MUSIC♪♬

t-black happiness 

(I bet you won’t understand a word she is saying but this is one of my favourite music, so enjoy :])

T, Tasha, Mirae Yoon, however you want to call her, it doesn’t really matter, because all of them are her names. But I will call her as T, because it’s much shorter

T is the first and one of the best female rappers in Korea. I read an article about her, and she said she learned how to sing and rap, and got the passion of music from her father. In this music, when you hear some guy rapping in English, her father is the one that did featuring.

When I first listen to music was when I was watching Korean TV on Youtube; they show music videos after the show program is over. Like I have written in many of my blogs, I don’t really pay attention to lyrics of the song. So, when I saw this music video, I just thought she has got great rhythm and flavour in music. Also, the music video looked cool enough to attract me. I searched for the song on the Internet, and downloaded it, too. I wanted to look for lyrics of this song, because when she was singing, I could feel that she was singing with her feeling from the experiences and pain.

T is a black-Asian-American. Her father is an African-American, her mother is a Korean, and since she was born in the States, and lived there for all of her youth time, she is considered as an American. This song, Black happiness by T, says many things about her feelings she felt when she was a little girl. Since people in Korea are not very used to racial mixtures, she felt very left out. Also, she felt sorry for her parents who felt pain when people gossiped about their daughter. She always has felt guilty for having dark skin.

However, her father encouraged her many times to keep her head up and be strong since she was young, so that is how she was taught to have self-esteem. Here is some part of the lyrics:

My sweet little girl, Tasha

I guess I can give you a little skit on life I guess

Talk about the good times and the bad times

You gotta be able to blend both of those in your life

You have to know and you have to believe with all you heart that things will always get better

So just keep your head up, Keep your faith and be strong

Never let nobody tell you that you can’t do it, because it can be done

I really loved that part of the song, because it makes me to be strong, even though I barely have any issues with racism. I believe people will feel at least something when they listen to that piece.

Today is May 27th. My friends and I have got 15 more days till graduation! (or the moving up ceremony; I don’t really care because both mean that school is going to be out! :]) What are you doing for summer? I don’t think I will do anything special except for going to beach and hang out with friends. I will probably just rest, be all lazy for two months and a week. Ahh.. I CAN’T WAIT!!!! Even though I am not doing anything special during summer, I am kind of excited for it. I don’t know why.

I wish I could go visit Korea like I did last summer. It was awesome. I met my family, friends, teachers, and everyone I had missed so much. I intrigued the flight we had though. My family and I had to take more than 22 hours of flight, more than 7 hours of waiting in the airport. We had to go by Caracas, Venezuela, Paris, France, and Incheon, South Korea, since there was no flight going straight from Costa Rica to Korea. My brother had terrible plane-sick, my mom couldn’t sleep well, and I was as dry as desert, because they turned the air conditioner on for hours and hours. Oh well, there wasn’t anything that I could do about that, right?

Anyways, after that nightmare, I would say I finally got to the heaven; the place I wanted to go so bad for about a year and a half. I visited my grandparents first, and went straight to bed. My family and I were extremely tired that we didn’t even have any strength left to talk to my grandparents. It took me about 3 days to get used to Korean time, because Costa Rican time is 15 hours later than Korea. We were terribly sorry, because we were up when they were sleeping, and we were being noisy to get food and all. And my dear grandparents were being so nice that they woke up at 2 o’clock only to talk to us and help us out with cooking.

After our conditions were getting better, I think I was never home. Most of the time, I went out with my friends, I went shopping since the department store was right in front of my grandparent’s apartment. My mom went out to meet her friends, too. And my brother played in the playground and watched Korean television and animations most of the times.

When I hung out with my friends, I went shopping with them, talked for hours and hours, and went to amusement parks. It was so fun. Other than the fact that we went those fun places, the thing that made me happy was that I could enjoy my time with them and just be with them.

I stayed in Korea for about two months. I never ever knew this was going to happen ever, it was strange. I missed Costa Rica when I was there for about a month and a half. I missed all the tropical nature and little birdies that cried really loud 5 o’clock in the morning, and never let me to sleep. I found it REALLY weird, because I used to hate Costa Rica where there is nothing to do here when it rains every single day, and where the culture is different.

