MUSIC♪♬

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. :]

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.

I love music. When I think of “passion,” I always think it should be some kind of “activity,” dancing, sports, playing instrument, etc. But when I thought about it more carefully, I had a feeling that music could be one of the passions. Because it makes me feel comfortable and happy, and I believe that is how you feel when you do something that is your passion. For me, I like any kind of music, except for dirty ones. Electronic, rap, jazz, and R&B are my favorites. I usually listen to Korean artists’ songs. Another genre that I love is Korean traditional music.