The way my family celebrates a thanksgiving and Christmas

The year is 2009 and Christmas was yesterday. I'm writing this blog because I'll be taking my GRE's in 2 weeks and so this will definitely be a great exercise for it.
The way my family celebrates thanksgiving and Christmas…. Now these are two pretty big holidays in many countries. People in China celebrate them as well as people in Europe. Those two holidays are the time where family members from all over the whole come together in one house and follow the tradition that European settlers have established. These are the times where people share what they are thankful for and receive love in forms of presents. These two holidays I would have to say are the two best holidays anyone in America would want every day without worrying about the price of neither a turkey nor presents.
My family on the other hand celebrates thanksgiving and Christmas the way any other families celebrate them. However it’s not the joyous celebration and the day where we would want it every day for my family. During these days, they are the time where we get criticized for everything. We don't like to share what we are thankful for instead we love to pin point a flaw against each other. Instead of receiving presents or "love," we get more vituperative comments about our life. I do not despise spending time with my family but I do not consider those holidays are special, in a good way.
How I spent Christmas was the same as any other Christmas I had with my family. Stay over my cousin’s place and just relax. We do not set up a tree or any gift exchange. We are very penny-pincher family. This year, I have spent Christmas with my cousins. I enjoy their presence. Ever since I was young, my only friends were my cousins. We were once called the power ranger because at first there were only five of us and we would always do things together. Because we were like this, even our favorite color now is the color of the ranger we were assigned to by us.
I cannot wait until I get my own family. I want to love each and every one of my kids and my family’s kids. I do not wish to throw negative comments at them nor think about myself over my families. I would want my kids to look forward to thanksgiving and Christmas. I would want us to share about our blessings towards each other and express our love through presents, cards, and/or etc. I want to have a great family, with maybe 2 kids and a wife whom I would love and want by myself FOREVER!

She Was Mine

Eric, JP, and Chris were playing this song over and over for awhile now. I love the chorus:

No matter where you go,
I wont be very far
Cause in my head I'll be right there
where you are
Cause love has no distance baby
Love, love has no distance baby
No, not when it comes to you and me

Future goals?

I'm almost done my undergrad and right now I'm feeling pressured. My parents wanted me to go into a science field, and I was hoping that my years in college, I would be able to appreciate my Chem/bio major/minor.... but I don't.. Right now since my plans on becoming an English teacher in Korea was thwarted by my whole family, except my uncle, I'm currently looking for a job. I'll be taking my GRE's Jan. 7, 2010 so all I'm doing till then is to study muchos hard-o. An older brother told me, if you still don't know what you want to become, go into graduate school.. So I'm planning on doing that. I'm going to look for a job first, save enough money, and then get into some grad school with it.

My goals for the korean teacher

I know it might not turn the way it did with the first korean teacher, but I want her to see Christ for what he has done for us. I'll try my best to share with her about the Gospel and all the good treasures. I'm going to ask Eric and other guys to help me out. I really hope that God will be using us to see his path. Pray for me :)

2nd korea teacher

I meet with the new Korean teacher today. Her name is Jeong yoon and she is 30 years old. She's right handed however when she was about to enter this world, the doctor told the mother that she would be stuck if she uses her own strength. The doctor reached in and pulled her out therefore her right arm had some permanent damage. She cannot lift her right arm above her head. She lost some of her range of motion in her right arm. She has trouble typing and writing. When she needs to write something on the board she uses her left hand however when it comes down to writing something on paper, by struggling, writes with her right. I got up at 8 and left home to pick her up around 10:15. There was some traffic during that day and the sky looked like if it was about to rain. I first took her to H-mart up in Upper Darby and then took her to Wal-mart down at PennsLanding. We then ate lunch at Ruby Buffet. With all the stuff that she bought, we’ve managed to bring all the bags in one trip. Carrying all the bags weren’t that difficult… only when we had to open the doors. Once I dropped her off, I went over to the homeless house and then did nothing until 4:15 ish. I went over to UCross and helped Mike Wang move in. After that we went to Imperial Inn and had a huge dinner PLUS a ridiculous amounts of water and tea. I was planning on going to the late night prayer meeting at 10:30 if someone was at the homeless house. But there was nobody. So I went home without going to the bathroom. I was in so much pain holding the stupid thing in. Once I got off the woodhaven exit, I decided that I couldn’t hold it much longer and stopped at Toys R Us at Franklin Mills mall. I went in the back and took the longest piss I’ve ever taken. I went home after that and studied for GRE’s like crazy.

