A Praise Chorus
Wooo! Exam week! It's Tuesday morning and I am in a pretty good mood, despite feeling a little stressed about grad school applications. I won't teach anything until Thursday, and even then, it's just two classes. Lucky, huh? We finish early, too, so I get to go home at 11 am. Yesterday, I finished and went to a coffee shop in Sillim to wait for Dean. I love coffee shop culture, I have to admit. Getting one drink (yesterday, it was just a lemonade) and sitting there with your iPod, writing to edit, or a sketchpad just for fun, away from the distractions of the apartment for a few hours. I brought with me a stack of old poems so I could tear them apart. The problem was that, after the massacre, I didn't quite know how to stitch them back up again. So now I have all these sad little fragments of poems that have the rest of their bodies violently x-ed out with things like "stupid", "completely unnecessary", "cliche" scribbled on the margins. Today and tomorrow will be dedicated to picking up the pieces and maybe even penning some new stuff.
On a good note, last weekend was the best weekend I've had in at least a month. Friday marked the opening of Circle Lounge, formerly the famous Club Circle. We were a big group, ranging from me, Dean, and Michael to our friend Dorothy (she never comes out with us!), a lot of Arirang DJs, some party girls, and um, Brian Joo (of Fly to the Sky). I hadn't anticipated having such a good time, and I guess that's why there was no pressure for "this has to be EPIC". The good mood just sneaked up on me out of nowhere.
We stayed out until around 5:30 and then came home to crash. The next night, I went to...a slumber party! Dorothy had the great idea of throwing a junior high style slumber party for the girls of Arirang and she was sweet enough to invite me, too. One of my only close girl friends here works for Arirang and two of the other girls I knew from Dorothy's fashion show I did earlier this fall. I felt stupid for feeling jittery about it, but it was just like being a teen again--flattered to be invited but also knowing that you don't know most of the girls invited.
It turned out that I had nothing to be worried about. Within a minute of setting my jacket down in the bedroom, someone was already pouring me a generous cup of "Purple Skittles", a drink with such an innocent name and taste that um, really turned out to be a little dangerous. Three cups later, we were all laughing hysterically at almost anything. Dorothy had provided us with a huuuge table of snack food (taquitos, m&m's, korean pork, pizza, cookies) and we kept making fun of ourselves for not having the willpower to step away from the table and go into the living room.
For the rest of the night, we amused ourselves with karaoke, manicures, a "New Moon" bootleg (during which I couldn't help insert as many sarcastic comments as possible, leading to the inevitable shrieks of, "Jennnnn!!!!!!! How can you say that??? He's BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!!"), more food, and the teasing of our one Canadian friend who had the guts to show up wearing her Canada jacket.
My last entry was really long, so I'll keep this one short. There are a LOT of pictures from the slumber party, though! And yes, I know, I look really young with the pink headband AND the pigtails. But I had no choice, you see. That's just how slumber parties work.
We all had to do our hair is some really girly, youthful style and Dorothy gave us different colored ribbon, too. For me, the choice was obvious: pigtails.
Everyone else was very ready for this series of photos except for me. I'm just awkward.
We took group photos galore. Even though it was supposed to be a girls' night, some boys did drop by (including Brian Joo wearing a big blue bathrobe).
Whiteberries, love shots, crepes, strange photo angles.
My camera battery said it was dead about an hour or two into the party, so I had to use my camera phone after that. The next morning, though, the battery said it was full. THANKS A LOT, CANON. But everyone brought cameras that night so it was a picture overload.
This is from the night before at the launching of Circle Lounge.
Finally, here is a video from the night!
This title is A Praise Chorus by Jimmy Eat World
Are you gonna waste your time thinking
How you’ve grown up,
Or how you missed out?
Things are never gonna be the way you want.
Where's it gonna get you acting serious?
Things are never gonna be quite what you want,
Or even at 25,
You gotta start sometime.
I’m on my feet I’m on the floor I’m good to go.
Now all I need is just to hear a song I know.
I wanna always feel like part of this was mine...
I wanna fall in love tonight.
Comments
Nice post, it DOES sound like loads of fun. now, i feel the urge to have a big slumber party, lol
And yeah...I look too young. After we all had our hair in these really cutesy styles, we looked around at each other going, "Ohhh you look so cute!" but then someone just looked at me and said, "No, you actually look like you are 14." -_-;
sheLLiJiElUn : Do it! If this party proved anything to me...it's that you're never too old to have a good ol' slumber party.
dancingbymyself : Yeah, she sang some songs and she has a great voice--very strong. As for the poetry, sometimes it's good if the feeling changes. I guess what some of my teachers have taught me is that you can start with one thing and end up with something completely different...but better. Sometimes, editing too much is bad, but often, going back every few months and even every few years is a good thing. You can notice things that you never noticed before.
cccatherine: Any celebs I'd really die to meet? Hmmm...I don't know! I think I'm a fairly relaxed person, so I can't see myself acting like a fool or losing my words just from meeting a Korean celebrity. So hmm...yeah, not sure how to answer that. Maybe...DBSK? Just because they are so massive? I don't know!
2. I don't think rewiting poems is that good of an idea lol. Maybe going back a an hour or two later and doing some basics, but anything more then a day or so, your mind will have changed from where you were when you wrote it, and I think alot of the time, even if just a few words/phrases change it can change the entire feeling of the poem.
The slumber party looks like it was a lot of fun~looking at these pics makes me want to have a slumber party now ~ XD
I love the slumber party pics, and I totally know what you mean about the coffee shop thing. I usually like to go to my local coffee shop, get some hot chocolate, and stare at people outside. haha.
Anyways, wow you look like a little kid in the slumber pics 0___0 Its a compliment ;)
4th.ave.cafe : Writing the blogs can be--I'll be honest--absolute hell sometimes. If nothing I consider "significant" happens, do I write about something personal or just not write anything at all? And if five or six really cool things happen, how do I write about them without writing a book?
I don't have any technical way of writing about them. If it starts to look way to long, I either just cut out big chunks of it or shrug and let it be. There have definitely been times where I have left out really big events just because the blog was already too long or I didn't feel like typing it up. -_-;
KanJi : Yes! I wrote five new versions for one poem last week, and I hated them all so much, I ended up just making the original one the final one. Sometimes, all that scribbling is just not worth it.
dancingbymyself: You're an Isak fanboy?? :D Fantastic. I just met Brian a few times because he's neighbors with my unnie.
MIS0HAPPY : Azumanga daioh...is that the REALLY CRAZY one with the pervy gym teacher?? And the insane intro song with all the "la lala lalalalalala"??
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