Hey, summer break is just two weeks away!

I know some people are planning to visit Korea for their vacation, so I’m introducing a few places in Korea that a tourist might find interesting.

Myung Dong

Yes, as you can see, Myung Dong is very, very crowded! I don’t recommend visiting this place if you’re a person that hates crowded places, but it is a very interesting place to visit! There’s tons of stores and interesting food on the streets, and there’s also the big Myung Dong Cathedral.

Chung Gae Chun

Chung Gae Chun is just a small river, but it has become a popular place to visit in the past few years. It’s quite interesting because it’s in the middle of a very crowded city. One thing you might want to know, it is much more beautiful at night, especially on holidays, because they turn on the decoration lights!

In Sa Dong

This place is called the art center of Korea. It is full of stores that sell Korean traditional stuff, so this is another good place for tourists to visit.

Dong Dae Moon

Have you ever shopped at midnight? If you haven’t, you’ll probably find Dong Dae Moon quite interesting. There are three major shopping malls here: Doota, Hello apm, and Milliore. The most populated time is usually between 10 and 3 ‘o clock at night, and trust me, there are lots of people, so if you’re planning to visit this place, you might want to ride a taxi or the subway.

If you’re someone with an East Asian background, you’ve probably been to a karaoke. Karaoke originated from Japan for the purpose of entertainment. For the ones that don’t know what a karaoke machine is, it plays songs without the voices for amateur singers to sing along. In Korean, a karaoke is called “Noraebang,” and the culture of “Noraebang” has changed a lot from the original Karaoke. When Noraebangs became popular in Korea, they were just places with a lot of singing rooms. Now, they have become very elegant and luxurious to attract the customers. There are large rooms that have big, comfortable beds and refrigerators. They are decorated with nice curtains and cozy dolls and cushions. Also, the owners of these places would give free delicious treats and give their customers more time to sing without charging them. Noraebangs are definitely getting quite competitive with each other to attract people. 

Now that the weather’s getting warmer and summer is just two months away, so many girls are worried about their bodies. “How am I going to be able to wear shorts with THESE LEGS?” or “My body is SO FAT I look pregnant!” All these concerns are probably what most girls have. A fit body is what they want, so they decide to go on a diet. This is very common for all girls, including me, and maybe even boys! So, what choices do all these chicks have for their diet? The two major ways they lose weight are by either starving themselves or exercising. 

Let’s talk about the starving part first. Starving is also well known as anorexia nervosa. This mental illness causes women to starve themselves to lose weight. Some even make themselves throw up or consume unhealthy drugs to make themselves feel not as hungry. Well, is this really a good solution? Think about it, if an anorexic girl reaches her goal and starts eating again, don’t you think that she will immediately gain weight again? Because her body has been dying for nutrition and just started storing everything in her body as soon as she ate something? I had a friend in grade seven who was so obsessed with losing weight that she became anorexic. Did she succeed? Nope. She ended up gaining more weight because of all the stress and the food she ate after she reached her dream weight. Starving could be the “easy way” to become lighter, but it may make you even fatter than you were.

Then, what about exercising? A lot of girls just don’t like to get all sweaty and hot, so they choose starving instead. BUT!! Think about the benefits of exercising. Your body will become healthier than before because you sweat out all the bad stuff in your body, and you’ll probably get more athletic from exercising. Not only that, you’ll definitely become slimmer, but you won’t be the skinny-fat kind of girl. Girls tend to think that starving (or at least eating less) is better because it lowers their weight more than exercising, but is that what we really want? Starving may lower the actual numbers more, but it doesn’t make you seem that much skinnier or healthier. Exercising, on the other hand, may not lower the numbers as much because it builds up muscle, but you will seem much slimmer and healthier. 

So, what method would you use?

Last Sunday, the 29th, a young Korean girl surprised the world by scoring a new world record World Figure Skating Championship. She is Kim Yuna, known as the fairy on ice, who is now the world’s best female figure skater. She was born in Bucheon, South Korea, in 1990 and started training at the age of six. Because of the poor conditions, Yuna had to train at night. At the age of 12, Yuna became the youngest female to win the senior title at the South Korean Figure Skating Championships. This was her first step towards becoming the queen of ice skating. Yuna has won numerous gold medals from international championships.

Getting first place in this year’s World Figure Skating Championship was very special for Yuna because this was an event she had been longing for. In the short program, she replaced her old world record with the score of 76.12 and scored another new world record of total of 207.71. Her score had a 16.42 points difference with the player that came second. 

Winning her first World Figure Skating Championship made Yuna cry. When the Korean national anthem song was played, tears started roling down her face. Yuna is famous for not crying no matter what, and I’m pretty sure that this was the first time she has cried at a championship. This definitely made the Koreans realize how hard she had worked to come this far. Now, everyone in Korea is extremely proud of this young girl. She may be only a freshman in college, but she has given hope and joy to the Koreans. You are truly amazing, Yuna!

Last Saturday, on the 28th, I went to the Wonder Girls’ first concert, “The 1st Wonder.” It was at the Olympic Fencing Gymnasium in Seoul. On their first concert tour, these girls went through Thailand and America and had their finale in Seoul, which was the one I went to. Although the concert started at 6 pm, my friend Joodi and I bought tickets for the standing seats, so we had to be at the gymnasium by 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Just like we had expected, the gymnasium was very crowded and full with excited people. It was funny how all the standing seats were full with guys and the actual seats were full with girls. We couldn’t see very well in the beginning because there were a lot of tall guys, but eventually found a spot where we could cheer and enjoy the concert. The girls were all very gorgeous and their songs and dances were great! Their concert was truly amazing and I would like to congratulate the girls for a such a great show! 

