this is inappropriate

but i dont care because you affected me.  when i first met you, you were so nice to me, and yet very authoritative.  i was vulnerable, young, shy, and new to the environment.  i liked you.  you were an asshole and for some reason i thought it was okay.  i never knew you were a berating person until people told me about you.  and still, somewhere deep inside of me, i knew i liked you and was okay with you regardless of what you did and said to others like me.  so in retrospect i didn't know firsthand that you were an admonishing kind of person of your type.  in a sense, i sort of looked up to you and admired you for what you did and who you were and i was really attracted to that image.  in the beginning of our relationship, i would always wonder where you were and when i saw you i would go out of my way to greet you.  but then came a time where you put your foot on the (your) ground and put me down.  i had mixed feelings.  i told all my friends what you did and how you tried to cover it up without my knowing it was you.  they all told me you were an awful person but still i wanted to believe that you were just doing you and that everything would be okay.  

then came my birthday and you bought me a nice gift and presented it to me in front of everybody but strategically so that it wasnt physically done that way.  my friends were jealous and i could sense it.  i continued to be on your side without anybody knowing that i was ever opposite of my friends.  

next thing you know it happened.  you took me out one friday night and got me drunk.  you gave me so much anxiety this night that nothing else in the world that was bad that had ever happened to me in my life felt like an ant bite.  you interrogated me of my feelings and beliefs without knowing you were doing it.  i was nervous.  was i a bad person?  did i do something wrong?  why are you talking about my friends like this?  and then all these thoughts came rolling in my inebriated mind.  that you truly are an awful human being.  you ask me what my intentions are and then combat it by telling me that im supposed to be the pure person that i am and have been since the day we met.  remember that day?  when you seemed so high and almighty, and i was so low and weak but fresh.  remember when you told me not to hang out with a certain group of people because we're different?  i believed you.  more importantly, i trusted you.  

you kept intoxicating me with your words and the alcohol until four in the morning when i succumbed to being taken home by one of your company.  i felt disgusting.  not disgusted.  but disgusting.  for listening to my friends but never believing their honest words.  for thinking that maybe you weren't that bad of a person.  i thought you would keep me safe and secure during our time spent together.  

yeah youre good looking and smart and all that.  but youre also berating, overcompensating, and dirty.  

you gave me the best thing and the worst both at the same time.  you made me realize that i cant always be loyal to the more valued first impressions.  you also proved to me that, maybe i am a bit pure inside and am of good nature -- but eff that, you pretty much ruined whatever pureness i possessed.  

as much as i really hate you, i appreciate you being a big part of my life because youve learned me the current state of mind that i have.  which is: it can only get better from here.

now heres where it gets good.  i dont know whos reading, but if its anybody i know, then youre sitting there trying to guess who it is -- and youre probably thinking OMG SHE WROTE A BLOG POST ABOUT HIM!  and youre multitasking by pulling out your iphone to message your friend/s just that.  

or maybe nobodys reading this BUTTT

as cool as it would be to have done that, im not that cool to exploit an ex, just yet.  

you are julia.  my boss in korea.  the woman who ruined many a peoples lives in korea.  F**KING JULIA, YOU ARE.  i wish you nothing but the best (whatever level that would be) now.  

exposition

this post has been long overdue.  korea was great nonetheless but there were many individual isolated incidents that occurred over the thirteen months of my working at the school.  those "isolated incidents" are now what seem to be that the school is just a nightmare.  wait a minute.  now?  no.  we've always known in the back of our minds, thus starting this week i am going to start writing entries about many of those isolated situations.  yes i am going to expose the school and the particular branch i worked at for over a year.  many of the ups and downs of working for this business.  what?  i mean the downs.  maybe someday i can pitch this accumulation over to a producer or a writer in hollywood and they can turn it into a movie about an american girl that movies abroad to take a break but .. WELL you'll have to tune in to see  =)
until then, GO AMERICA!

We Have To Stop Calling Girls “Crazy” |

We Have To Stop Calling Girls “Crazy” | Thought Catalog

I will have more to say about this later!

