Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other love.

the saying up there is on my mind....what can i say? today has been quite a day, quite an emotional rollarcoaster day but i survived it.

who knew after almost being in a relationship after 4 years could crumble down to this but this is exactly what i am feeling, the only word that comes to my head is disbelief. i feel all this was thrown at me at left field and i didn't see it coming at all or maybe the fact that i was so way over my head overly-consumed with myself that i was way to oblivious to see it coming. i was blindsided when the news hit me, i was not prepare for it all.

i was so upset beyond tears i was trying to hold myself together as he said the dreaded words out of his mouth. i really did, until tears rolled out of his eyes and i realized that i was not in a dream anymore and this was really REAL. We had really broken up after being together for almost 4 years.....on the outside, i have been keeping myself together beautifully and very strong and trying really hard not to break down crying every second i have but when you have had an emotional attachment with somebody for so long, its hard to just let it go. deep down inside, i feel like i am a emotional wreck but i am so strong and hitting the gym everyday because excercising will release those endorphins and reduce my stress level.

i can't belive that i let myself get to the point where i have put such neglience into a relationship.....i put myself needs waaay before his and in the end, i got hurt. i truly loved him with all my heart but my actions were not speaking clearly what i was saying. i feel like its at my fault but maybe we are really at different points in our life. i have exactly one more year of school and he is starting a new chapter in his. i wish him the best of luck and hope that we can still manage to stay in each other lives.

can we really be friends? i honestly think that we can be. is it going to be easy? no. i will deftinly need time to re-think all my thoughts and emotions but when im ready to settle down to just being "friends", i think i will be ready. i love him as a boyfriend, but i love him as a friend.

all in the end, i feel like i lost my best friend. he was my 'confidante" and the shoulder to lean on. its hard to lose the best friend, hopefully we can still manage to stay friends......

i am so ever grateful for all the phone calls and my dear friends abby and jason for taking me out to Melting Pot. thank you my dear friends :)

Day 2 in Korea

So on my 2nd day, I set had a weird jet lag so I woke up at 3:30 AM. I ended up reading a book and watching some tv. I have managed to finish 2 novels already and I am currently re-reading "Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix" which is coming out in the movie theatar July 14, 2007 which I am crazy excited about. I am obessed with Harry Potter! But as I watched tv, everything is in korea so I really didn't understand it too well but they did have 1 american channel so I watched "Medium" and "Law and Order. Then at 6:00 AM, my little cousin Poo-Ro-Min who is 18 had to get up to go to high school which is crazy in Korea. All high schoolers have to go to school from 7 AM to 10 PM at night and by the time they ride the bus home, it is 11 PM. But these students do this 6 days a week. They even go to school on Saturday, no joke. Can you imagine? No wonder majority of the American students are dumb, no offense. I mean not everyone are but to have this much disicipline to attend school for 15 hours everyday, 6 days a week is true discipline. Then I said good-bye to my cousin as he went to school then by 9 AM, my sister woke up and we got ready and went to my grandma's apartment which is 2 minutes away. She made us a yummmmmy breakfast. I love eating rice and fish in the morning. Then we dropped my uncle off work and my grandma at her hair salon so she can get her hair permed and then we went to Mina's doctor's office so she can take her stiches out of her eye. Her eye surgery went so well and her eyes look gorgeous!! You can see her pictures of it on her facebook pictures.

Afterwards, we went mountain hiking to Mountain Kumi. We took a cable car up to 400 feet then we hiked the rest down. It was really hot outside so it was an amazing work out. I love the outdoors. Korea's scenery is sooo beautiful. I can post some pictures later but Mina posted all the pictures up on her album in her facebook. After the 2 hour hike, we went back into Kumi shopping district and went to Baskin Robbins first to get ice cream. I got green tea (which was yummy!) then we walked around and shopped. I got 2 shirts and this really pretty necklace with my korea name engraved. This necklace looks like what Carrie have in the Sex in the City with her name Carrie on a chain. Mina has one current but in english but we both got these necklaces with our korean names engraved in it for 44 US Dollars each. Then we got some cute stuff, like hair stuff and headbands. Then after some shopping, my aunt took us to this really yummy cafe called Yogo Starberry where we ate Donkatsu and really good Pa-Bean Su. The food there was really good! Aftder the wonderful shopping, we went to the hair salon where I got a magic perm which is permanent hair straightening. My aunt, Mina and I went to the hair salon and 5 and didn't leave until 9 because my whole process took 4 hours and that's not a joke. But my hair looks AMAZING and is soooooooooooooooooo straight and really shiny. I love it! The lady did an amazing job!!! And the great thing was it only costs $110.00 US Dollars. But If I wanted to that get done in USA, it would have cost like between $200-500.00. I know someone in USA who did the exact same thing I did and she paid $500 at a hair salon in USA. How crazy is that? Then after we ate, we went to this really good Korean BBQ restraunt by their apartment. It was walking distance. We ate some good food and we came back and I fell asleep at 10:30 PM. Haahaha but it's already the next day and I woke up at 6 in the morning.