After I came back, I still missed Korea, my family, and my friends, but I didn’t want to go back. I think, first of all, because of the nightmare we had on the airplane, and for the second, I like living in Costa Rica. :]

Basketball is another sport that I like to play. Like I told you on the previous post, I am not very athletic. I am super slow; I have very bad aim, so I can’t score when I try to in games; I could tell you tons about how bad I am when I play sports. However, I just like playing sports because they are fun to play, they make me to exercise, and they get me away from laziness. Also they make me to feel… good, I guess, afterwards. I really do not know how I could describe the emotion and the reason why I feel that way. But honestly, I bet all we care about is how much we feel happy by doing something that we like ourselves, isn’t it?   Similar to volleyball, I started playing basketball last year. It was when I just moved to CDS. I did not know how the school was at that time, but I wanted to be doing some school activities. Also, I was interested in basketball, so I joined the team. Our team literally ROCKED. The 8^th graders from last year were so good that we won every single game we had last year. I did not get to play that much though, because I just entered the team, I didn’t know any rules of basketball… Let’s say I didn’t know how to play at all. I tried to be like them, but it didn’t work well how I wanted it to. I wanted to give up whenever I felt left out, but at the same time, I tried my best to be like them.   Right now, the basketball season is going on. I am the one and only 8^th grader on the team, but I still am not very good. But I can tell you that I have been improving a lot. I guess I became a little more aggressive when I play. I didn’t know what was going on last year when I played, so I was more like standing there. But since I have learned more the rules, I can play in the court! :]   Sometimes I wanted to give up playing basketball. It was just too much for me. I had to have a lot of upper body strength to keep the ball from the other team, I had to run fast, and aim the little black rectangle on the board. Also, I had to learn all the strategies. It was just too much for me. But once I started thinking positively, I realized that the only way I can improve is to practice more and more until I can play how I want to.

I have been writing about my passion, music, this whole month or more. I enjoyed writing about music, because I like sharing what I like with people. But now, I am a little bit tired of writing about it. And I bet the readers who have to read all my blog posts about music got bored of it, too. So, I am going to have a “break” with writing about music. I am going to start writing about sports! Yay, exciting, huh? No? Well then… I don’t know haha. Anyways, this time, I am going to talk about one of the sports that I love most, volleyball.  I started playing volleyball since I was in 7th grade. Well… It sounds like I have played for a long time, but I actually haven’t. The volleyball season was only for one third of the year, which was only for about a few months. And I played on the team this year, too. So if you add them up, it could be more or less a year, or less than a year. However I might not be one of the best players on the team, I think “passion” means something that you can enjoy and feel good when you do something, other than competing each other and see who is better than whom.

Like I stated before, I only have played volleyball more or less a year. Last year, I wanted to play some other sport than basketball. I thought about soccer, but since the others are way too good, I didn’t want to feel left out. I thought about volleyball, too. I thought it would be perfect for me, because when you play basketball, you have to run back and forth depending on who gets the ball, which is very tiring. But when you play volleyball, you don’t necessarily have to run back and forth the court. I mean, you will definitely have to go and sacrifice your body to get the ball over the net, but the area that you have to run around is much smaller than you do in basketball. So, I finally decided to sign up to go in the volleyball team.

The first practices we had were pretty tough for me. Because it was the first time I’ve ever played volleyball, my thighs were painful for weeks. It was difficult to learn all the rules we have to know in games, how to control our strength to not to make it go out of the line, and stuff like that. Even though I was not good at all, I tried to learn so I could improve. Also, the other teammates were nice to me to teach me some strategies and stuff like that.

This year, I signed up for volleyball team again. I am not bragging or anything, but I could feel that I improved a little bit. I felt extremely happy. Although we lost most of the games we had, I was happy that our teamwork and strategies got much better. Hopefully, they will do EVEN better next year when we are not there.

Now, I am going to tell you a story how I got into the varsity team of our school. I was playing volleyball with two guys after school, because since I was done with all my homework, I didn’t have anything to do. So, we were playing and they were making fun of me because I sucked. Well, what would you say? They were two gigantic powerful guys! Then their coach asked me if I wanted to be on the girls’ varsity team, because she thought I was really good. Therefore, I am on the varsity team, although I’m not very good. I am just starting, and I try very hard to get improved little by little. Also, our coach is nice and funny, and he really wants to help me with that.