Complications with GCC

Hey guys

I've written this at least like four times because I couldn't express myself appropriately.

GCC is a great church, they have their goods and they have their bads. Since sophomore year, I've been coming to GCC and never once, I've felt like I belonged here. It’s weird~ I believe it’s the way I was raised. My personality does not match with anyone in GCC. The staffs and the people (mostly the UPenn students). I'm glad that I join band and overflow because they helped me experience all different types of people. Their "fun," their worries, and their perspective in life. I was hoping that I would be able to get used to people in GCC, but it hasn't yet.

Coming into my 5th year in Drexel, I'm slowly realizing that GCC isn't the "right" church for me. I say this and I'm sure there are many ways people could say I'm wrong. Experiencing JCA (Journey Church of Atlanta) and other churches down in GA was an eye opener for me. I felt that I can do many things there. It's hard to explain... With the people there, I was easily in sync and I was able to express myself without using lot of words. and I like using little words. :)

It might be time for me to slowly move away from GCC. I'm not sure when~ but I do feel that my time here is over and I must move on to a different church.

quick summer re-cap

Hey guys! (Benson and Justine)

So this summer my life has been busy worrying about GRE's. I've also been working at my moms carwash business down in Downingtown. It's really a hard job. I mean my hand still hurts from working and its been couple weeks not working there! There has been so many "problems" at the carwash and because I'm the only one that understands computers and know both korean and english, I've been used to the fullest. I once slept in my car for a day because I had to drive far for a stupid computer that controls the whole carwash tunnel. I remember feeling like a bum. Anyways~ I've been sleeping early and waking up early just to make coffee and other stuff for my mom. She works really hard for me and I want to show her that she is not sweating in vain.

Anywho~ I'm getting tired so ill just post this up now

Slip and fall + Grandma Lee = Hospital Adventure

Let me first give you guys a little detail of my Grandmother. She was born somewhere up in North Korea. She is currently 4'11".. i think or even smaller. (My family loves to make fun of my grandmother’s height. So my mom is 5'5" and my dad is 5'11". I'm 5'9" and my sister is 5'0". My dad sides of the family are over 6'0" and my mother side consists of people around her height. So when people ask us why we are short, we blame my grandmother for giving us the "shortness" gene. Anyways~) she is 83 years old and lives by herself in a nursing home, but it’s like an apartment without the frequent interruptions by the nurse.

My grandmother has slipped and fractured her hip and something else with her right leg. She has a tough time walking around so she needs someone to assist her in going to the bathroom. She can swing her knees back and forth however when it comes to raising her thighs, she feel a quick cramping sensation.

Sunday evening, is when this incident happened. She was making bread and apparently there was some puddle that she overlooked and slipped on it. No one would have known about this situation if my sister didn’t call her. We went to a nearby hospital Einstein hospital. This hospital is literally few blocks from where my grandmother lives. Every night my sister, my mom, my two aunts, and I would stay and look after her. We would translate and also help her go to the bathroom. Well~ she can’t walk to the bathroom so we have a commote next to her bed.

Every day so far has been an adventure hanging out with my grandma Lee in the hospital. Either something interesting or funny things happen.

Guitar

Let me share you my little story of how I started learning guitar. I’ve started to learn how to play guitar January or February of 2007. At this time I was living in The Hub at 40^th and Chestnut st. I would always go back home during the weekends to attend my home church. So one Sunday, my cousin comes to service with a black guitar. It looked really nice and to my later surprise, it was his. I went to a small Korean Baptist church and there were only two people that knew how to play a guitar. One was my youth pastor and the other was a friend who only knew the chords for the key of G. I guess my cousin wanted to learn how to play and be the “cool” guy that also knows how to play the guitar. Anyways~ So I remember it was after service and all the youth kids were getting ready to set up for lunch. He brings out his guitar and gathered everyone to sing a song with him. Back then, if someone else brought in a guitar and it wasn’t the youth pastor, it was a really cool thing and we gave lot of respect to that person. I felt jealous that everyone was now looking up to my cousin. I felt terrible but when he started playing, my jealous feeling went away really quickly.

