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.