I'm not too sure what were doing today. We'll were deft gonna go eat breakfast at my grandma's then maybe drive out to Taegu to see more relatives and spend the day there and then my aunt said she will take me to a Korean library or bookstore so I can get more books to read lol. Im such a loser...but I love to read! :)

And I love being here. I brought $900.00 for spending money here for my aunt here have been paying for EVERYTHING HERE FOR US. I have already been here for 3 days and my aunt has paid for everything. Everytime we go out to eat, she pays for us and my magic perm, she paid for it and all our shopping we have done so far (which we probably have bought like $200 worth of things), my aunt paid for everything. My aunt and uncle here have a lot of money and SOOOOOOO FREAKING NICE. I love it out here!! It's really nice because my uncle does so well, my aunt doesn't have to work, ever.

But some things I have noticed about Korea in general:

1.) People are really friendly. They always say "thank-yous".
2.) The drivers are nuts! They drive past thru red stop lights and cops don't even stop them. The drivers here are insane. People will keep on driving even if you are walking,.How insane is that?
3.) The country is so small so parking here is bad and people park anywhere. People will park behind you in a lot so if you are wanting to the leave the lot, you can push the car out of your way (haha no joke). I helped my aunt do this because a stupid car blocked our way so Mina and I helped our aunt push the car away with our own bare hands.
4.) Any time you shop at a store, people always ask you if you want tea or water to drink.
5.) Every time you buy something, people ALWAYS give you samples. Just because I bought this one shirt, the lady gave me another shirt for free. When I bought some make-up at Missha (this really good korean beauty store), the lady gave me free samples of skin care lotions.
6.) People sleep in floors. Nobody sleeps in beds.
7.) People don't have shower curtains so you shower without one but I am getting used to it now lol.

When I think of more..I will post some more :)

My thoughts

For such a tragedy to happen, my first thoughts and prayers go out to the individuals and the families of the individuals who were killed. This incident makes me feel ashamed and yet sad at how someone could have committed such an act- someone who has the same heritage as me.

Many people may not share my feelings but I offer my pity and condolences to the family of Choi Seung-Hui. Like the parents of the individuals who were killed, they also share the pain in losing their family member except that they must also face the consequences of their son's actions. They have to carry the burden and guilt of knowing that their son was responsible for the murder of 33 individuals and multiple other's injuries.

I guess another reason why I console more with the killer is because the fact that he was severely depressed and had a mental illness. I personally have never been severely depressed but let me tell you-I have had a family member who have and just one time person having it causes a severe stressful environment for the entire family. A lot of people might angrily lash back at me at this point saying, "So what? There's a million people out there who have worse things going on in their lives and they don't go out killing people." His actions were selfish, to take out many other lives that he could to bring down with him.

There is a correlation between meds and behavior. Meds affect the mind, thoughts, impulses, inhibitions, and cognition. There are many reports that support that meds can cause or create psychosis; this individual clearly was psychotic. Many people who don't know medicines very well don't know that a depresssion patient more then 90% of the time has to try out many different kinds of anti-depressents just because every different human being reacts differently to each medications. One person might be okay taking zoloft but may act more sucidal and angrier towards Prozac. One patient might react to lexapro very well but another might better with Wellbutrin XL. Depression is a DISEASE and it must be cured.


During the year that my dad didn't seek any help, depression tore my family apart. You don't understand the stress toll it took on my family. My mom was pretty much running our family buisness of the Dry Cleaners all by herself and trust me, running a dry cleaners by yourself is hard because it consists of so much maunal labor work. I mean literally, she was working 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. Meanwhile, my mom kept it a secret from everyone because she knew that Mina and I(this is when we were both away from home) had school to finish and didn't want to bother us with such "harsh" news that our father was really sick. Meanwhile, my father was attemping suicide after suicide. Finally this past summer, he commited suicide which caused him to be in a coma for 48 hours and was in the ICU for 7 days. This was a HUGE wakeup call for everyone. Thank god for having such a excellent recommendation from my friend Ashely, my dad started to see Dr. Zhang. He is the BEST psychratist in the region. He is the kind of doctor that came to see his own patients at the hospital and goes out of his way to make sure his patients are WELL TAKEN CARE OF. Thanks to him, today, my father has turned a 360 degree and is doing much, much better. I mean he is the best of the best.......just a 30 minute session with him will cost you $240 bucks. But thank god for health insurance.


My point of that story is that in the Korean Community, there is so much pride and having Depression and seeking help is a big taboo. It took a year for my father to seek help. In the case of the killer, what if he had seeked help sooner, the acts he commited might have been might not have occured. Or if he had a better doctor who tried him out on the different variety of the anti-depressents out there that are marketed, his acts might have been prevented.