I really hope that, by next year, I could be better and play on the games without making fewer mistakes. I feel terrible when the other team earns points because I make stupid mistakes.

The 8th graders, including me, went to Manuel Antonio for the field trip, and we did a lot of fun stuff. It was awesome! I could tell you that it was the best field trip that I had ever been to.

It took us a long time to get Manuel Antonio; I don’t know exactly how long it took us, because we went to some place called Turubari. We had our breakfast there because we left from school at 6 in the morning; I had hard time waking up at 5. We rested a little bit after we had our breakfast. After that, we were divided into two groups. Some of my friends and I went to do canopy, and the others went to do something called superman. At first, I didn’t want to do canopy, because I was afraid of height. But once I tried it, I enjoyed canopy. It felt like I was riding on a rollercoaster. It went down fast and the breeze that touched my skin felt cool. It was perfect for a hot day. The last one was called “Twin Cable,” and it was the best. There were two different lines, and they could go down at the same time. Also, it was the longest. I saw most of my friends having a “competition” who could reach the stop first. It seemed fun, but I didn’t try to do it, because I was afraid of getting hurt from going too fast.

When we were done with the canopy and superman, we walked around the park to look at some plants and animals. I couldn’t even get near to the cages of iguanas and crocodiles, because I am terrified by the reptiles. We saw many different kinds of trees and flowers. Also, we went into a maze. I went it for three times and got lost completely every time.

We were on the bus for a couple of hours to get to Manuel Antonio. It was dark when we got to the hotel. We were swimming in the swimming pool, took a shower after, and wet to bed. It was the first day in Manuel Antonio.

On the second day, we woke up at 6 in the morning. We had a breakfast on our way to rafting. The bus trip was pretty long, and the road was terrible. I almost got a carsick. When we got to the rafting place, the guide was telling us about the things we should know before we went rafting. After his explanations, we started our “journey” on our boat. At first, I was afraid, because I don’t know how to swim. Also, the guide said there could be some crocodiles near the river. But since we had our life jacket on, I just jumped out of the boat. The temperature of the river was PERFECT. It was not cold at all, and it was cool enough. Rafting was the best part of this trip.

After rafting, we went to Manuel Antonio beach. It was cloudy, and raining a little bit, but it still seemed beautiful. I took tons of pictures with my friends, played in the water, and looked around the little open stores that had cool souvenirs. Everything seemed so peaceful there.

At night, after we had our dinner, we had a fashion show with our Lord of the Flies shirts. (Go to Ms. Rumford’s blog for detail: http://rumfordwriters.edublogs.org). I was excited to see who would be the winner of the fashion show, because everyone worked really hard on it in a short amount of time, and our shirts came out great, too. At the end, Brady, one of my friends, got the first place. We had a little bit of chilling time after the fashion show, and packed up a little bit.

On the last day at Manuel Antonio, we did community service for about an hour at the National Park and donated some rakes. We cleared the leaves that were on the path. After working very hard on it, we hung out at the beach. Fortunately, it was a sunny day unlikely the day before, so we enjoyed even more. But I got tanned too much from there that my mom thought I was another person.When we went back to the hotel, the first group was already there, waiting for us. It was a nightmare, because I was the last one to take the shower in our room, and there were four people. It took a long time to become my turn. I took a shower in about five minutes; I didn’t even have time to dry my hair, put my clothes on, and took my luggage to the bus.

It felt like the days at Manuel Antonio were long. I enjoyed the trip incredibly much. I don’t think I will ever be able to forget about this trip or have a trip that is even better than this one in my entire life.

Okay. I was planning to write on a DJ who I love for this week’s post. But I think I really should write about this right at this moment, because it is making me REALLY upset and frustrated. I hope nobody will get offended by reading my writing, because that is not the purpose. Myung-Bak Lee was elected in August 2007 as the president of Korea. People thought he would improve South Korea’s economics and everything, but for me, I do not think so. When he was the mayor of Seoul, he made a stream that was used to be dirty made it clean and beautiful. He won a prize that was related to environment in 2008 from the magazine Times. However, things changed after he became the president.