My cousin just started to play guitar that week and so now he isn’t that good with the transitions with the different chords. I forgot which song he was playing but it was slower than usual. BUT everyone still loved it and said lot of nice things to him. My jealously shot right back up and so after about 2/3 of the song, I cut him and demanded that I give it a shot. I had to admit, I was bad bad. I was slower than him but not that slow. Now back then I was someone that would give up if I couldn’t do it. I would have never touched or even bothered to learn how to play guitar if it weren’t for the words that came out of this one... ignorant little girl. (This is a side note but this kind of reminds me of the dvd cover of “My Sassy Girl.” There was a little quote on the corner of the back cover which translated, “The two couples wouldn’t be together if it weren’t for those words that came out of her mouth.” If you’ve seen My Sassy Girl, when the girl was drunk, she said “honey” to the guy which started their story.) She told me in Korean:

“why don’t you learn from him!”

I still can’t believe she said that to me!! My pride or something was being challenged hardcore from this girl. I really wanted to come back at her and just prove her wrong.

Once I got back to the Hub, my roommate brought his old guitar from his home. Back then I didn’t see it as a sign by God, instead something that I can practice and show her up next Sunday. Those words were enough to drive me mad for one whole week, playing 3-5 hours a day until I was getting bloody fingers JUST to come back the following Sunday to show her up! Nah mean (you know what I mean)!!!!

So that is exactly what I’ve done. I practiced and now I was definitely better than my cousin. I had trouble forming the Fmajor and the Bminor chords back then but my strumming was “bad to the bone.” I remember waiting patiently until the service was over. I grabbed my youth pastor’s guitar and I went downstairs to look for that one girl. I was still bitter even after one week. I didn’t get to find her so I ended up playing upstairs by myself. One adult was walking by and saw me holding a guitar. He told me that I shouldn’t pretend to play guitar and laughed at me. I remember thinking, “PSH~ No he didn’t”, and so I played a fast song. I remember seeing his smirk turning into a face that just got SLAMMED…by my awesomeness. I remember the senior pastor had coming down from his office to see who was strumming on the guitar. He was surprised that it was me. He made a positive comment on my new acquired guitar skills.

The moment of truth came when everyone in the youth group gathered in the sanctuary to practice for next Sunday’s worship. I was on the steps to the stage, playing random chords in the key of G. That girl came into the room and that was my signal to play like an excited monkey on crack. Everyone looked for couple seconds and then went back talking to their friends. That girl did the same… In my head, at that time, I was thinking that I won. She was definitely thinking how good I was and how wrong and incompetent she was in her head. As I’m writing this now… she definitely wasn’t.

So this is why I’ve come to learn guitar. Just because of that girl’s little comment, a new and a great time-killer hobby was discovered.

My first blog!

Never in my life had I thought of writing blogs. I'm terrible at explaining verbally of what's going on in my mind. A reason why I have started to write is because people have told me that it will improve my writing. I have zero confidence in my writing skills and I hate showing my work to people. So why blog? It's a silly reason but I promised a friend that I will start blogging after my finals. I'm someone that hates breaking promises. Plus I think it’s a good to try something new.

Anyways~ I was thinking about what to name my blog for couple days. First, I thought of "A Call for Happiness" but thinking about it more and more just made my blog and my life sound somewhat depressing. I wanted to incorporate “happiness” into my title. I really enjoy making people smile from their hearts, and with this time in age, no one is truly happy. Everyone has worries such as schools, jobs, and relationships. So a call for happiness was something I wanted everyone to strive for (hope that made sense). I’ve also thought about “Acquiring Seventh Heaven” but a friend told me that it doesn’t make sense. I guess that’s true. So I’ve decided to name it “The Rhythm of my Dance.” For the ones that know me, my goal in life was to become someone big in Korea. I love dancing and it is something that I don’t need to think hard about and be good at it. I got into a car accident my late senior year of high school which screwed up my back. I couldn’t dance the way I used to so in the end I was left with a broken heart. My love for dance shattered because of that accident. However, at the same time I believe it was a message from God. He probably knew that my life would’ve been more depressing if I followed my old path to stardom.

I still love to dance so I hope that my blog will help you experience just a little bit of the rhythm of my dance.