But the news is also saying that he was a quiet loner guy. The society today is so focused on such materialistic things and people are cruel and so rude. Especially look at the suicidal rates in younger aldolscent years today. Kids are so mean to each other and teasing a classmate just because someone else is fat, or not as stylish and don't wear all the stupid name-brand "Abercrombie" attire, or just because there SO smart, the other classmates considers them as "nerds". Who cares because if the emotional damage hasn't been done, those "nerds" are gonna be your next MIT grad computer genises or the next Doctor who can save the world one patient at a time. It pisses me off at how mean people get....especially those who are ignornant and shallow. Now don't get me wrong, I'm fully content with my life and stuff and being an Asian girl, I have never encountered RACISM front-hand but I know shit happens and people are ALWAYS going to be judgemental and have their own prejudices.


The news have said that he had an older sister who graduated from Princeton and come on,. his parents were probably hard on him to excel even harder. After I got over the initial shock about hearing this, one of my odder thoughts was this: Asian parents always emphasize being competitive, right? They want their kids to come out on top. Well, this guy did... in a gruesome manner. The most massive public shooting in US modern history?  Terrible. It was only a matter of time before some poor Asian parents pushed their kid just a bit too far and he snapped. But I can proudly that asian parents are particularly more strict and demanding and I love it... it may be the cause of great stress among us youngins, but at the same time it's what helps us attain that abnormally higher search for perfection. 

Last semester I made the Dean's List for having over a 3.5 and damn I was proud of myself! Moreso, due to having 2 great parents who push me to be the best that I can possibly be. I wish I was 100x smarter sometimes so that I could make them even prouder by going to medical school instead just nursing school but I'm most defintley not stopping at just getting my BSN in Nursing....in couple years, I'm going to go back to grad school to get my Masters in Nursing so that I can be a Nurse Practioner or go into being a Specialist. I guess because the way my parents raised us, it made me a nerd haha. I seem like the craziest, outgoing gal on the outside but I really consider myself a nerd. I love to read and honestly, would rather spend my Friday nights at a Borders or Barnes and Noble haha :) or perhaps at a bar or a casino every now and then lol.


And I can say that this causes me to be an OVERACHIEVER at times and it also causes me to be a crazy work-acoholic because due to my parents hard, work ethics, I work myself crazy hours (at times, 40 hours a week at the Pharmacy) and am currently a full time Nursing student but I know that our Asian parents do this so that we can have a better life for ourselves then what our parents will ever achieve in their lifetime.

Im SO proud of myself for having 2 wonderful parents who excel me to be the best I can be. And a great support of friends and sister and brother and a wonderful boyfriend (almost 3 years this August!).

And can produly say that due to my overachieverness, I try to be the best friends to my friends, best sister to my twin sister and baby brother(well he's not much of a baby anymore lol) but I try to be the sibling/parent to them haha I guess I act this way because I'm the oldest and my "big sister" mode turns on. I consider myself to be a cool sister especially to my little brother. I'm always taking him out to eat or always buying him his favorite snacks and treats or taking him out to go read at our favorite places. And lastly, I try to be the best Gf to my wonderful boyfriend. He is PHENOMNAL AND WELL, JUST FABOLOUS :)

The past couple days have been reallly fun! And by fun, I mean I mean FUN!!

Besides working at my jobs, this past Thursday my grandma and uncle from LA/ Korea came out to visit us and I had to go to the Lambert Airport to pick them up but it started off being a disaster (because I got lost and it took forever haha but thank god i had my little brother there with me and parking at the airport is such a biatch!) but I haven't seen them both in like  5 years so it was sooo good to see them. I loveee my grandma from Korea (or my mom's side of the family). She is sooo cute and soooo the typical korean grandmother and she can ONLY speak korean so I hate having the language barrier sometimes. We all went out to eat out last night and it was so much fun. I wish my grandma lived here in the country.

But on Friday, I started my first day at the Candy Store and love it! But Im on a diet so I hope I don't get too tempted haha. But my duty besides selling candy/boxing candy/gift wrapping is to make the chocolate covered straberries. I get to learn the proper techniques.

Then last night, we all went out! Ohhhh but it was sooo much fun!!! I saw Ardith and met 2 of her friends from high school, Melissa and Danielle and met up with Miles, Michelle Q, and Mina out at Westport after dinner. We couldn't get into this one place so we all sat outside on a curb haha and talked then went karokeing/drinking! That was soooooooo much fun! Then we all went out to Florrisant with our new friends! These girls are soo crazy and sooo fun!!! Plus-Melissa and Danielle goes to schools out here in St. Louis so now I have more buddies to hang out with during the school year haha! But last night was too crazy even if it was taking gallizion pictures to dancing in the car!! I took my first Jager Bomb and it was soooo goood!!!!! Even though I got sooooo RED haha. Everyone started calling me a "Pomegranate".

Today, Mina and I are driving out to Dexter, Missouri to see Jaclyn and her family and Devo and Sarah!! I am soooooooo excited!! I haven't seen them in months!! And then on Sunday-we are going floating!! Im gonna come back with such a good tan yeahhhh :p

I mean I still think about my situtation with Chris in the back of my head all the time and it seems like everything i do or see reminds me of him. But it's getting closer to Monday which means we have our "talk" soon. I admit it, Im actually getting nervous for it. But I just hope that it will be good and not bad. This week went by so fast and thanks to such amazing friends and family-I'm feeling better and stronger....