Regular updates, how do they work?

Ah the problem of continuously putting off posting, I am unfortunately left facing a lot of things to say. Warning, you have what will possibly be a very long post ahead of you. But eventually I'll get the hang of posting more often again and hopefully I can get to posting twice a month at least so I can keep the size of each post down. I did finally decide I had to post though after a couple important straws broke this camel's back. Those things happen to both involve Seattle U; one being my clearance to graduate (I was starting to get worried) and the other being my acceptance to Seattle U law. I'm still leaning towards applying for teaching jobs in Korea, but it was nice to get that acceptance; my family had gone almost a week without hearing about a college acceptance (Kathryn has heard back positively from 6 of 8 so far). So anyway, time to reminisce about last quarter.

Projects Galore:
To wrap up the quarter, I was faced with two group presentations (a 20 minute one and a 50 minute one) as well as two 3,000 word essays. The level of business was almost reminiscent of spring quarter 2011 when I was doing projects alongside LSAT study. This quarter was less busy and the pain was less that I had so much to do and more that I had been lazy all quarter and brought this upon myself. My essays actually turned out to both be more enjoyable than I had hoped. My videogames and culture essay discussed the past, present, and future financial success of professional Starcraft. It wound up going over the limit by about 2,000 words; however I don't think the professor minded. We had to make a brief presentation to the class in addition to the paper and mine naturally went long (I couldn't help myself, I had a captive audience listening to me talking about Starcraft!), but everyone seemed to really enjoy it and was asking me questions about it afterwards. My second paper was a market analysis on the market of my choice. Since I chose my topic late, I wrote about how OPEC countries act as a cartel to control market prices. It was a pretty dry paper, but I had fun researching and writing it. I think it was just nice to get back into that grind that I never really had to get into in Korea.

My presentations were another matter. The 50 minute one actually went pretty well. There were only four groups in the whole class, so each group had 8 people, which is more than enough people to hide amongst. My other project was not as successful. We were the last to choose our topic, only really deciding on it a week before the deadline. What's more, we only had time to work on it during a four day weekend. It was a pretty stressful project in that I wound up doing almost the entire thing. I felt under pressure to do well and to carry it because the professor teaching the class for which this project was to be turned in is one of the ones that wrote me my letter of recommendation (the one I really respect and am terrified of). She also seemed to really only give me any credit for being intelligent in the group which I think was partly due to the fact that she knew me (which should suggest otherwise...) and the fact that I was the one that nobody ever had a problem with. The other three kept pointing fingers at each other for some problem. And I don't know what goes on in the International Business department (all three of them were in that major), but they turned in some really unprofessional crap to me that I had to really edit. One guy is from China and English is his second language, so I was fine editing his stuff, but I expected to have to edit less from the other two. Fortunately, I had allocated an entire weekend to devote to preparing the project and that seems to have paid off given my final grade in the class. On the day of the presentation, one of the girls in my group showed up late to class. It would be excusable normally, but she was late by 15 minutes consistently every single day of the quarter. The only day she showed up on time was the first day of presentations when we thought we were going to have to go, so we met before class. When the presentation started without her, I had to be ready to take her spot on it because not only was I the only one that read over everyone's part, but the IB people seemed really unable to publicly speak (but again in one case that's because he's not confident in English even though he did really well). Anyway, I was happy to put all that behind me. I even got time to study for the last test ever with my favorite professor and based on how I feel about the test and how my final grade turned out, it seems that it was my best grade on any of her tests.

Frisbee:
I actually wound up missing pretty much all frisbee events and practices between the beginning of February and the end of the quarter. I had some really bad sickness that we thought was pneumonia at one point, but now we have no idea. I'm basing it on what dad's doctor told him since I gave him exactly what I had and I refused to go to the doctor myself. Either way, I seem to be over it now. I did make it to the last practice of the year on our field. It's being torn down to make a really nice one that will be available next fall once the seniors have graduated. Those of us that showed up celebrated the last practice with drunk frisbee. I brought a shit ton of PBR (I bought it ironically which probably makes it 1000 times worse) and we had some hard stuff too. There was a lot of public urination, burying cans on the field, jokes, and the captain even gave a speech from LotR whilst riding around on his imaginary horse at one point. It was a great way to send off the field in style. Now that I'm healthy(ish) again, I'm looking forward to tournament season. We have one this weekend in Ellensburg, then sectionals next month. After that, hopefully one at EWU which was really fun last year and then a tournament at a location which I do not know, but I do know it involves a weekend of solid drinking. I opted not to go last year because I didn't want to tempt the fates with my 21 drinking bet and all, but I'm for sure going this year.

Videogames:
Well this is mostly League of Legends related. I did recently get Mass Effect 3, but nothing to report right now. I haven't seen the supposedly shitty ending yet and I hope it's not as bad as they all say. I've been playing a lot of League with Eric, Steven, and Chris. The occasional drunk LoL is also fun. I'm starting to narrow in on a few champions that I suck slightly less with although I still have a really bad game all too often. I haven't played much Starcraft recently, but I've been occasionally watching it still when I get time and am up late enough.

Spring Break:
I spent my spring break doing my tour of the family which has basically involved me talking about Korea to every family member that hasn't gotten to see me since I got back. I spent some time at the ocean with Grandpa over the weekend which was fun even though the weather was kinda crappy. We got up to see my  great aunt and uncle in Forks which was nice as always. After that, I had about a day back, then went to Eastern Washington to see my uncle and aunt and cousin, then to see Shorewood do the state drill competition (Kathryn's in it, I'm not a creeper). I found out my cousin's husband plays League, so hopefully I'll get to see him online sometimes.

Teeth:
So I don't know where I last left off on my teeth and all, but I had that root canal for the tooth that long ago was chipped and had since died. Looks like I'll need a second because the one next to it was involved too. But in the meantime, I'll be getting permanent plaster caps (veneers?) on my front teeth tomorrow. For the last two weeks, I had temporary ones which are actually one unit and are made of plastic. Having two teeth as one has been uncomfortable, but I will soon not have to bear that annoyance anymore. The biggest pain in the ass about the temporary caps has been I can't bite my fingernails which has driven me insane to a point where I would be biting my nails even more frequently. Tomorrow I get it all fixed up though and I'll have nice, permanent caps over my front teeth. I elected to have them look exactly the same as before rather than make their bottoms level with each other because I decided I liked it being just slightly off like that since the teeth are otherwise perfectly straight. I'll take picture of it and I'll include those in my next post for your viewing pleasure (on an imgur account, I don't want to subject you to my teeth every time you hit this page).

Wow, that's actually all I had to say. Maybe we got lucky and this post was a little shorter. I'll probably wind up posting next Monday after the tournament in Ellensburg. If not then, I'll be posting in the second week of April. Until then, peace out.

I owe you another post now

Well it's been a while since my last post. I've used my time in February to get caught up on some things while accidentally falling behind on classwork as I get used to a quarter system that is very short. The end of the term has snuck up on me, I was still used to semester length terms and neglected to start my multiple papers. Also notable, I recently finished my applications (oh wait, application) to law schools (er, law school T__T).

I did actually continue with the law school application process even though going back to Korea is now a more desirable course of action for me. I figured I burned so much time getting ready to apply that I had to keep going with it. Unfortunately, I found out there was a problem with my transcripts a couple weeks before the deadline for the UW (the problem being that they never arrived). So I had to go back to request transcripts from my school which was punctual as always, then SCC which was unpunctual as always. First of all, I find that every time I go back to SCC, I wonder how I was ever so happy to go there. Don't get me wrong, I got a good education and I'm glad I went and saved all that money, but a lot of the people there are just so weird. I guess maybe I'm just growing more used to the hipster crowd (shudder) at Seattle U. So I went to SCC and as usual, they told me it takes 5-7 business days to process then send out my transcript meaning it would get to the LSAC in about 2 actual weeks. As usual, I spent that whole explanation contemplating in my head why it takes a school 1/4 the size of SU 4 times the time to send out a transcript. But I had plenty of time, so I wasn't too frustrated about it. Until I received a note from the LSAC a few days before the deadline that my SCC transcript had arrived without a required form attached. Each transcript has to be sent with a form that is signed by the registrar so that the LSAC knows it's legitimate. I told SCC to attach it and they didn't. So I had to run back there and they actually made me pay for the transcript again, then gave me the same crap about how it would take time and I said well I was hoping you would have done it right the first time, so please do it as quickly as possible. And they did it faster than they had done before, but they got it in THE DAY AFTER THE DEADLINE. So having that transcript not there effectively destroyed any chance I have of going to the UW because even if I had been able to apply, they would have seen that I had only been in school for two years, which would be almost an instant denial given my GPA and LSAT score being about lower to middle range for what they want. Seattle U's deadline is the first of March, so I put in my application for them and we'll see where that goes. I'm not holding out for getting any money from them, so as soon as my projects are done, I'm going to start looking at ways to sign on with a company to go teach back in Korea.

On that note, I find that I really miss that place. I enjoyed having my own place (although the basement is working for me again here) and living in a fun city where I could watch Starcraft whenever I wanted. There are some times when I don't want to leave here though, but those times are mostly when I'm hanging out with  Steven, Eric, and Chris. I figure I can always meet up with them online though, so being in Seoul wouldn't be too bad.

Speaking of hanging out with those guys, I've started playing League of Legends a lot more recently. It's been fun and those three are saints for putting up with me bumbling around in the game. I'm a lot better than when I started, but I still have a ways to go. I hope to be at a skill level where I can maintain the default ELO rating once I reach level 30. Currently, I'm not up to snuff there. But I'm getting more practiced with a few champions that I like which is making it easier to improve in certain roles.

