I'm Kristy Sanghee, or just Kris, a 20-year-old girl from an island in the United States. When I'm not wasting away in freshman college classes, I dream about my humongous crushes on Korean culture and 3D animation.
Thank you Molla’s Valentine’s Day
14th February 2012 | General, Life | 14 comments
Happy Valentine’s Day! I never thought I’d be one to say that kind of thing but it’s for the better anyway. My dad came home last night, and he brought me a netbook.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A belated birthday present for me! Now my college life should be much better, I’d be able to take more notes, I’d have a laptop to use during my long waits for class and the train! Thank you daddy. 
I saw a lot of guys on campus carrying bouquets today. Bahahaha I can’t ever imagine myself receiving a bunch of flowers or chocolates. Especially since I can’t even spend Valentine’s Day with Mingyun. BUT I finally got Skype! My name is “kriselator” in case you have it and want to add me. I couldn’t think of anything original. 
Since Valentine’s Day can be about any kind of love, My main pitch in is the love I’m showing my blog. First I installed a bunch of cute smilies by Georgina, finally 
, been wanting for do that ever since I got WordPress almost a year ago, haha. The second is that I’m finally going to write about the highlights of my Korea trip. Yes I know, 6 months too late, but Molla deserves to know. All this time I wanted to create many pages for my manual journal but I gave up on having time to clean up my writing and organize it. As Dipika had done with her LA trip, I’ll list the highlights in details.
IF YOU’RE NOT UP FOR IT DON’T READ, IT’S QUITE LONG!
Meeting Taejin. For those who don’t know my mom introduced me to my cousin Taejin a few years ago online so I can help him improve his English just by conversing. He and his mom – my mom’s sister – were the ones who picked us up from the airport. His first impression of me was me calling him Taemin. I had been listening to SHINee on the airplane so it’s not too bad of a mistake is it? 
He also called me noona, intensely awkward for me! I’ve never been called noona in my life before. That’s just a term a guy calls an older girl, kind of like jie jie in Chinese – haha learned that from Mei. He doesn’t call me noona now though because I couldn’t get used to it.
Living With My Brother. My brother left for Korea in 2004. It makes nearly a decade I haven’t lived under the same roof as him unless you count his visits home once a year or less. Though my stay with him was so short, I really got to see what his life in Korea is like. I even got to meet a few of his friends though it was quiet awkward since not all of them speak English very well. Sooo, Arron lives in this really nice apartment, it’s not big, but it’s very new and modern compared to the house I’m stuck in. Though he had to work every day, weekends included, he was on break from school so he had time to hang out with me at night. My mom was staying at my grandparents’ so I was ABSOLUTELY FREE. With my brother there’s no schedule for things, there was no bothering about dinner – don’t think his kitchen has ever been used 
. We seriously went out to eateries at 9PM on some days. It’s amazing because places in Korea don’t close that early.
Harabeoji’s 80th. This was a humongous lunch probably the most humongous and extravagant I’ve ever seen. My mom has 3 siblings and they all have children, some of my grandpa’s nieces and nephews even showed up. I must’ve met at least 50 people that day. Okay exaggeration lol. 
More like 15 extended family members and some of my mom’s cousins who didn’t even know her let alone me. The celebration was at a restaurant with so many tables. I felt terribly out of place because I didn’t understand what people were saying, and I didn’t have a good meal. Well I talked to some of my girl cousins, in my broken Korean while they tried to talk to me in just as broken English. We made it work though, haha. They were really nice and really wanted to know me despite the language barrier.
SHOPPING!!! Shopping in Korea is THE BEST thing. There’s so much stuff to choose from, and they’re not overpriced like the Korean stuff here. I bought far too much clothing to talk, but my absolute favorite is a pair of freaking gorgeous ankle boots. Dipika said she wanted to see so I found a picture of something similar.
Mine is almost the same except it doesn’t have such a high heel and it’s brown, not as reddish as the brown pair in the picture though. I’m usually so strict about shoe color to only being black and white but these shoes were able to get an exception granted!
Exploring Seoul. I love Seoul’s summer weather compared to here. It’s much less hot, and everywhere there’s A/C unlike some of the broken down old buildings around here. The Seoul subway system is beautiful compared to the one in NYC that’s probably 3000 years old. I really wish I had time to check out the tourist sights for Korean culture. And unfortunately I didn’t get to spy any celebrities even if people have told me that it’s really common to see them randomly since Korea is so small.
Miscellaneous. I wanted to go to Busan and almost did! Busan is about 2 hours from Seoul, my aunt lives there, she was going back too so I totally could’ve gone with her. But my flight back to USA was only a few days away then and my mom said no. HMMPH 
Also, it felt so weird to be so close to Mingyun – he lives in Jeju – during the 3 months we prepared to be thousands of miles away from each other. Too bad he couldn’t come up to see me.
Well, you get a double virtual present if you read all that! Happy Valentine’s Day again!