gets a little loud. they are envious of me because i could learn flute in school at no cost to me if i wanted to, but here they have to pay to learn an instrument. i never thought i'd appreciate having a band class at mt view. well i still don't, but at least they do! i didn't stay there the whole time, the instructors daughter came. her mom told her i was there so she got out of school to come see me!! her name is hara, or hala. (their L's and R's are mixed into the same letter. so my name comes out sounding kinda like rori or lodi) she speaks excellent english. She is my age (17 korean years) but she is already in a highschool. she says it goes on for 13 HOURS!!! OMG i feelso bad for her. she said it use to be only 5 like most highschools but they they changed it. if i were her i'd switch highschools. 13 hours!! holy shit!! it really makes me appreciate the school system in america more too. she was really nice, we talked a lot. its refreshing to talk to someone in english and have them understand you. we went out to eat at a fast food restaurant and there was an upstairs. i guess there are usually upstairs to fast food restaurants cuz of the lack of floor space. they just build up. you could write anything you want on the walls, so i wrote a lil messege too :) it was practically covered in writing, on the ceiling chairs tables everything. people should be able to do thatd in america too.

on the 21, that was yesterday, me and my family went to seoul to do some shopping. we left at 11:30 and went by train. it took 4 hours to get there. i thought we were closer than that. i didn't bring anything to do so i was pretty bored. i looked out the window and napped a lot. 4 hours is a lot of time to not be doing anything. when we finally arrived there we hopped on a subway for a lil bit. i don't know the name of where we went, but it was right near where jung lives. first we went out to eat at mcdonalds!!!! it was so good!! i miss fast food . then we tried finding a bank that would accept my card, since i had had so much touble with it in seochung. finally we found a bank that accepted my card, and it let me take out a little bit. i tried withdrawing everything to put it into a different account but it won't let me. it was sooo agrivating i almost wanted to cry, i can't get to any of my money when im in seochun and in seoul it wouldnt let me take more that 100$ out. my whole money situation is so fucked up. but i took what i could get and we went shopping! there's a pretty expensive department store called. who ever said buying clothes in korea would be cheap was wrong.i bought 2 pairs of shorts, 2 shirts, and a new bag. it wasn't all that great of a shopping experience, and i love to shop, but no one spoke english and my host mom just nodded and smiled when i asked her a question. so i had to just go with the flow of things. in the dressing rooms, like in houses, there's a lil place to take your shoes off, and then there are shelves, with tissues and hand lotions and things on them. but there werent' any mirrors! you left the dressing room and the mirror was on the other side of the door. i spent 990,000 won, that's a little less than 90$. jung met us at the subway station near her home. she lives in seoul so i don't understand why she goes to dong-gang middle school. it has to be several hours away, she must stay at someones house or something, but arent there middle schools in seoul?? hmm. me ji-eun and jung went out to eat at a place called new york hotdog. seoul is such a wanna be new york. lol this place even had pictures of the twin towers on the wall. 3 of them actually. it was kind of cool, but like...what about the eifel tower, or something, haha and they sell a lot of clothing that says new york, or has american major league baseball teamnames on it. i'm not big into that, even in the US. it's even weirder here. i enjoyed the american style food though. it was about 8 when we left and the train ride back wasnt so bad, cuz i slept the whole way.

so thats about everything, if you read it this far, i pity you, :P but thanks for checking it out anyways!! -later-

lori!

i like to watch the sun rise... in a strangers arms and this is home, this is home this is hoooome
Mood:  special
Now Playing: olympic games on tv
its probably just about noon in the states, but my day is already ending. it's so weird. I just called mom, i had called her when i got off the plane too. i was told not to call home too oftenwhen i first arrive cuz it interferes with getting adaped, but i had to tell her about my new address and such.


the plane ride was loooong and boring. i sat next to a black boy who was going into the service in korea. we were probably the only non asian people on the entire plane, and we got a lot of strange looks. people literaly turned all the way around in their seats to look at us. kind of akward....


when i got there i stayed with chongs family for the night. they gave me flowers and things it was so nice. her family is really kind and generous. she is the only one who speaks english in her family, and it was a little difficult some times. at like 11 they took me out karyoking, it was so much fun. i was nervous to at first but they had a lot of american songs i knew. i didnt have to stand up in front of everyone to sing, it was just like a little room with tv screens and everyone goes in there. we went karyoking the second night of the tour too. aparently it is a popular past time here. i love it. guys in america would never do something like that it was awesome that everyone could get together like that and have fun. the teachers went too. the girls sang a lot then some of the guys sang too. ye-il danced, he dances like michael jackson, it was soo hilarious i wish i had brought my camera. yea-min dances like that too but he is the shy one. i couldnt understand what they were singing but the music was good. it was stuff you can dance to, and everyone was dancing and singing along it was a sight. julian, the belgium exchange student dances like a mad man, literally, but he's only trying to make a fool of himself, and make people laugh, its the way people use to dance in the 50's or something, but it's crazy. we stayed up really late singing, and had to get up so early the next morning. it was a long day. all the days seem so long and i get all mixed up, whathappened which days, but i had a blast anyways. we stayed at youth hostels n there werent' any beds, but the floor was a soft kind of material made special for the purpose of sleeping on. we had blankets and pillows. since it was just me yea-lim and chong the on the 3rd night i heaped all the remaining blankets together and its like a bed and lee and chong took pictures of me while i was sleeping. how embarressing... lol