My classes have been going well, frisbee has not been so great. I've spent most of this quarter horribly busy on practice days or sick, which has prevented me from going recently. I want to go, but practice is 2 hours and my travel time to and from it is another two hours and when those hours are right in the middle of the day, it is really difficult to make it down since those are hours I need to spend working with groups on projects. We have a tournament coming up in mid-March and I'm really hoping to get some practice time in before then, but it's looking like I might not be able to get back to practice until next week at least.

For classes, my econ ones are fine. The videogames class recently had us playing WoW (I think he chose that one because of the culture it has created and the relatively flat learning curve). I picked a class that could heal, tank, or dps since I am one of the guys in class that is more experienced in games (most of the class is casuals). I leveled up at great pain because the game was so boring. Yesterday, we did our culminating event in the game, an instance run. I ran in a group with my friend from the frisbee team who tanked, then a new guy, an experienced WoW player, and my professor's dad (who was really cool) who were all dps. Then at the request of the professor since I was a priest, I provided heals. Healing is really the final frontier for me in MMOs because I seem to have touched on every other type of role except that one. I am proud to report though that I did really well and my group was one of only two that didn't suffer any casualties. I have to start writing my paper for this class soon, but I'm excited about it because I'm writing about the history and economic prospects of professional Starcraft. It's an interdisciplinary core class, so we were suggested to write papers about videogame culture that we could relate to our own majors in some way. This is going to be my easiest paper because I can definitely talk about economics and Starcraft for a long time.

Sorry to cut this post short, but I don't have too much left to say. Also, I'm making it while my rice is cooking for lunch (yes, we finally got a rice cooker!!!) and it's about done, so I'm going to tend to that, then get my papers started.

New classes and things I forgot to mention

Now that I've completed a few of the class sessions, it seems appropriate to comment on them. It's actually weird to think that I just have about 12 classes left for each one (time flies when you stack them all on two days of the week). On that note, I finally met someone like me. He happens to be in all three of my classes with me and we gave each other props for being hardcore enough to have all our classes on two days of the week. It's bad on the one hand because I have about 8 hours of class going on those days, but having those four day weekends and Wednesdays off is a pretty fair tradeoff. After I get done with the classes and frisbee, I'll hop onto a couple subjects that I forgot to mention in my earlier post that were quite noteworthy.

Asian Economic Development:
I signed up for this class first because I figured it would be a good class considering I just came from Asia and studied economics there. I was already looking forward to it before I found out my favorite teacher was the professor. I'm now in the cool circle with her because this is my third class with her. Many people usually wind up in her class once then avoid her like the plague, but I like her. This class is actually not bad, but it can get dry at times mostly because it's the first class of the day. I think I'll do well since I'm now quite used to her teaching style and this time around, I have more knowledge on the subject which means more participation points if I am so inclined.

Economic Strategy and Markets:
This class has turned out to be a more micro based course (I don't know what I expected...) which is nice because I greatly prefer micro to macroecon and this is the first micro based course I've had since I took microecon which is the first class that got me down the economics track all the way back in 2009 fall quarter. The professor is a nice guy and his class is organized well, but sometimes I feel behind in the class because prerequisites for the class are principles of microeconomics and business calculus and I believe that I am the person in the class for whom it has been the longest since they took those classes.

Videogames and Culture:
Originally, this was going to be a third economics elective because I thought I had to take one. I was not happy because that class was a Monday/Wednesday class, which made my classes split up awkwardly. Instead, I found out that I could take a core interdisciplinary instead of that course which I did not need at all and I happened to notice this one which fit perfectly with my interests and schedule. It turns out the captain of the frisbee team who is a good friend of mine is also in the class. As a Strategic Communications major, this class is a major-based elective for him, but it's cool to have someone I know well in a class for once. The professor is really cool and the class is going really well. My final paper is going to be about the economic prospects of the esports industry which is going to kick serious ass because of all the primary sources I am bringing back with me. We finished our first test recently and since I hadn't studied and his tests are organized very strangely (but he helps us figure it out after they are graded and constantly asserts that you can fail the first test and still recover well because the first test counts for so little of the test grade) it seemed that I had not done well because I got just one point shy of an A-. Then he showed the three highest scores (anonymously) and mine was number 2. I had to contain my chuckles as I could only wonder what the rest of the class did. This class is definitely my favorite of the three even though the other two are related to economics.

Other things:
I recently found out that the lump in my gums was due to having a dead tooth. I fell and chipped it back in 2003 and since then, it died. I had to go in to get a root canal which sucked, but we found out through the process that only one was dead, not two. That was good news since I didn't want to have to go back for a second root canal.

I've also been getting more into League, getting to play with Steven, Eric, and Chris pretty often. Beyond that, I've either been playing SC2 when Keir is on or just playing Skyrim by myself which is really fun. Until next post everyone, peace out.

Re-assimilation into America (but also some other noteworthy events in Asia)

I have indeed had classes by this point in time, but I will refrain from mentioning them until when I next make a post which I'm planning to do next week in the first half of the week. I should be able to hold myself to that deadline because the post will be short since it will only pertain to my classes. In this post, I'll cover the last few days I had in Korea, then Japan, then briefly go over things that have happened since I've been back. But before I get to that, shoutout to Steven for updating! Thanks for giving me new reading material! Go check out his blog if you get bored of my rants.

Final Days in Korea:

On the moving out day for the dorm, we had to be cleared out by 11am, so many people opted not to sleep due to a combination of some people having early flights and everyone not wanting to have to lose a lot of time when they could be having last hurrahs with each other. I wound up spending most of the night with Chang and this guy who is a BroodWar caster from England who was in town visiting (coincidentally, Chang happens to be his biggest fan) on his way to visit his parents in China. We also hung out with a couple other guys from TeamLiquid who were in town visiting relatives. I wound up getting into the dorm really early in the morning as some people were actually leaving (around 3am at this point). I got into my room where Steve (roommate) was still up and packing and I joined in as well. I got about an hour of sleep and he just went to sleep and planned to get up at 10:30am. I had to get up at 6 and make two trips back and forth to the hotel where I was staying. I would have liked to do it all in one trip, but I had bought so many things, I couldn't get it all into the one suitcase I brought (getting everything I had over in such a small amount of space was challenge enough). I wound up falling asleep in all the taxis I took, but it was fine because the taxi drivers were cool guys. I finally got back to the dorm after my trips after a 2 hour double cross town trip session and just went to sleep. I was awoken with a knock on the door as one of Steve's friends came to say goodbye. It was 11:30. So we both had to pack up and leave quickly. I said goodbye, then went downstairs to help Chang move her things to the bus because she had two huge suitcases that I'm sure she could have lived comfortably in (like using them as houses). That night, after some BroodWar related antics with the caster and the two other guys as well as a friend of mine from the OSL finals, I went back to the hotel and was reunited with my parents.

And so began the busy days of traipsing about Seoul in weather that was in highs of the teens. I showed them all my favorite places around the city and they seemed to get why I liked it so much. I also got to show them how pro I had become at interacting with people, which was also nice. I warned them that old people would point at me and say things to me, then I would respond to them and that all that was happening is we were talking about how I was wearing shorts in such cold weather. It happened a lot, so I was glad I didn't warn them for something that didn't happen. Another fun thing was that our hotel had a really nice casino that is regarded as one of the nicer casisnos in Seoul. I went gambling there twice and just wound up doing roulette both nights because the blackjack tables were all super crowded and it was a lot easier to enter a roulette table. The first day was just dad and I. I won about $25 (25,000W) and dad won about $37. The second night, all four of us went gambling. We all started out with $50 each. Mom and Kathryn and dad did slots for some reason. Mom and Kathryn combined came out up $5 and dad lost all his money. They went to bed way before me and I wound up sitting at a roulette table for 2 hours with these two nice Japanese guys and we all did pretty good. It was funny to react at each other when we all won big money from boxing out the same numbers. In the end, I won $350 (350,000W) and had to cash out at the big boy cashier. I was pretty happy with myself there. There was a Girls Generation repackage album that was different from the Boys by only one song, but it also came with some cool other things and since I won big money, I figured paying (normal CD price) for it was definitely fine. I do not regret that purchase as I now have a nice picture of Sunny looking back at me from above my computer screen.

Going to Japan:

This will be brief because I confirmed through my second time in Japan that I don't really care much for Japan. I just fit in a lot better with Korea. I think if I wind up living there, I will do more travel to China and if I learn a language after Korean, it will be Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese? I thought Cantonese was for pros, but Eric says I would just get made fun of a lot T___T (I just wanted to be a hipster Chinese speaker)). Anyway, Tokyo was kinda cool. It was unlike any other city I've been in. I thought Seoul was huge being the second largest city in the world and all, but Tokyo stomps the crap out of that. It is massive and the subway system is complex to an equally insane degree. We looked around a lot and got to see a lot of the big tourist attractions. Using some of the gambling money I won, I bought myself Girls' Generation's Japanese CD that I had been looking for last time I was in Japan. In addition to seeing the sights, we spent a few days at Tokyo Disneyland because yes, we absolutely had to. It was really okay. The Japanese seem to be really afraid of rollercoasters, which were conspicuously absent throughout the park. Aside from that, it was a neat experience. Flavored popcorn is big there, sometimes the lines were even larger than those for the rides. After the five days in Japan though, I was starting to get homesick. Not necessarily just for Washington, but for Korea as well. I really just wanted to get out of Japan to somewhere I liked.