First of all, he planned about all the schools in South Korea to have all the classes in English starting in 2012. It could be a good thing. Students will have opportunities to learn English and be more international. But the thing is that if they are only to speak in English in school, they will forget Korean eventually, then that means the traditional language will be forgotten. Also, the parents are going to have to get much more money for their children whose English is not very good to have tutor. And the students, whose family is not very abundant, will feel left out.  The second thing that he said he was going to do was making a huge canal. In my opinion, I don’t see it is going to be any good for the country. First, it is going to take a lot of money out of the tax that people had earned with their effort. I bet the government could use it for something better, such as improving public places like libraries and schools. Also, by building the canal, it will be a tragedy for all the livings that live near that area.  Here is the most shocking issue that is going on in Korea right now. He decided to import beef from the states. I didn’t really mind at first, because I was never interested in the economics. But this time, all of my friends and people on Internet were talking about the beef. And I was curious what was going on. I read an article that said the cow madness disease is 95% likely to be infected for Asians like Korean and Japanese people, and 35% for people from the West such as Americans, Europeans, etc. It is not that you are not going to get it because you are a vegetarian. You can get it only from drinking water. The process is like this: the chef washes the knife that he had cut the meat; water is going to go through the pipe; even there is a purify system, it will not work very well; the water will be used in our homes to wash our dishes and take a shower. Will it be gone if you boil the water? Well, only when you boil it above 800 degrees Celsius. Also, beef’s powders and gelatins are used for all our daily products: snack, meal, diapers, pads, etc. Especially, in Korean culture, people like to put bone parts of the cow, and make soups.

The thing that makes me REALLY mad is how the president of a country just ignores the thoughts of the public. When he was elected, I remember him saying ‘I will respect the nation’s thoughts’ or something like that. But it is obviously not what he promised. But what’s going on right now? People are getting madder day by day, because the government is not explaining what they are doing OR they are not listening to people’s opinions. I, at least, wanted the president to come out and give us explanations about what will be good for the nation by having American beef. It just seems like he doesn’t care about people’s health or anything. What is more important, a country’s ecomony or the public’s health. After 10 years, a half of the population could be dead. Of course, people who have LOTS of money would be able to eat expensive food from other country. However, people who DO NOT have much money will have to get the disease. I bet almost every single Koreans are against what he is doing. People have been doing a signature-seeking campaign for President Lee’s impeachment, and more than 500,000 people have signed for it (8:20 p.m. 5/1 Costa Rican Time).  I know I am only a student, and I don’t know that much about the government or anything. But since I am a person and I am one of the people who have pride of being a Korean, I hope the government will think about it much more carefully, and listen to people’s voices.

When I think about the memories related to piano, I just laugh. Wow, how much I hated playing the piano. I truly, from the bottom of my heart, hated playing the piano. Especially, I hated having piano lessons. But since I studied music, I had to know how to play the piano, because piano is close to the basic of music. It is not that I didn’t like the sound of it. I hated playing it. Anyways, do you want to hear how much I hated playing the piano? Okay, then here it goes. I can remember it so clearly. I learned how to play the piano since I was more or less 5. I saw a pianist on television, and she looked beautiful. It seemed like her fingers were flying like little humming birds. And all of my friends know how to play the piano, so I asked my mom if she could find a teacher for me. I had two lessons per week. When I had the first teacher, I was so excited that I put stickies that had notes on my room’s door and I played the piano until my neighbours told me to be quiet. However, I do not know since when, I started losing interests. It was probably because the new teacher that I had when we moved gave me too much homework. Also, she expected too much from me; she made me to play Mozart’s piece when I was only 9. Maybe it wasn’t that I hated piano; I might have hated the teacher. When she called my home, I just hung up as soon as I heard her voice. And when my mom wasn’t home I pretended that I was not at home. (I hope my mom will not read this essay.) When I was 12, I decided to have lesson once in a week, because I was way too tired to study, practice my instrument, and practice piano at the same time. I still loathed piano at that time. It felt like I was the only one who was not getting better at all. And my fingers were not moving smoothly. I wanted to give up playing the piano so bad. But my parents did not allow me to, because they thought my musical talent would be not as good as the others’. Then, when I moved to Costa Rica, I didn’t have any chance to have piano lessons. My mom did ask me if I wanted to have piano lessons. But I didn’t want to, because first of all, I had to have it in Spanish, which is the language that I do not know well. Also, I wanted to be free from the stress of the piano. But guess what happened a few weeks ago. I have been interested in playing the piano, again! I get the music pieces from the Internet, because I like playing the songs that I like to listen. I would like to sing if I knew how to play the songs perfectly.