Title: He’s Just Not That Into You

Director: Ken Kwapis

Release Date: February 2009 (United States)

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Starring: Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Scarlett Johansson, Justin Long, Jennifer Connelly, Ginnifer Goodwin, Kevin Connolly, Bradley Cooper, Kris Kristofferson

He’s Just Not That Into You is a movie based on a self-help book by Gred Behrendt. The movie is about five women and four men, who are all extremely different people with different lives. First of all, there’s Gigi and Alex, who first meet at a bar. Gigi is an eager girl who is always trying too hard to find her mate. Alex always gives Gigi advice, telling her all the rules and codes for love. Next, there’s Janine, Ben and Anna. Janine, the perfectionist who always has to see things going her way, is married to Ben who is cheating on her with Anna, claiming that he was forced to marry Janine. Anna is also in a casual relationship with Conor, a realtor. Conor gets help from Anna’s friend Mary, a news paper editor. Finally, there is Beth and Neil, who have been dating for seven years and are living together. They are both in love with each other and Beth wants to get married with Neil, who thinks that signing some piece of paper for marriage is just stupid. 

Just reading the tangled and complicated relationships of these nine people probably makes your head hurt. The descriptions written down probably make you think of where and how there relationships are going to go, but don’t worry because this movie does have an ending. Since there’s so many people and loves, the movie also has quite a lot of themes and messages. For example, Neil’s decision in the end to marry Beth shows how important one’s sacrifice is. Just like he says in the movie, Neil’s happiness is Beth’s happiness, and marrying Beth is the way to make her happy. Another example is when Alex realizes after a fight with Gigi that he had been in love with her. Although he always gives Gigi advice about love, he doesn’t recognize his love for Gigi until the very end, after their fight. I think this also relates to the theme of movie as a whole, that there is no specific rule or code that all lovers have to follow. Just like the beginning of the movie, the whole “if a guy acts mean towards you, it’s because he likes you” is not necessarily true. To find true love and become happy, one has to realize that life is no romantic comedy that everyone dreams of, but something more of a reality show.

Title: The Accidental Husband

Directed by: Griffin Dunne

Produced by: Jennifer Todd, Suzanne Todd, Jason Blum

Written by: Mimi Hare, Clare Naylor, Bonnie Sikowitz

Starring: Uma Thurman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Colin Firth

Distributed by: Yari Film Group

Release Date(s): February 29, 2008 (UK), 2009 (US), 2009 (South Korea)

Genre: Romantic comedy

Country: United States

Language: English

The Accidental Husband is about Emma, a DJ and a writer, famous for her love counseling. All women in Manhattan listen to her radio show and always call her for advice. One day, Emma gets a call from Sophia, who wants to know if she’s making the right choice by marrying a man called Patrick. Emma basically tells Sophia that they shouldn’t get married, so Sophia decides to break up with Patrick. Heartbroken and furious, Patrick tries to get revenge on Emma, who is engaged to her fiancee, by hacking and registering Emma’s status as being married to himself. Emma, who is surprised when she finds out that she already has a husband when she wants to get married with her fiancee, visits Patrick which causes some bigger events to happen…

The Accidental Husband was full of interesting irony. The “love guru” Emma who always gives out advices to others, actually gets into a love problem which she has a hard time solving. This reminded me of an old Korean proverb, “a blacksmith’s knife is rusted.” The movie was trying to tell the audience that one should look back on himself before telling others what to do. This message made me think of my own actions, whether all the “advices” that I’d given out to others were actually advices. The movie was quite predictable, but it had a good message that people often don’t think about.

Everybody has mp3 players. Among these mp3 owners, there are earplug users and headphone users. I use earplugs and I believe that more people use them than headphones. Maybe that’s because headphones are not as “cool looking” as earplugs or they’re not as convenient to carry around as earplugs. However, my thoughts about using earplugs have changes now, because I found out that earplugs are much more harmful to your ears, specifically the tympanic membranes. It is said so that listening to music through earplugs are as harmful to your ears as being right next to the speaker at a rock concert! So, to inform everyone about the dangers of earplugs and promote the use of headphone, I would like to show some cool headphones that people might like.

MIX STYLE

SKULL CANDY

ZUMREED

They’re unique, they’re stylish, they’re cool!

In the world of fashion, having clothes with nice designs isn’t good enough. Pretty-but-plain designs need to be enhanced with interesting patterns or texture, in order to stand out. 

Since I’m majoring in art and willing to pursue a career in the fashion industry, I looked up some patterns for clothign that I found engaging.

ANIMAL PRINTS

Zebra

Leopard

Dalmatian

Giraffe

FLORAL PRINTS

Daisy 

Rose

Lily

If you’re someone not familiar with East Asian culture, you’ll probably be wondering what “White Day” means. White Day is on March 14th, which is a month after Valentines Day. In some East Asian countries such as Korea or Japan, only the females give guys chocolate on Valentines Day, and therefore guys are supposed to present girls with candy on White Day.

It says that White Day was first celebrated on 1978 in Japan. A confectionary company decided that men should give women candy as a response to the chocolate the females have given them, and came up with the idea of White Day. Other sweets companies started manufacturing candy for White Day, and the tradition spread throughout East Asia.

After, the Koreans came up with the idea of Black Day, when people who haven’t received any chocolate or candy go eat black bean noodles. However, this day is not as popular in Korea, so not many people actually participate. In my opinion, this may be because people don’t want to celebrate for not receiving anything.

There are a lot of traditional days White Day and Black Day in Korea, such as Pepero Day, which the Koreans celebrate.

All images from google.com