On our way out of Japan though, we found out the morning of our flight that it had been cancelled because the flight from Seattle never arrived. There was a small group of people from our flight that was also going to Seattle and we wound up getting rescheduled on the same flights, which was kind of nice to have people to share the experience with. We actually had a direct flight to Seattle, but they changed it to a Singapore Air flight (dad and I were super excited because we had seen the ads in the Economist and knew how good the planes were) and then we had a 7 hour layover in LAX (T___T) before going home and getting to Seattle 12 hours after we were supposed to land. The Singapore air flight was super kickass. It had bigger screens, more legroom, a power outlet, free internet, and pretty flight attendants. I would have used the internet, but I found a lot of good movies that I had wanted to see while I was gone from the states, so I used the time to get caught up with that. The layover sucked, but I drank a couple big beers on an empty stomach which allowed me to sleep through about 3 hours of the layover. In the end, we got to Seattle at 10:30pm on New Years Eve and stayed up pretty much just to see the clock turn over to midnight before going to bed. I was able to normalize my sleep schedule, but my family slept in way late the first day.

America:
I've been doing normal things again. School and frisbee started up so that's been eating up some of my time. I'll get into those next post in what will be a fairly short one. I also started seeing Grandpa on Wednesdays again which has been nice to get back to. There has also been game night which changes nights and times now that Steven and Chris are both working (props to that guys). Finally, I started back up with the D&D group. They switched to 4e while I was gone which is unfortunate because according to Steven, there has been less roleplaying and more combat which has definitely been the case since I've been there. I got my new character though and it's been pretty fun to play, so I don't mind terribly. And there has been an economic aspect added to it which of course I enjoy because Chris invested in land which was converted to a farm and brothel (I have no idea why those two things, but they're really profitable).

I really miss Korea still which is interesting because I didn't miss America at all when I left. I don't mind so much when I'm hanging out with people, but times like right now, I kind of wish I was back. I haven't watched any live Starcraft since I've been back partially because I just can't go back to low quality streams and I got too used to it being on at a convenient time. Fortunately, BroodWar matches get free high quality vods posted, so I've been keeping up with that better so than with SC2. I just started playing again though with Keir. I can't wait to play more, it's been too long since we've played together. I also have started to get more into LoL with Chris and Steven and Eric. It has also been fun to have them teach me how to suck slightly less. And of course the biggest news:

I

BEAT

GUILD WARS

My Hall of Monuments Page as Proof

 The moment.

 At long last they can be together!

I'm pretty happy about this.

So I'm done with Guild Wars 1 forever. Unless Chris calls me back in to help him with his own progress, there is no chance you will ever see me online. I was determined to spend as little time on this as possible when I got back and thankfully, I was able to play the mercantile game rather than having to resort to farming to get my last three titles. It took two weeks after getting back, but on the 14th of January, I finally did it. Major weight off my shoulders as now I feel like I got back a piece of my life that I haven't had in a very long time.

Well until next week, that's all I have for you now. I'll see you later.

Ok at long last, my last month in Seoul

Well as pretty much all of you reading should know, I'm back from Seoul. I got in when I made my last little post. A lot of things happened in my last month and between all that and finals, then my family coming, then having no internet access into having late flights, I somehow managed to not make a post in December at all. It was quite a colossal failure and I'll try to make up for it with a good post. For now though in the interest of keeping this short, I'll stop this post at the point when my family arrived in Seoul. That keeps this post to a manageable 25 days (at least I hope manageable....).

Girls:
When I last left off, I had gone on a single date with a girl. That unfortunately did not pan out as I had hoped. We seemed to get along, but since she worked for the company I was a student for, she pretty much flat out said there was to be no dating between us and left it at that. The email was actually pretty bluntly worded and I wasn't sure if she was angry/frustrated with me or if she was just simply stating the facts. After that point, I apologized, tried to keep it professional going on, and communication with her was less frequent, though we still were nice to each other. On my last day there, I got called up to the office because she had something to give me for participating in something (unimportant as to what it was) and at that point, I got to talk to her and the director of the program a bit about saying goodbye, thanks for doing this and that, and the I'll see you if I'm ever in the area. But the assistant awkwardly forced into the conversation the fact that she would see me again if I came back to Seoul. Not in a creepy way of course, just in such a way that it was notable, almost like she was asking to meet up when I came back. Honestly, I have no idea what to make of it, though as always I will be optimistic. In the meantime though it's probably at least 8 months until I get back to Seoul for teaching, so we'll see what happens.

After getting rejected by her (which happened just a couple days after my last big post), I was a little disappointed about it, but remembered this other girl I was hanging out with a lot. She was the one that was really into Starcraft. At the point when I got rejected, I started to get more flirty with her until a point eventually when I actually talked to her about it. But she had had a bad breakup with a boyfriend who moved away and either cheated on her or just dumped her, but either way, he wound up with this girl that he had liked for a long time. I figured that had been 3 years ago and she was over it, but such was not the case. She said I was cool, but she refused to do anything long distance (especially since she is a junior in college and it would be a while before we theoretically lived in the same city (I will not entertain the idea of moving to California) so it would not work out. Now having been rejected twice, I figured it was time to just stop trying in Seoul. That conversation happened on the 17th anyway (family came in on the 21st), so it seemed a reasonable decision. I was disappointed to have been turned down twice like that, legitimate excuses or not, but oh well, that's a hell of a lot more than I've ever done in my life before so I'll take what small victory I can get from this haha.

What do you mean that's all you wanted to read about? Keep reading, there's more stuff.

Starcraft:
It was my last few times going to the GOM studio. I got to show a lot of people around there and eventually, the adventure came to an end. I said goodbye to casters and some players (they all had nice things to say when I left) and I departed for the last time. I also managed to get a picture with the girl at the front desk who I was always to shy to talk to. I did have a brief conversation with her (in Korean!) in which I told her I was leaving, but was hoping to come back next year to teach English. Then we got a picture (which took an awkwardly large number of attempts (stupid camera)) and then she let me take a picture of the picture wall. I picked on that made me laugh all season long and it is now safely in my possession...somewhere. I'll find it eventually. It's with another picture that I don't want to lose, so I know I have it stashed somewhere, unpacking is just taking me forever.

World Cyber Games:
So the WCG this year was held in Busan, the first time it had been in Korea since the first one. I was going down with Chang (Starcraft girl) as well as a friend from Canada (they were both going separately from my other group) and then also my group which consisted of me, my Canadian Starcraft friend Chris, Matt from my program, Dan (a friend of Chris and Matt), then Jan and Daniel who were the Germans. We met up with another friend there, Jens who also plays SC with Jan and I at PC bangs once in a while. Since the Germans had class on Friday morning, we all decided to leave after that. Chang and the Canadian guy left first thing that morning because there was a BroodWar game going on that night and Chang wanted to be there for it. My group got there just as it was starting, then the rest of them decided to go look around the town (they mostly went for tourism, just wanting to come to the WCG for the finals day) while I went to meet the other two at the event where I caught the last 3 games of the proleague. At that point, I met up with Jens by random chance. After the game, the four of us went out to get Korean BBQ and our drank on. Chang is really short (5'0") so she had four shots and it was all about how attractive she thought Bisu and Stork are. After that, we met up with the other people from my group and went out drinking again before everyone went back to go to bed.

On the second day, it was just the four of us (that had gone to BW the day before) again. Jens split off during the day and eventually wound up going back to Seoul because he had things to turn in for classes and he could call what was going to happen in the finals (it was the best Terran Korean in the world vs a relatively unknown Chinese Zerg player). I got the chance to talk to Moletrap (GSL caster) for a while which was cool. That night, there was an auction for charity and Stork was not quite MCing it, but not quite modeling things either. It was somewhere in between. Long story short Chang wound up buying a Samsung KHAN leather jacket that belonged to and was signed by Stork with my financial backing (she was short on cash, so I put in 70k (Won, not dollars) to help her out (I got paid back (wouldn't have been an issue if she hadn't rejected me >__>)) (I hope my parentheses open and close correctly here or I will feel the fool)) and as a result, we both got to go up on stage to meet him. It made it on a Korean news site, which was a little funny. After that, the three of us went to get some food nearby, then me and the Canadian guy went out drinking with the Germans since we had some time. We then proceeded to play semi/drunk SC which was really fun.

The third day we were there was finals day. I spent the whole day just watching finals of various games including Warcraft 3, Starcraft 2, League of Legends, and even Fifa '12. In there somewhere, I also managed to get interviewed about Samsung by Samsung. I don't know what's going to happen to that horribly awkward video. We stuck around for the awards ceremony which was fun in that it was really cheesy and lame. There was a silly performance by a magic dance troupe from Korea. They danced to All that Jazz (which since it was Korean, became "All Dat Jaj") before breaking into Danshing Queen. After that, a Chinese pop band came out to perform songs (since the next 2 WCG's are in some city in China). The C-pop was the most creepy pop music I have ever listened to, but the girls at the end when they congratulated everyone and said they would see us in China was so amazingly cute. I want to have each of them to talk to me like that forever. I would never tire of it. After all that, the entire group of everyone caught the train back to Seoul at about 10 at night. The Canadian guy had kind of made everyone sick of him, but Tasteless and Artosis (most famous SC2 casters) and a couple other guys were on our train, so the Canadian guy ditched us for the whole ride to have an epic drunk adventure with them. It worked out for the rest of us. Chang was sleepy so I let her lean over on my shoulder/arm since she is so short which made the train ride home super awesome. Chris and I talked about SC most of the way, then decided we would hit up a PC bang when we got back at 1am. We wound up going to one from 2-5. I lost a best of 7 to him, losing 4-1 (he is a platinum NA player and I am not quite anywhere near that) then we did some team games.