Amen to this dude!

ouch 아야 (ah-yah)

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy 

bubbled children 

the above photographs are from seoul land, an amusement park in south seoul with a zoo and a big rose garden, and yes there are children in big bubbles.
[insert segue here]
but this blog post is about beauty, not just general beauty, but a particular beautification step that my family has advocated for ever since my grandmother was younger than me.  women in seoul have been switching up and advancing regimes for beauty since the colonial times (is that right?).  one thing that has not changed is the art of tattooing.  what's ironic is that recreational tattoos are strictly forbidden in korea and parlors are illegal (does not mean there aren't any here).  something that is not forbidden but is actually the norm, is to tattoo eyebrows and eyelids, yes EYELIDS.  my own grandmother got her eyelids tattooed when she was only 22 years old and they're still there working her beautiful eyes for her!  for those of you who knew me throughout college, know that i got my eyebrows tattooed a few times junior and senior year, courtesy of my parents via christmas.  at the time it was not very common back in the states and I'm pretty sure it still isn't but eyelids were definitely out of the question.  when i came to korea last year, i realized a lot of the young ladies had perfect eyeliner on and i wondered how they have mastered the perfection of black liquid eyeliner.  the answer?  TATTOO it!  i spent eight months contemplating with my friend on whether i wanted to do it or not and finally at the beginning of february i decided, what the heck, it's for beauty right?  no pain, no gain.  the day of the anticipated appointment came and my friend decided the last minute that she did not want to do it in fear of pain and uncertainty.  but nonetheless i went on with it and here goes the process:

1.  they lay you down on a very small but comfortable bed and put covers over you

2.  add an anesthetic gel on your eyelids and leave it there for twenty minutes to settle in.  this is the most painful part, because the cream burns your eyelids while its numbing.  

3.  they wipe off any excess gel and prepare the amount of ink they will need right in front of you, but your eyes are closed shut so you can't see anything, just hear the nerve-wracking clinking

4.  they start the machine and you hear the buzzing of the tattoo pen and the expert just goes for it.  she will talk to you while she's doing it to calm you, it doesn't work for me.  i was profusely sweating.

in total the procession takes about 32 minutes.  the great thing about this tattoo is that it's not obnoxious and jet black.  it looks extremely natural and it's thin so it's perfect for those summery days you don't feel like wearing any makeup but don't want to look too washed out.  my friend regretted not doing it.  

this eyeliner tattoo is one of the best things i've gotten done in korea, next to laser eye surgery (m-lasek).  

 this picture is a dramatized version of the tattoo choices.

so if you're thinking about getting your face tattooed (limitation: eyebrows and eyelids) then i highly recommend that you do, if you're a working girl, or a socialite.  it saves you time in the morning, money on makeup, and makes you feel advanced when it comes to physical attractiveness (self-esteem maybe? idk.).  

i'm going to seoul tomorrow afternoon to get my third and final re-touch of my eyeliner tattoo and very excited to get it darker! best 95 dollars spent!!

fool me fool me

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”

hotel lobby at "times square" seoul

  I'm not going to say I have it all figured out, but I do!  I went to dinner with a new co-worker this week and after dinner they asked me: do you like to be negative about everything?  No doubt it caught me off guard because I wasn't complaining or being pessimistic about anything at the time but I wasn't quick to answer no, so it had me thinking, do I 'LIKE' it?  NO I don't LIKE it, but do I enjoy it?  Sure!  Now more importantly, this wasn't a close friend of mine or a relative or an extended acquaintance.  It was a brand new person who is a tangent of my life asking me such a prosaic question.  Not only did they ask me that, they proceeded to ask another not too long after of whether I am a Democrat or a Republican.  Haha.  I didn't answer.  So enough with the "fluff" talk (all you iBT people know what i'm talking about) and on with my Main Idea (another interactive english teacher's favorite).  

sarah and moi at pavox 

  Living in Korea, you have to be quick to make friends and I learned the easy way fortunately, last year.  So what I'm saying is that I shouldn't have been taken back by their pragmatical questions one after another.  Making friends in Korea is like having a "big girl" interview.  You go in prepared to answer these wit-lacking questions with even better answers or sometimes lack thereof.  It's actually kind of nice because then maybe you're set to go back home to the States and either jump right in with your old friends or easily (maybe) make new friends if you needed/wanted to.  

  This co-worker asked me what I really liked about Korea this year and all I could think about was how lucky I was with the group of friends that I had for the nine months that we were together (every single day).  We were like the breakfast club.  We had a southern black guy, a californian taiwanese guy, a southern californian white boy, and an orange county turned charlottean blonde all with this los angeles turned southern korean-american girl.  We have all walked those different paths of life growing up but somehow and in someway we ended up together in Suwon, South Korea to spend a glorious nine months together with our ups and downs colliding.  Not to mention we had another very good friend for the first three months before she left to go home for a few months, not only to come back again!  

  Hmm so what's my conclusion?  KOREA IS AWESOME!  She has taught me how to quickly make friends whom I will NEVER FORGET!  Now Justin Bieber has taught me to say: never say never, but I think this goes without saying that this time it's okay.  For the new co-worker?  They're cool and could maybe possibly be my new friend here for the following couple months!  

heres my number, call me maybe