i am so lame.

watched my big fat gypsy wedding last night, and it was so surprisingly crazy good. call it my social anthropology self, but couldn't help but get engrossed by the lives of traveller people in the UK. so completely different from what i expected. aka a girl staying in school until 16 is an achievement and getting married at 22 is considered old, but getting married to a guy she'd only met twice before and was literally her first boyfriend is normal. makes me reappreciate my own life a little more.

also, i find it hard that a second grader won the google doodling contest with this photo:

when i was in second grade, i could hardly hold a pencil, much less draw oddly beguiling alien G creatures with perfectly proportioned and spatially appropriate space persons. parents kids these days.

les paul google doodle aka me playing the guitar on google

didn't know google was so interactive. i think i found my other calling. google strumming.

obbaaaaaa. fyi, not whiny, just american.

American English is surprisingly a very sing songy language. People don't usually believe me, but try speaking the last couple of sentences and I'll argue that your tone changed over 10 times. Could American English rival Chinese Mandarin in the amount of intonation changes, just not as formalized?? shockingly possibly yes? take that ethnocentricity.

But back to whininess, Korean, compared to English, is a pretty flat language. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that until this past year, and as such my Korean undeniably sucks. My tones are all over the place. And after hearing your cousins and aunts giggling about how cute you sound while you try to bungle your way through some simple phrases like "thank you" or "can we please have more water," sounding American can get pretty tiring.

but at least i've figured out one of the biggest hurdles to korean fluency. hopefully in my quest to learn more about my heritage, I'll start sounding more Korean-Korean instead of Korean-American.

starting to gear up for another move, which makes me reminisce about my old apartment.

in the classic style of before and after:

"Before-ish" aka in the process of moving out

thank god for friends. while she may look very happy and energetic, it was probably around 1 am by the time we moved out the last few boxes.

and.. After!

chocolates courtesy of the boyfriend :) i believe they are german chocolates.

more gifts from the boyfriend!

one of my favorite sitting areas made.

i'll miss these views

aside from the smallness and the constant smell of smoke that permeated the air, this tiny furnished apartment did good for me for a little while. but i am oh so glad to finally move on!

goodbye chicago! hello columbus!