Classes:
Well they finally ended. Actually I really have nothing else to say about them, sorry.

It's now late and I should really get to bed because I need to eventually get my schedule normalized since I'm starting school again in two days. I'll try to fit in a post sometime next week about time until school started. Until then, peace out.

FFFFUUUUUUU

I FORGOT TO POST LAST MONTH. THE FIRST TIME MY BLOG HAS FAILED TO DELIVER EVEN ONE UPDATE IN A WHOLE MONTH. I APOLOGIZE AND WILL POST MORE EVENTUALLY.

We can blame flight schedules and laziness and whatnot. I'll probably give you guys a somewhat detailed account tomorrow, but then I will post more in detail about stuff I did.

Sneaking in a post before the end of the month

And golly gee willikers, what a month it's been. I went on (technically?) my first date ever, met both BoxeR and (more importantly) Firebathero, found new Starcraft friends, had a fun bonding week with my group, picked up laddering, and  generally just continued to enjoy life in the city. I promise I will cover all these things in the post and with that, I shall get started.

Social interactions:
Most of those leads I mentioned in the last post have dried up. The North Koreans are not going to work out, but I had begun to think maybe that wasn't the best idea to begin with. The GSL girl is still around, but I still have no idea if that guy with her is her boyfriend or coworker. Either way, I was too shy to ever ask her out, and anyway, I wound up asking out the girl that was my first choice anyway (well I guess second if you count Sunny >__>). Anyway, the story shall be detailed below.

November 11th is Pepero day in Korea (Pepero is the Korean version of pocky sticks). Since this was 11/11/11, it was called millenium pepero day (despite it happening every century the way they wrote out the date, but whatever), however that is more or less irrelevant to this story. The magic of Pepero day is you can give Pepero to anyone and there doesn't have to be a romantic connotation to it, thought there often is. It's the perfect way to fall flat on your face in rejection, perfect for me and my nervousness! On top of that, I heard that the director for the program (the reason I am too shy to go up and ask the assistant out in person (her name is Boram which I will use from hereon out)) had the day off that day, so I took it as a sign that this was the time. I went out that night and bought her Pepero and the next day, went to deliver it in person. She looked pretty happy and surprised when I gave her the Pepero (no one else did that all day it seems). She then invited me in because she had something to bring up with me because of the volunteering project and the English tutoring I'm doing. That lasted a couple minutes, then it got more casual for a couple more minutes. Since I was concerned about the rejection last time, I tried to casually slip in my desire to move back to Korea to teach English in the future which she seemed surprised by, but it was well received. Right before I had to leave, I then decided to ask her out to dinner. Unfortunately, both our schedules didn't align for a couple weeks, so we decided to just get lunch the following weekend. I left the office quite happy with myself.

A handful of the girls in the group know I like Boram, but none of then knew I asked her out on a date. They just knew I had given her Pepero on Pepero day and all of them seem to think it's super cute. On my way to the date, I passed Katherine (girl that I came over on the same flight as) as she was waiting for the elevator. I had worn pants because I wanted to look nicer than usual for Boram, so I walked quickly so my legs would be hidden around the corner from Katherine, then when she said hi to me, I leaned back so she would just see my upper body and head. But she is too smart for her own good and walked around to where she could see all of me at which point she asked if I was going to the international party that day. I said no because I was going out to Sinchon for lunch (trying not to say I was going out with Boram because I didn't want it to be big news in case I failed). At that point, Katherine looked down and saw I was wearing pants, then looked back up at me with a smug smirk that just said "You're wearing pants, I know exactly where you're going..." With that, she said goodbye and I did too, then I headed out. The actual date went pretty well. I don't know how much she thought it was a date, though the fact that I was wearing pants should have clued her in. After eating, I paid and she only offered once before letting me do it (I take that as a success, if she had repeatedly insisted, that would have been bad). After that, we were going to go back to the subway originally since I had to tutor that afternoon, but she suggested we walk around a bit to find this art flea market nearby. So we walked around there and saw some cool things, then slowly made our way back to the subway. All in all, it was about 1.5-2 hours with her and quite enjoyable. I'm currently trying to find a time when I can go out to dinner with her. Eventually I'll be able to tell her I like her, I just gotta get out on a date with her again.

In other social lifey things, I made some new Starcraft friends. I found out through TeamLiquid that there is a girl that goes to school here that loves BroodWar. She actually recognized me at a GSL event (I have a blog on TeamLiquid with Starcraft related posts and pictures of me), but was too shy to say hi there and wound up PMing me later on. We eventually connected and now we go to games together (along with a couple other cool people from TL that go here too and one guy that's here on vacation). It's nice to have foreigners to hang out with at BW events because otherwise, I would be the only white guy there. She is a rising superstar on the TL forums and has studied BroodWar extensively. She only started getting into it in June, but she now knows a ton. I guess she went back and just researched the hell out of BroodWar history. There are still times when I can give some knowledge to her, but generally, her memory of events is better than mine (and I was watching them unfold live T___T). Anyway, hanging out with them has been entertaining. I'm planning to go to a PC bang with the girl so we can play some BroodWar (she has trouble with it on her computer and hasn't actually played hardly any BW yet).

Group Project Bonding/Classes in General:
My professor that keeps cancelling class surprised everyone one day when he declared that he wasn't feeling well and thus would be ending class early....in the semester. That meant that after last Friday, the class would no longer be meeting for the remainder of the semester. The two remaining presentations would wrap up on that final day, then we would be done except for our papers which we are to submit online. The only problem with this is that my group was the last group and until he told us that (on a Sunday night), we were under the impression that we had twice as much time to complete the project. And we hadn't started. So we instantly figured it was crunch time and proceeded to spend a lot of time together over the course of that week. We did a prezi presentation to stand out and it went really well actually. You get docked points if your presentation is below 18 minutes and you get scolded if it is above 22 minutes. He asked for 20 minute presentations and ours wound up coming the closest at 19:47. The second closest was my friend's group who came in at 19:23. In the end, it didn't look like we scrambled the few days before it was due (though everyone knew we did because we freely admitted it) and we got 40/40s from all groups except one group who is full of bitches and grades everyone's projects really low (they gave us their highest grade all semester, a 39/40). When they said their score, half the class just got this confused look on their face and a couple people just confusedly stared at her. We were damn happy with our prezi and what we had accomplished in such a short time. We even included some trolly things in it, such as a hadoken and some cheesy pictures. Me and the gamer girl snuck those in late at night when we were really bored working on the project. The link is here for you to see. The slides are generally devoid of information because that's what the professor said he wanted from all groups.
http://prezi.com/itnjhtj_xzpa/topic-10-kim-jung-un-and-north-koreas-future/
(does you little good to learn from it without it being narrated, but you can still go in and spot the little hidden gems we put in).

My other classes are going well and are far less interesting than that one.

Laddering:
This one is brief. I have begun laddering more on the NA server. I ended the prevoius season with my MMR really low and because I lost my placement match this season, it put me in Silver. This has incresed my drive to get back to gold and someday higher leagues as well. Confusingly, I am ranked in Silver league on the Korean server as well, so I'm not sure what to make of that since the Korean server is way harder than the North America one. If anything, it might just be proof that I play better against better opponents (and the reason I feel like I played really well (though not nearly well enough) against the pro players I played in the Code A preliminaries.

Meeting BoxeR and FBH:
Two of my favorite players ever, I got to meet them in one month. Meeting BoxeR was already mentioned here, and my meeting FBH can be found in my TeamLiquid blog (it's a bit long) http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=289853

Getting to meet him was extremely awesome and I can't wait to keep supporting ACE at events.

So in conclusion, wish me luck on perhaps getting more dates. Who knows, maybe she likes me too and I will get a girlfriend. That would be quite interesting. Until next time, peace out.

I wasn't feeling guilty about not posting because I had forgotten that I hadn't in a few weeks.

Well I suppose it has been a while since my last post. I've been up to mostly the usual, Starcraft and adventuring. I also find time to do homework and attend classes of course, but those are less interesting. Our study group went to Japan recently, so expect that to take up most of the post. Other than that, nothing big to report (at least not intro paragraph worthy) so I'll dive right into the post.

Starcraft Stuff:
I was a little disappointed because the GSL finals for October were going to Blizzcon in Anaheim. It was a good just my luck sort of thing, I go all the way to Korea and the GSL goes to America. There's one more final in Korea for this current GSL that I will get to attend, then I have to wait until I come back to go to a final again. Since a lot of people now had no good way to watch the GSL, GOM invited us all to the studio to watch. In the main studio, the Korean stream was being watched. For us English speakers, the lobby was playing the English casted version. It was a pretty fun day, though nowhere near as good as the last GSL finals.

In other Starcraft things, I've finally gotten to meet two of the best players known to man. Of course I'm talking about NesTea and Mvp (I know you knew that already). Someday, I hope BroodWar starts again because I'm really itching to see some good BroodWar games. In addition to that, I really want to see Firebathero play. Really badly.