I'm not staying with yea-lim like i was suppose to. there isnt enough room in their house. Ye-il and Yea-min, (twins) were going to go to america but they didnt' get their visas in time so now they are planning to go to india, so they will learn english. good luck with that. everyone here is trying to learn english. It seems like me and rose, the other exchange student from the us are the only ones who know how to speak it correcly. so we are instantly popular. I love it. the trip i went on for four days was an 'english camp" but when they werent talking to me orthe teachers theysusally talked in korean anyways. yeah-lim went to the us for a year so her engish is alright. she still has some troubles on the pronunciation of some words, buti help her with those. restaurant is difficult for her. han-young's is also very good, considering he's only 14. In Korea people are a year older than they are in american years. I am 17 here. so he is really 15, in korean years. i get so confused. yea-lim is 17 too, and the twins are...16 i think...in korean years. they don't speak english too well, and they are reallly shy. Korean guys are sooo shy, and the girls are the braver ones. the girls are really loud, and it is normal.


I think korean girls are really pretty. but to them pale skin and blue eyes and light colored hair is really pretty. they tell me all the time that they think i am beautiful. when i went to buy an ice cream today the lady said to yea-lim, who i like my translater, "the american girl, she is pretty. she looks like a doll " i thought that was really cool. i get a lot of funny looks too. light skinned people are rare here. at a temples me and yea-lim were yelling ahnyoung-haseyo to the people and they were so surprised. they dont expect to hear american people speaking their language.


the temples we went to were really pretty. the cealings were painted in really cool designs, and the wood working was amazing. on day 3 we woke up at the ass crack of 6 to go see a budhist temple. it had a large statue of buddah and he had a gold circle on his forhead that catches the sun in the morning and reflects the light beautifully. unfortunatley there was no sun that day. it was raining really bad for most of the time we were tourng. it rains a lot in korea during the summer time. they bring umbrellas everywhere incase it is raining or if the sun is shining too. the sun is so intense here. i burn easy as it is, but here, the sun was only out for a few minutes and i got burned good on my shoulders. yea-lim let me borrow her hat and my face isnt burned that much, its a lil pink. that temple we went to was high up on a hill and it was downpourng to bad i was afraid there would be floods, but no one else seemed to be worried. my shoes got soaked, which made walking difficult because my feet hurt. yea-lim convinced han-young to carry me, and the korean girls thought it was SOOO FUNNY... they are entertainment deprived i think. they watch a lot of soap operas and go crazy when someone on their soap kisses someone. its really funny to see their reactions. sometimes they act kind of immature, in my opinion but it is because they arent use to being exposed tothe same amount of r or x rated material americans are exposed to.


on day 2 we went to a folk vollage. it was really neat to see how they use to do things, and there was a lot to look at. yea-lim is like my guide around and she tells me what people are saying when they describe things in korean. the other exchange students pretty much stay to themselves, actaully, they stick together. the girls are all wow'd over julian becuase he has pale skin. emilio who is from mexico, doesnt get quite as much attention, but neither of them know any korean either. rose has been here for 2 weeks and knows a little more about it than the rest of us.

in the united states we are getting an exchange student from mexico and belgium and that is where the exchange students from here are from. those countries must have sent out a lot of people. Chong is going to belgium on the 25. tracy leaves tomorrow to go down to portland and she will catch her plain saturday. they are going to the same location, so tracy will probably meet chong. i showed chong what tracy looks like, but im sure they ill meet. how ironic is that!?

on day 3 we went to a tomb site, and had a chinese guy for our guide, he tried speaking english but his accent was so strong he couldnt make himself clear, so i really didnt understand andything about the tombs, just that its wehre they buried the kind with all his gold and riches. yea-lim was really interested in that, and the bell we went to see. i dont knwo what it was called, ic an't remember any of the names of these places, they all have really long names. but we took a lot of pictures at each place.


everybody appreciated the buddhist temples even though they arent buddhist, i dont think. i dont know what religion my family is, but they won't make me go to church every sunday, so i am thankful for that. i'd like to go a few times to see what it is like here, maybe. if anything i'd like to learn more about the buddhist religion. i was interested in that before i came to korea, and i thought that korea had a lot of buddhists, but now they are mostly christians.


things are a lot different now that i'm not being compared to tracy, or with her, its like being an only child. its really cool, i always watned to know what it would be like, and now i tell people i havea twin and they are amazed, like woah there are really 2 of you??? so she must be really pretty too then??? lol they think american anything is beautiful. i love that. and asian fashion is funky too which is cool,i cant wait to go shopping for new clothes. i think i brought enough to last me ayear, but i have whole different style from them and i want to get the full "asian experience" and thatmeans shopping for new clothes!!!

well thta all now everyone else has gone to bed!! good night ahnung! sarang-aeyou!