I thought that it would be a great idea if I post the videos of my own on the blog! I actually recorded them about a month ago, but I had to stop in the middle, because my blisters popped while I was playing Kayagum, and it hurt a lot. (The blisters I got…—->)I finished the rest of the song a few days ago, and it took me a long time to find out how to post videos.

The song I am playing on this video is called “Chun-Seol (Spring Snow)” made by Byung-Ki Hwang. It’s pretty long, but I hope you will enjoy!

*The sound is a little bit slower than the video.

When I listen to music, there are several artists that I really like to listen to their songs. Most of the songs that I listened to are Korean. It is not that because I am a Korean. I don’t actually mind which country the songs are from. I do not care about languages. Last time, I saw a quote on the Internet. “Music is the universal language of mankind. “~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Outre-Mer. I like this quote, and I agree on it. I believe that even though people do not understand what the singer is saying, they get their emotions. But when I think about it, the reason why I listen to Korean ones mostly is that my best friend from Korea, Sharon, suggests me to listen to some songs that she liked very much. And when I find that I like them, too, I listen to them days and days. I never get bored of them. That’s the charming of the electronica music. Sharon’s most favourite one is Clazziquai Project. And all of a sudden, it became one of mine, too. Clazziquai’s songs are mostly on electronic music, jazz, house, and groove. There are three people: DJ Clazzi, Ho-Ran, and Alex. Ho-Ran and Alex are the main vocals, and DJ Clazzi is the one who manages producing. They have released three official albums, and three remix version. Also, their albums have been popular in Taiwan and Japan. Their first official album, Instant Pig, was released in 2004. The second one. Color Your Soul, was published in 2005, and the third one, Love Child of the Century, was announced in 2007. There is a list of songs that I like by Clazziquai:

• She is…
• Nova Bossa
• Fill This Night
• Nal-Jja-Byun-Kyung-Sun
• Gentle Giant
• Love Mode
• Come To Me
• Dance
• Color your Soul
• Romeo ‘N Juliet
• After Love
• Robotica
• Sunshine
• Sweety
• Be My Love

They are not the only songs by Clazziquai. I guarantee that there are more songs that I would love. Since it is hard to get Korean CDs in Costa Rica, I download them from the Internet, or get them from my friends. However, it is hard to find them on the Internet, because in these days, the rules with copyrights have been stricter, therefore it is harder to look for songs on the Internet. So, I am planning on buying some albums of Clazziquai when I visit Korea, which I don’t know when it will be. The reason I couldn’t get any CDs when I went to Korea this summer was because I was not that interested in this group. I really like Clazziquai Project, because they are very enthusiastic with music. And they have very soft voices that make me comfortable. I can’t wait until they release new album! If you would like some more information about Clazziquai, go to: http://www.clazziquai.co.kr/

Clazziquai Project

Left: Alex

Middle: DJ Clazzi

Right: Ho-Ran

The first official album, Instant Pig, 2005

The second official album, Color Your Soul, 2005

The third official album, Love Child of the Century, 2007

Electronica might not sound pretty familiar to people. I bet they like to listen to songs that have sweet or sad love lyrics, rock, rap, etc. I like those kind of music, too. But the reason why I am writing about electronica is that I wanted the readers to read about something that they had never known before. There are various types of songs under electronica category, such as techno, trance, house, drum and base, and acid jazz. I assume that you know what techno and house are. Like techno and house are, electronica music is based on beats and melody than lyrics. It has many different kinds of “machine sound,” or I might call it as “robot sound,” that is made by a synthesizer. A synthesizer is similar to an electronic piano. I was very attracted by its hum that sounds like marbles rolling down the surface. Usually acid jazz and Shibuya-Kei, the ones that I listen to most of the time, has that kind of feeling. I know. You might now get what I am talking about. I can see your face going like, “What? What is she trying to say?” But that was the only way I could describe the sound. It makes me relaxed very much, and some songs that have sweet melody even make me happy sometimes.Electronica songs are mostly used for background music for some restaurants or stores. Without music, it would be boring, and people would not want to stay there for a long time. And if they put some songs that had lyrics from the beginning to the end of the song, for me, the place would seem messy. But electronica is perfect for background music. I feel that it is tranquility that makes me to like this genre of song very much. I will put top lists of songs that love for next post!