Ok and I actually had to add this last part because even though I finished this section already (had to leave it unfinished overnight because I was busy), but this is too awesome. I met BoxeR. Of course it wasn't the first time I had ever met him, but the last time I met him, it was just kind of a pulling up in front of him, getting an autograph, thanking him, and moving on. This time, I actually got to more formally meet him. Like with BroodWar (but not with SC2) there are fan meetings after games. Being an old BW player and a generally popular guy, BoxeR held one of these meetings after his game yesterday. After it died down slightly, Jessica (his girlfriend) invited the other white guy and I to get pictures. It's hard to tell when to interject when fan meetings happen and in all cases where I have, the fans haven't minded having a random white guy come in really quick and get a picture and an autograph before asking questions again. This was just nice of Jessica to make it less awkward for us. The guy and I swapped taking pictures for each other and it was really cool. BoxeR used my pen so I don't think I'll ever be able to part with it now. Staying for the fan meeting was cool too even though I caught less than half of what they were talking about. I don't know what to say exactly, it was just so awesome to meet BoxeR for longer than 10 seconds. It's been the highlight of my Starcraft adventures here. Now all I really want is a picture with Firebathero, but that requires BroodWar to start up again.

Japan Excursion:
Our group had a trip to Japan (specifically Osaka and Kyoto) to study Korean diaspora. Unfortunately, the first day consisted of leaving for the airport at 5am, then getting on a plane and spending about from noon until 6pm walking around and touring. By the end of the day, everyone was super wiped out and nobody really recovered until we got back to Korea. The first day was spent touring around Kyoto. We went on a walking tour of an area near where there is supposed to be heavy Geisha activity, but did not see any. Later that night after dinner (which wasn't that great. I didn't eat well in Japan due to the fact that I detest fish) there was an optional tour to the actual geisha activity area at which point a few of us did get to see geisha after we split up to head home after giving up as a large group. After giving up, the big group split up into two groups. I was with the less party-tastic (stupid way of saying less popular?) group which was cool because I like hanging out with them. It's also good to get good points with as many of the girls in the group as possible which I am actively trying to do. Gotta alienate myself a bit less here. We got froyo and saw actual geisha (the other group did not) and then we went back to the hotel.

The next day was the long walking tour of Kyoto. It was pretty informative and for some reason the guide liked talking to me even though I didn't know that much about Japan and couldn't add to the conversation. Usually if a guide likes talking to me its because we have something in common like a deep knowledge of classic rock or maybe just I knew about the topic we were learning about. Either way, this tour was informative, but way too long and about halfway through, everyone kind of stopped paying close attention when we got somewhere. It wasn't necessarily to be rude, it was just that none of us were able to sleep that well given the rigorous schedule we were on (bed at about midnight, up and ready to leave at 7). Everyone welcomed the hour and a half bus ride that afternoon from Kyoto to Osaka at which point we were given the night off. It was one of the girls' birthdays, so a handful of us went to celebrate with her. In the process, I found a really good steak place for cheap that I ate at with a bunch of people before the two groups (we split up to get seated at different restaurants easier) rejoined each other. At that point, a lot of people began to be drains on the productivity of the group while myself and the birthday girl looked around for bars that had room for all of us. I hadn't interacted with her a whole lot before this, but she was one of the people in the group that gets me, so it made walking around with her less awkward. I also think I earned points for being one of the only people helping her find a place to go. Eventually, we all decided on a bar  that had some karaoke in it and we just went there and drank and the girls sang a lot. Well the bar neglected to tell us that there is a 200Y charge per song (about $1.50 per song). Anyway, all but a couple of the girls sang a bunch of the songs, but we all decided to chip in equal amounts to punish ourselves for collective ignorance. The guys wound up paying extra because those couple of the girls that didn't sing (unlike the guys) were really bitchy about not paying. We made sure everyone was back safe in the hotel, then me and one of the guys went back out to casually walk around the town for a little bit because we weren't quite tired and we wanted to get away from a couple of the girls who had been really annoying. After walking around for about an hour, it started to rain so we headed back in.

This hotel was nice because the rooms were really small so every person got their own room. Even better was the bed played good elevator music (a console on the bed rather) so I got to fall asleep to that. I actually got 6 hours of sleep and that was the most sleep I got in one sitting the whole weekend. Sunday was our fun day. We had to get up early to tour around a big palace in Nara (just outside of Osaka), but then got the day off starting from noon. The big palace was really cool. In the surrounding area, there were free roaming deer (a lot of them) and they were really tame, so it was like a strange petting zoo. Going into the temple was also pretty amazing because of its size. It is the largest wooden structure in the world measuring at about 160 feet tall, about 190 feet wide, and about 170 feet long. Inside the temple was really nice as well, containing two huge statues each about 45 feet tall. There was also a pillar with a hole at the base that was just large enough for someone of my size to squeeze through, so a bunch of us tried that. You're supposed to gain enlightenment or wishes granted if you do it, so fingers crossed. I also did a special love walk at a palace in Kyoto where you walk from one stone to another with your eyes closed (me and two other guys did it for fun) and if you do that, you're supposed to find true love so fingers super crossed. Who knows, maybe Sunny will just appear at my doorstep someday with all this good luck I'm supposedly accumulating. After seeing the palace, we had an hour to just randomly explore which turned into people trying to eat whilst being harassed by the deer. Apparently I was either the deer whisperer of the group or just the only one that had any experience whatsoever dealing with farm animals because the responsibility kept falling to me to keep the deer from bothering the girls too much. Having so many deer to pet was a nice substitute for not having a cat.

That afternoon, the group split up quite thoroughly. Not even all the guys stayed together which was the strangest part. Usually there are at least four of us (plus one guy that tags along), but this time, only three of us went to get food together. I had planned on hanging out with Boram during this time, but as with all weekend, she was perpetually kidnapped by other people and was hanging out with them. I'll go into a bit more detail in a little bit here the subject of her. Anyway, the three of us got food, then went back towards the hotel to rest for an hour because we were all tired. One guy offered to knock on our doors in an hour and we all went into our rooms. The problem for me was that my bed was so comfortable, if I even sat on it briefly, I would fall asleep. Such was the case this time and I wound up sleeping for four hours as did the other two guys. By that time, we all decided we should go get dinner because it was 6:00. The two guys really wanted steak, but the other people we were now with did not, so I volunteered to go get steak with the two guys since I desperately wanted something that wasn't seafood (any meal provided to us through the program was predominantly seafood which sucks because I hate hate hate that stuff) and I also didn't need to hang out with those other people. We got the good steak again then proceeded to wander around town looking to find gifts for people. Eventually we concluded that gifts were too expensive and we gave up and left back for the hotel to rest for an hour again. Then 3 hours later, we woke up and a couple people decided they wanted to do a night exploration this night similar to the one I did with that other guy from the night before. It went pretty well, but eventually it started to rain, so we went back inside. Back in the hotel, I played cards for a bit with one of the guys, then eventually began winning at that game really consistently. I guess I'm a natural. We then played a few games during the first half of the Giants game (one of the guys is from New York), but at halftime, it was 3am and I was tired, so I went to bed for 4 hours before getting up for the next day.

It was now Monday, our final day. We took a tour of a nice temple which took up a good amount of time. We then spent most of the afternoon making our way to the airport and then waiting for the plane to arrive. A few of us stopped at the duty free store to pick up alcohol (it's gonna be a partay when I come back to game night with all these asian drinks). Also somewhere in there, me and the two guys I hung out with on Sunday ran across Little Bow Wow (who I didn't recognize). He was super nice and the two guys got their picture taken with him. I didn't want to get in on it because I only know who he is because of Like Mike and there was no way in hell I was going to tell him that. We finally arrived in Korea at about 9:00 at which point I got back to my room and passed out at about 11:00, then proceeded to get a much needed 12 hours of sleep.

Japan was actually an interesting experience in that it was not terribly interesting. I had been wondering for a couple weeks prior to going there if I was really liking Korea for Korea or if I was just liking it because it was different from home. After going to Japan and coming back to Korea, I now know that I really like Korea for being Korea. I feel at home here and it was nice to get back into my regular familiar schedule here, doing all the things I like to do on a daily basis. I am positive that were I to come back here (which I still really want to do (but how to tell my family....)), I would really be happy. I know if I tell my family this, they will all say well you're an adult so you can make the decisions and that's cool, but I would rather they support this decision rather than accept it. And unfortunately, unless I underestimate how much they would approve of my plan, my most convincing strategy for them realizing why I want to come back would be to get a girlfriend over here. And I don't want to make that sound really creepy, I would really like a girlfriend here anyway. I've been spoiled here with all the pretty girls everywhere. So with this topic, I shall transfer into...

Amorous Affairs:
Well not so much I guess given my general lack of success/attempts.

First, we have the assistant. I did ask her "out" about a month and a half ago, but after a few events that made me wonder if she understood I asked her out instead of asked her to hang out, the rendezvous fell apart and never happened. It also sounded like she wanted to meet with a larger group of people so it would be more casual. That sounds pretty straightforward, but I still have no idea if she knows I asked her on a date (I applied some of the nuances with the English language that I would on an American girl (that a Korean girl might not understand)) so I'm currently debating whether to try again and that end has kind of been left open for now. I'm also working other leads.

The girl that seemed to like me from the volunteering project has not shown up since that first week. In fact, I haven't heard from her much, so I assume that is now a dead end.

But last week, a new girl showed up to the volunteering project. She is 150cm tall (the perfect height!!) and recently got a license for something involving programming. I take programming to mean one thing, but it sounds like she may just be certified as proficient in excel and programs like that. Either way, she's slightly nerdy and I'm considering asking her out next time she comes if I haven't scored a date by then already. And again, we're allowed to do anything with the people outside of the project so it's totally okay. I actually have a student now through that project and every Thursday, I'm going to be teaching him some English.

And last, but certainly not least, there's the girl that works at the GSL front desk. I see her every day I come in and she greets me with a big smile and I greet her back in Korean. I sometimes try to make chit chat briefly in Korean (still haven't gotten her name yet though) and we're too shy to make prolonged eye contact, but people that have seen me talking to her described what she did while I was complementing her or talking to her and it's usually something that gives me a pretty good vibe. Confusingly, there's this one guy that always sits with her and I can't tell if he's her boyfriend. I don't necessarily think he is, but there's also the possibility that he is a close friend that is protective of her or possibly even an unfortunate friendzoned guy. Being in that position a few times myself, I hate to ask her out under his watch, but I figure I gotta do it eventually. I was planning to do it last night, but since BoxeR was there, getting to meet him had to take priority and in addition to that, there were a ton of people, so I couldn't talk to her really well. Ideally today the guy will not be there and I can just approach her during a game or something. Wish me luck, hopefully win or lose I will actually get up the balls to do something.

Korean Life:
The classes are going well, but they're really boring and my desire to talk about them is even less than your desire to hear about them I'm sure. I've been making casual friends mostly through trips to Costco. It seems every time I take my roommate, he finds someone that wants to tag along, so I get to meet new people that way which is kind of fun. People are also getting to know me as the Starcraft guy or the Costco guy. I also have taken to liking to make really terrible puns around people, so that's been fun to have that going too. Hopefully I can provide people with some amusement. As for my adventures, I haven't had time for many since my last post what with my Japan trip and midterms taking place. I did manage to do another big walk starting at midnight the other day though. The subway broke and I was too cheap for a taxi, so I walked for about 2 hours from my location to my dorm room starting at midnight. And I only got harassed once and it was in the most public area. A Korean guy called me the n-word to which I gave him a confused look and kept walking.

Not much else to report. This post has taken me a while to write and for a second time is running right up into my language class, so I should get going to that. Until next time, peace out.

Whoa, I go to Korea and Blogger gets revamped

Not that any of you would know since nobody besides me posts anymore. Hey guys, sorry about the massive delay. I should really have posted 2 weeks ago, but I got kind of sidetracked with Starcraft events and other cool things I've been doing. I recently decided that at least once a week, I want to try to just go explore random parts of the city on my own. It's been pretty fun, especially since I've gotten good places to explore by watching a Korean show I like called Running Man. More on that later. Also, I've started keeping a blog on TeamLiquid, which is the most used site for everything Starcraft. Because I now have a medium to make long, ranting posts about Starcraft in a place where I don't feel like it's bothering you guys, my posts here will be less about just Starcraft and hopefully more about my IRL life (and thus perhaps slightly more condensed! (but don't count on it...)). Once I learn more about how the blog setup works on that site, I'll link to posts I've made if you guys want. Until then, best to get on with what's been happening!

First off, I got two of the things on my list of things I wish I had brought. It took a while, but I eventually ordered and waited for a frisbee to arrive. It turns out, it got here in about 5 days, then spent 2.5 weeks on the floor of the mail room (which is odd because usually packages do not get put in the mail room) until it was discovered by a girl who knew me and told me it was there. Success! I still haven't gotten to use it though because I've been going to Starcraft a lot. This weekend, I'm going to get some chances to throw around though, so that will be fun. I also acquired a compass. It came when I visited this big flea market in Seoul on one of my adventures. I've kept it on my person at all times since then. When I'm outside of the major metropolitan area, I can easily tell which way is north. The compass really comes in handy inside the main part of the city and at night though. I still do not have a pokewalker, but I also doubt that I will get one here.

Adventures:
I've been around to a lot of places in Seoul now. Once a week, I get the whole day off, so I like to just hop on the subway and hit a new destination. The best part is at the places I visit, I'm usually the only foreigner there which is pretty fun. It satisfies my hipsterness. Eventually, I'll get around to uploading pictures to facebook. Anyway, I've been to some cool places such as:
-A bridge in South Seoul that every 2 hours also has a fountain display from one side. I then walked back to my dorm from there which was a really long walk, taking just a couple minutes shy of 3 hours.
-A folk flea market which I spent WAYYY too much time at because it reminded me of walking around in a nicer version of my grandpa's shed. I also liked it because I knew Sunny had been there to film an episode of Running Man when she was a guest on the show. Anyway, I'm definitely going back there. I saw an old record of Never Gonna Give you Up and if it's still there next time, that thing is mine.
-Dream forest up in North Seoul where there's a big nature preserve. There's a good forest with good hiking and occasional views of the whole city. There's also an observatory which was unfortunately closed when I was there, but if I go back, I'm visiting it.
-SM entertainment building located southeast of the fountain bridge. The building is pretty boring actually, but I wanted to see it because SM is the label that Girls Generation is with, so you know....there was a chance I could run into Sunny >___>

Starcraft:
I gotta hit on this a little. Starcraft has been really fun. I'm starting to get to know the casters and they definitely remember me by now. I usually come alone, but they're more than willing to talk to me between games and I actually feel like I'm not troubling them, but that they're actually liking me. I've also been able to talk to a lot of people that come in for their first time for whatever reason. It's fun to tell them a bit about esports and what goes on. It feels like being an esports ambassador of sorts, I like it.

I've also found a couple guys here that play SC as well, so occasionally, the three of us will hit up a PC bang together. One guy is my skill level and the other guy is really good (Masters in KR server), but he still likes to play with us, so that's nice. The two of them both go together a lot when I'm going to GSL matches, but they always invite me along and I try to go whenever I don't have a GSL thing going on.

Food:
Because I know you guys are concerned. I found a restaurant here near the GSL studio that I have become a regular at. I eat really good meals there and they always know what I want to order when I come in. I've also started drinking this Vitamin C drink that Girls Generation advertises because it's good for me, it tastes good, and sometimes Sunny is on the bottle. It's a triple win!

Volunteering:
Our study group does this thing called the BACK project where we volunteer on Saturdays with North Korean refugees, teaching them English and going out and doing fun activities with them. In addition to that, we're allowed to be friends with them outside of class and do whatever we want because they're really also looking for friends as well as people to help them learn English. I'm the only guy in the group, plus I'm one of the oldest two people from our study group (then two of the North Korean guys are 25) so naturally I'm pretty popular. And it's nice to talk to them because they're all our age (between 19 and 25). There are two schools that participate in the thing. On the first weekend, only one girl came from one of the schools, and the other school had about 9 or 10 people coming. It sounded like the one girl was excited to come though because she wanted to make a lot of friends because she is the only one from her family here in South Korea. She came with her teacher who has since stopped coming because this program is designed to just be interaction between students. So anyway, this girl and I made good eye contact right away (sorry about the cheesy, slow build in) and then didn't talk much, but I heard her asking her teacher how to say a bunch of different questions in English. Eventually, after all the introductions and games were played, we had a bit of free time in which it turned out the North Koreans were to ask some of us for our contact info so we could become mentors for teaching them English and whatnot. Just to brag, I'm the only one that got more than one mentor, it's because I'm an older guy. But the nice part was as soon as this started, that girl ran up to me and used all the questions she had learned from her teacher on me to get my contact info. I've since been in fairly regular contact with her. She wasn't able to make it last weekend and now we don't see the group until the first weekend in November due to our group's busy schedule, but I'm hoping to possibly see her sometime before that. Who knows, maybe I'll ask her out sometime. I don't know if I should think about doing that just yet. It's going to be fun doing that for the coming weekends though. Also, the experience of teaching them English has been really fun and its making me consider coming back here to teach English even more (PLEASE OVERLOOK ALL GRAMMATICAL ERRORS I HAVE MADE WHEN THINKING ABOUT ME TEACHING ENGLISH).

Well now I have Korean class coming up in about 10 minutes, so I should be heading out. Fortunately, I got to cover everything I wanted to talk about. So I'll get pictures up on facebook and then hopefully I will get to talk to you guys individually eventually. Until then, peace out.

It's too exciting over here!

Hey, sorry about the big delay between posts. I know I keep saying every other weekend, but I am currently failing at that. I've been keeping really busy with Starcraft matches on weekdays and random activities on weekends. Fortunately, my classes are not big on homework and similar to my home university, they assign term papers and those combined with a midterm and a final will make up my entire grade for the class. I really like it being done that way because I can work on my papers a little at a time instead of just having to crap out a new homework assignment every night while procrastinating on a short essay due at the end of the class. It occurs to me now that I never even got to tell you about my classes, so I'll take care of that in this post. Also, I might start getting a bit more starcraft experience heavy (I'll try not to too much) because we're really trying to keep posts on http://starcraftcrew.tumblr.com/ on the short side so that they're easy to get reblogged.

International Trade Practices:
I like this class despite the fact that it's a little basic. It's the best I could do in terms of getting into econ related courses, so I hope I can get credit for it. At the very least, I am far enough ahead in credits that I can afford to have none of my classes here count towards my major (though I would REALLY like it if I could get that to happen). The professor for this class is kind of silly and has a really thick accent, but either doesn't notice or doesn't care because he just powers through words that he blatantly mispronounces. Every day, we're greeted with a really loud "HERRO EVERYONE." The class as I said is more basic than what I expected from a trade class, but I guess it will work out fine since I know about of the stuff that's we're going to learn.

Politics and Society of North Korea:
This was a class I came across when I was desperately looking for a class to add so that I could have the required 15 credits (I got screwed in registration and ran the risk of getting kicked out if I remained with only 12 credits. Now I'm safely full time at 15 credits). The professor for this class actually lives in Busan (about as far as you can get in Korea from Seoul; it takes about 3 hours on the train) and rides the train up every time there's class (and class is at 9am!). For this reason, he made the class only meet once a week instead of twice (one of the days was a one hour meeting). He suggested we work on our group projects in that time, so my group has gladly begun to do that. The class looks like it will be really interesting.

Philosophy in East Asian Literature:
This was the only class (besides my language class) that I successfully signed up for during the registration period. I'm always into philosophy courses (it's still my minor), so I know this class will continue to be interesting. Additionally, I think the professor likes me because I'm usually the most attentive person (and I sit in the back (I don't like having my back to a door and I like a wall to lean on)). He's actually a lot like the 'typical philosophy professor' so naturally I get along with him well.

Korean Language:
I was a little disappointed to land in the beginner beginner level because it felt like the hours I spent studying this summer were wasted. To anyone interested, I don't recommend Rosetta Stone. It was not particularly effective for me. We spent the first two weeks of the class learning the alphabet which was hell for me and two other people in the class because the three of us knew the alphabet, but not much else (the reason they just stuck us in beginner). More recently, we've been working on introductions and stuff which has been nice. The guy that knew the alphabet is struggling now, but me and the (Dutch!) girl that knew the alphabet are still finding this class kind of easy. Just last Friday, there were some games between our university and Korea University, our rival school. Everyone wound up skipping classes throughout the day to attend this. I was unable to do so because of a test in my philosophy class, so there were only two people (including myself) in my language class. Because we couldn't learn anything new in the class, we took a look ahead to what we'll be doing at the end of the semester. I now understand it, so I know for sure I will pass the class. I also started going beyond the scope of the class which impressed the teacher. She has actually said I'm a smart student to my face, which was a good way to build up my ego haha. We have two teachers, one does M/W/F and the other does a lot of just reading and pronunciation work with us on T/Th. I call the reading teacher the aegyo teacher because she (somewhat effectively) displays a lot of aegyo. Most of the guys like her better. I actually like the M/W/F teacher better because she's the one that said I was smart ^__^.

YonKo Games:
Each year, Yonsei University and Korea University have a sporting event that covers a weekend in which the two schools compete in Basketball, Baseball, Ice Hockey, Rugby, and Soccer. The main activity during the games though is not watching, but chanting and singing nonstop (literally, there were zero breaks at every game). I learned that the point of the YonKo games are not to see who can win more games, but to see how collectively drunk the student bodies of both schools can get. After the games wrapped up on Saturday, there was a big party on the Yonsei campus at which there was an open bar for two and a half hours until they ran out of beer. An open bar for college students....interesting idea. Needless to say, it was a quiet morning in Shinchon the next day. Unfortunately, I didn't meet any pretty girls at the street party T___T. I did go drinking with my Starcraft friends from Korea University though. I impressed them with my bottle opening ability (that was the first time I've done it in Korea, I'm more worried about hurting myself since I'm not drinking my usual crap-ton of milk each day). They insisted on getting a video of me doing it, so I obliged. I don't know why it's such an impressive feat. I later continued to impress them by chasing beer with soju. Again, something so mundane being found impressive is something that confused me. On the note of beer also, I had a Heineken last night (first time since coming to Korea that I've had non-Korean beer. Heineken is not my favorite Dutch beer (Amstel is) and don't get me wrong; Heineken is good and all, but it's not stellar. But it being my first foreigner beer in so long, it tasted like gold. Korean beer just doesn't stack up. I feel sorry for people here T___T.

My roomate and I have gotten to know each other better. He's actually a pretty cool guy. We're on a comfort level in terms of jokes and information sharing that I'm on with you guys, so it's nice. He's a Ravens fan and I like the Ravens, so we stay up on Sunday nights to watch them play which is also fun. We're going to do that again tonight. It's nice to have a way to watch some football over here, especially since I can then sleep in since I have no class early on Mondays.

I went to the GSL Finals a few weeks ago and it was quite an experience. They had the 10 "all star" players lined up for autographs before the mini tournament. All foreigner fans got instantly moved to preferred spots in the line, then preferred seating, which was really cool. I got autographs from several players and got to chat with a couple too. I joked around with Jinro from TeamLiquid and found out he's actually a pretty nice guy. Also, interacting with BoxeR was quite amazing. When we went in to actually get our seats, we were placed in the third row. There were only press and family members in front of us. When the finals started, team IM sat in the section next to us. My friend was on the aisle and across from him (across the aisle) was NesTea himself. It was pretty cool and the finals were really great TvT.

A couple weeks later, I went to the OSL Finals with my BroodWar friends and some guys I met online from TeamLiquid.net. It was a cool enough experience and the guys from TL were nice, but a few of them really wanted to get absolutely drunk during the matches. I didn't have any interest in doing that because I came to watch BroodWar (they didn't really know anything about it). I've actually found that being a white guy that likes BroodWar, I'm a dying breed. The finals were absolutely amazing and way more intense than the GSL Finals. I was glad I got to go to this because there might never be an OSL again unless the BroodWar scene can find a way to survive in the troubling times it is going through.

General Starcraft viewing is going well too. I found out that Moletrap (english SC2 caster) likes BroodWar and I've run into him at some events, so I've gotten to talk to him a bit more which has been cool. I'm also glad I met him more because I admittedly didn't really like him when I lived in the states. Now that I've gotten to know him a bit (and this is true with all the code A casters), I really like them. They're cool guys. And I like to think they like having a regular visitor to the studios that actually kind of knows his stuff. Most people just pop in once and want autographs and pictures and we never see them again. Can't blame people for being like that though, I was there in my first week. Some players and coaches are recognizing me too, probably since I stand out in a crowd and I'm there quite literally every day. Watching BroodWar has been fun too because I hang out with people that really know the game, so it's nice to have someone that can help me to spell it out. In the semifinals match, I attended with my friend that teaches here. The match actually happened to be on the same day as the birthday of my favorite BW streamer on TeamLiquid (and he's my only way of watching BW matches live back home) so I wished him happy birthday on TeamLiquid and said I would get a sign on stream for him. I wound up actually getting it on the stream much to my surprise. And during each match in the OSL, the winners of the day will autograph a keyboard bag after they win. The bag is then given to the person with the best sign at the end of the day. There was just one winner today, but I got the bag. And it was Jangbi's autograph (current OSL champion), so even better! I was going to buy a keyboard bag while I was here, but not now that I got that sweet one. I was really happy.

In other news, stuff is going pretty well here. I'm really liking it. I of course miss talking to everyone more regularly than I currently do and not having game night kind of sucks, but I can replace it pretty easily with stuff here, so that is always fine. No girlfriend yet, but who knows, maybe one will come someday soon. It took a trip to Korea to learn how badly I actually had 'yellow fever' >___>. So before I sign off for this post, I'll leave you with the short list of things I really wish I had brought.

1: Compass:
I still have trouble finding north sometimes due to cloudiness or  tall buildings preventing me from determining the location of the sun. When I can actually see it, I always know which way I am facing, but sometimes it is just not possible. And the worst part is that (like all things in this list), I had a compass in my hand all ready to pack, but I wound up deciding not to bring it at the last minute.

2: PokeWalker:
With this, I figured I wouldn't be walking very much and I didn't want to risk losing it. Turns out I would likely have not lost it, plus I'm walking at least 2-3 miles each day (then running a mile every other day to stay in shape for frisbee) so having that PokeWalker would have really come in handy since I'm just grinding my pokemon up to higher levels in my free time (when my internet dies randomly).

3: A frisbee:
I jokingly said when I was packing that if I couldn't find a frisbee on a college campus, then it wasn't meant for me to play frisbee while I was here. I of course thought I would have no problem finding one in a store. Turns out I was dead wrong and they're super hard to find. I spent 6 hours today looking for one and about 3 hours last Thursday doing the same thing. I'm going to have to give up and order one online because I need to be throwing so that I am tournament ready when I get back to the states. At the very least, the running is helping me a bit. I also play soccer with the Germans occasionally, which is a good way to keep some coordination up I guess.

Ok well thats it for now. Until next time, peace out!

Your eyes do not deceive you! It is an update!

Hello everyone! I totally spaced on updating last weekend. I'll try to be better about it in the future. It's been a really cramped few weeks and I'm starting to get more and more free time as we go into the actual semester. This post will probably run long, so I'll be keeping all Starcraft related posts short for the time being. I recommend you check out http://starcraftcrew.tumblr.com/ if you want to read about my Starcraft related adventures. Keir and Peter also work on the site, so to tell if I made a post, just find out whether it pertains to Korean leagues or not. If it does, then it is one of my posts. In the future, I'm going to start tagging posts with my name to let people know who made it. And again, I apologize if I'm late on posting in the future (going to try for every other Sunday/Monday), but it may be due to having written too much for that site or just a busy schedule. I'm working hard to try to fill the tumblr blog with as many important news posts as possible in the hopes that it will someday grow big and strong. And since I'm the only one posting about all the things in Korea, I've been pretty much constantly writing posts and getting a huge backlog of them saved up because I don't want to just spam a ton of posts to that site in one day. But I've spoken enough about that, time for a post here!

My plane ride over was nice. As I hate being jetlagged, I made the decision to not sleep the night before flying so that I would wind up having been awake for about 20 hours before hopefully crashing that night and getting a good night's sleep and quickly adjusting to the local time. This staying up idea turned out to be especially great because I was able to get through 13 hours of flying without having to use any electronics or other entertainment items I had brought along. I remember nothing from the SEA to SFO leg because I was asleep before we took off and woke up after we landed. The two guys next to me seemed to have done the same thing, so good thing I [probably] didn't prevent them from using the bathroom. For my SFO to Incheon flight, I sat next to a guy who is an English teacher over here. We wound up talking about Korea related stuff (what I could expect to encounter and whether it was a good experience to teach over here) for about 3 hours of the 11 hour flight. The other 8 hours of the flight were spent sleeping. I was pretty happy with myself. When I landed, I was wide awake and was worried that my sleep plan had failed, but it did eventually work out. There was one girl on my flight from the CIEE group and we had spoken via facebook before the flight, so she waited for me at the exit to the jetway and we went through customs and got our bags together to prevent ourselves from getting too lost. From there, we proceeded to go to the meetup location for the CIEE group. We met the program director there and her (pretty) assistant. Spoiler alert, I wound up asking the assistant out recently, more on that later. After meeting them, we waited for about 3 other people to show up, then we got shuttled off to the university where we ate dinner and all went to bed.

Some names really quick:
Katherine - The girl on the flight, I think of her as kind of a little sister (independently of the coincidence that her name is the same as my actual sister). We don't hang out much anymore, but early on in the program, we did.
Gary - Nerdy guy, but once he starts drinking, he is a party animal. He's pretty cool and good to hang out with, but I've been hanging out with him less and less as he makes more acquaintances.
Peter, Matt, and Chang - I hung out with them a lot during the couple of weeks that we were with the group. They are fully aware of my Starcraft activities and plan to come to one game with me in the future. They're really cool, but they like to go out drinking whereas I like to watch Starcraft. I'll still go places with them occasionally though.
Boram - The assistant director for the program here. I like talking with her and hopefully I'll get to do more of that as the semester progresses.

By the following morning, the group had all arrived. I was surprised to see the ratio of guys to girls in the group (23 girls and 6 guys). We had an orientation thing, then got assigned to 6 groups (one guy per group as it turned out) and were given a photo scavenger hunt throughout the city. Once I learned it was a competition, I really wanted to win. Fortunately, the girls in my group also wanted to win, so we worked hard all afternoon. Other teams took a break for dinner, but ours did not and as a result, we wound up winning. We didn't even have anyone that was really fluent in Korean, but between a girl that knew some Korean and my ability to read Hangul, it worked out really well.

The rest of the week was pretty normal, containing just some minor events like learning locations of important places. On Friday, we left for our three day excursion to the southern part of the country accompanied by a guy who is an expert on Korean history and knows a lot about the land in the southern provinces. He was kind of weird at first, but was really cool after I got to know him. At lunch, people were kind of sick of him after his hour and a half lecture about Korean philosophical history that took place on the bus ride. As everyone was sitting down at tables, I noticed he was alone while all the others were filling up. I decided I would leave my seat to go sit across from him because I felt pretty bad. Boram wound up sitting next to me, so I must have earned some good karma for that to happen. I got to talking to him (his name was David as well) and I found out that we have pretty identical taste in music (he was a hippie) and he is also an Eagle Scout, so that was pretty cool. I gained a lot of respect for him after the conversation during that meal.

That night, we stopped in a small town to stay at a traditional Korean home (where you sleep on the floor and all that (oh, it's great for your back, I'm sure (not))). Everyone went out to eat, but the group got kind of split in two because no restaurant could hold all 29 of us. The staff people went their own way and I don't really know where they ate. The people that I went with went to a Korean BBQ place which was pretty amazing. We decided this would be our big party night, so we all got a lot of alcohol. Knowing that I could handle a lot of Tequila (I learned that lesson after not reaching my limit after 7 shots and 2 beers over the course of 2 hours earlier this summer), I decided I would try to see how much soju I could have. By the end of the night, I wound up having 2.5-3 bottles of soju on my own. Soju is considered hard alcohol in case you're wondering, so yes, that is a lot. There was some lame truth and dare stuff that I didn't really partake in, but it was funny to watch. I didn't actually get drunk until I blacked out. I felt fine, but then at one point, I remember looking at my bed and thinking "Man, I'm really tired." Next thing I know, I'm waking up in that bed. Apparently, I only blacked out for about 5 minutes before falling asleep, so I guess that worked out. All that happened was I stubbed my toe, a girl asked if I was okay, I said yes and apologized for being drunk, then I proceeded to lie down and go to sleep. Being drunk is an excellent way to fall asleep on a hardwood floor! When I woke up the following morning, a ton of people were hung over, but I felt pretty great actually. Everything wasn't super bright and I had no headache, so I don't know what to make of that.

The second day, we went around the southern part of the country looking at buddhist temples and other cool historical stuff like that. At our traditional hotel for the night, we found out that they got MBCGame on the tvs, so the guys room wound up watching that for a while. Later into the night, we went downstairs to the small scale PC Bang that was there to play some Broodwar. I challenged 4 of the other guys to a 1v4 since they really wanted to play on Fastest Map. Two had never really played before, but two of them had. The worst part was that I totally should have won. If I had stayed in my base for about 30 more seconds, I would have repelled their mass attack and I would have been free to move out. Instead, I was impatient and my forces were all the way across the map when I got attacked. After that, we did a 1v2v2. I killed one guy early on, then the other three allied up against me and I wound up losing. I was playing zerg that time, so I didn't have the chance to go carriers like I did the previous time.

On the third day, we saw some more buddhist temples on our way back into Seoul. We arrived late at night and at that point, I just stuck around the dorm and went to sleep.

Throughout the following week, we just had a mass of orientations: first for our program, then for the university and the dorm we were staying in. It was a lot of sitting and listening, but I was able to find time at nights to go to see Starcraft every night. I've become a regular there and I'm starting to even get recognized by some Korean players and coaches (I mean, I have to stand out being one of the few white guys they see on a daily basis). I've also made some good friends through these matches which has been really fun because it makes the games a lot more interesting. I can't hear English casters (and there are none for BroodWar matches), so having someone to talk to is nice. If you've seen my facebook, you know that I've been meeting players left and right, it's been really cool. I've been finding new players to become a fan of and it's been really nice. I've also liked getting back into the BroodWar scene too, I had really missed it.

So less has been happening recently because classes were starting this last week. We did make it out to the DMZ which was pretty interesting. It was a full day, but we got to see into North Korea, we got to see tunnels they dug, and other cool touristy locations. During the trip, we asked Boram if she wanted to come out clubbing with us one night and it was eventually decided on a Friday night. Weekday nights are nights that I go watch SC and Fridays are BW match days, so I was a little bummed, but I was excited to get to hang out with her, even if it was also with a bunch of other guys and some girls too. I found out we were going to meet her in a part of town that is near the GOM studio, so I figured I had time to be over there to watch those matches instead of BW. Then, I got a better idea and asked Boram if she wanted to go get dinner with me before we met up with everyone. She said yes, so that was pretty exciting. Unfortunately, plans fell apart and the hangout never wound up happening. It turned out she had something come up, so she wasn't able to get dinner with me either (T___T). She apologized, and it was fine. Secretly, I was kind of happy because I got in touch with her on my way to the subway, so I hopped on one going the opposite direction and got to see the BW I had thought I would have to miss. She also said that we'll have to hang out later in the semester, so there is still hope.

Today, I had my preliminary games for Code A. There was of course no chance at me getting into Code A, but a couple friends and I figured it would be a fun chance to maybe get to play some pros. My friends went yesterday and didn't do so well against their opponents. To make it worse, the opponents weren't really big games. Moletrap and the other commentators offered to stream their games for fun, but it turned out BoxeR was playing at the same time, so that didn't wind up happening. I thought there was going to be a chance for me today, but I had an early match and the commentators weren't there yet. Oh well. I wound up playing Startale.Squirtle who is actually a really good player and a former Code A member. When he said his name in the chat, the first thing that came to mind was "Oh thank God, a Protoss!" TvP is my strongest matchup, so I was happy to give Squirtle the best games I possibly could. He was really friendly and didn't roll me too insanely hard and it was a fun experience to play him. Afterwards, I asked where he was sitting so I could congratulate him and I did that. He seemed kind of surprised that I offered to do it, I guess it's not that common of a thing to do. I got to meet quite a few pro players today and it was nice to have played Squirtle because I could just tell them I got beaten by him and nobody would have to ask how skilled I actually am at Starcraft. They know Squirtle is a good player and should beat me regardless of my ladder ranking. One last fun note, I got a lot of attention from some spectators. I'm not sure whether it was due to me being white or due to me playing southpaw. It was probably a combination of the two.

Oh, but I forgot! I got to see BoxeR play! Usually, when he plays (be it at MLG, GSL, or whatever) he is instantly upgraded to showmatch status and is put in one of those booths. He was in the later stages of the tournament, so nobody was really around and I was able to stand behind him with SlayerS_Jessica, SlayerS_MMA, and a couple other random people. I know it sounds kind of mundane, but to actually stand behind BoxeR while he's playing in a tournament is probably a once in a lifetime experience and it was totally cool. He lost unfortunately, but maybe next time I'll get to see him rack up some wins.

That's all I can really think of to post for now. My classes aren't 100% locked in yet, so I'm going to refrain from posting about them until that is taken care of. Until next time, peace out.