i witnessed the unthinkable today.

Driving back from Penn, I pulled up onto North Merion Avenue and approached Wyndham to park. There was a white BMW X5 coming towards me, and a golden lab was sticking his head out the window. The car was going slow, thank God, but somehow the dog fell out of the car. He jutted his upper body too far out the window, I guess, and gravity took over and he fell out, hitting his back on a street sign pole and rolling onto the ground.

And I watched the whole thing happen. I braked to a stop and just watched it happen in horror.

The weird thing is, when I saw the dog with his body out the window, I seriously thought, "dude. I hope it doesn't fall out." And it did. It totally fell out of the car.

The lady didn't realize what had happened until she saw my face, I think. Cuz she was madd delayed in her response. She stopped the car and jetted out of her car to make sure the dog was okay. It was kinda sad to watch. but I stayed there in the middle of the street, with two other cars behind me. When I finally felt like it was safe to move up I made eye-contact with the driver and she looked so guilty. Like she knew we were judging her for letting her dog fall out of the car.

The funny part is, the dog was just confused and seemed like it was playing it off. Like a person who falls on his face as he's walking and just gets up and acts nonchalantly like nothing happened. Except it was a dog.

and it's December. crazy.

what?

It's Halloween and only the capies and capie-like girls are dressed up going to class. I just wore my Dr. Seuss tshirt, gapkids zipup, jeans, and a Villanova cap to class. And I stayed awake for ALL of ecology- which was pretty amazing, considering that I haven't been conscious for all of class for about 2 weeks or so.



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Okay. I just deleted the rest of this post. It was ... frustrating. Just a ranting along the lines of "What is wrong with this world. I look at the news and all I feel is upset and sad." :(

Senior year is not pleasant. High school senior year was a call to paaaarrrttayyyyy!!!! But this is different. Academically, you're wrapping up all of the things you learned- or whatever- through a thesis. And trying to finish up your graduation requirements. Life-ly, you're looking for jobs. Your friends are sad because the job hunt is hard and no one wants a girl from a liberal arts school in the suburbs if they can have someone from say, Wharton, which is 20 minutes away. freakin Wharton. Some friends that are older begin getting married, having kids. Other friends the same age are already engaged or finding that guy or girl that makes their world complete (haha ew). And you're not dating or engaged or married. or jubilantly pregnant. You're nearing the ultimate end of childhood-- even though you're legally an adult at 18 and completely totally independent by 21, you're still liable to be under the financial and responsible care of your parents until you graduate. But once out of school, you have to work. Or get married.

With all that said, it's not terrible. It's pretty intense and scary. I don't feel prepared at all for the world. I did not pick up any practical skills useful for the workplace while at Bryn Mawr. I suck at Excel, don't know how to make something into a PDF, suck at economics, can't solve equations. The most impressive thing on my resume is my stint at EXPLO- indicating that I like teaching and beat out a lot of other applicants for that position two summers ago. But not everyone knows what EXPLO is.

But I'm okay. Maybe because the biggest source of stress is my thesis- it's just a paper ultimately. I'm goin to continue to freak out about it, but I won't die because of it. I say that now but in 2 weeks it'll be a different story. ..

Don't really know what this post is about. But I will end with this:

My hair's grown out a lot.

strong and lonely

A few summers ago I went to the mall with my dad and looked for sunglasses. We were in the sunglasses section of Macy's for 45 minutes before I decided I didn't like any of them. He's the type to look at an item for 3 seconds and buy it on the spot, so the wait and my indecisiveness drove him a little crazy.

He called me today asking if I was okay- if I was lonely. I'd mentioned to my mom during lunch today that I've been feeling a bit lonesome because of work and responsibility and not being with my friends as much as I'd like to, and I guess she told my dad because he called sounding sorry for me. I couldn't help laughing when he asked whether a boyfriend would make me feel better.

"What's your style? Any preferences?"
I don't know.
"Come on Soyeonah. You know- that's your problem! You're so picky that you don't even know what you want!"
Okay..
"I know I've been telling you to be expensive and picky, but I give you permission now to loosen up. You can lower your standards. Remember when you dragged me to the mall to buy sunglasses??? You can't do that anymore- you need to know what you want!"
Okay. haha
"Seriously. Appa will come to your school and we can have a date, get some beers, watch a movie, talk about love, your youth, and whatever."
hahahaha okay appa.
"You're what- 22? You got 8 more years to go. You'll be fine. You're a strong girl- you don't need a boy right this second. But what do you want?"
... He can't be shorter than I am.
"he he he he he. Okay. That might be kind of hard, but I'll try my best."

I guess I really am the one most likely to have an arranged marriage.

I guess the point of this post is that parents are pretty great. They annoy and bother you 90% of the time, but all they really want is your happiness. My parents apparently are so eager for me to be happy, and not lonely, that they'll get the guy for me.

I'm actually kinda nervous that my parents are going to ask me to email some Korean dude in the near future. They've already done that to my cousin. They think what they did for her (not to her) was so great. hahahahaha

faith

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for...

By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did... By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death... By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family... By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went... By faith Abraham, even though he was past age--and Sarah herself was barren--was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise...

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country--a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

Hebrews 11.

eclectic

My mom has this obsession with freezing and refrigerating things. She doesn't like things to go to waste so she bags and freezes almost all of our food. Thing is, we don't really eat the leftovers because we forget about them being in the freezer, and it just takes up the shelf-space that should rightfully be holding ice cream and other frozen goodness. But the thing that gets me the most is how she bags and freezes our rice immediately after our first helping of it. I can't leisurely grab kimchi and kim to eat with bap because the bap is always frozen. And I'm too lazy or hungry to wait for the bap to heat up in the microwave so I've been craving Korean food lately.

Waiting for a prescription at Rite Aid I picked up Philadelphia magazine and flipped to the center. The author of the article witnessed the death of a woman in my area and he recounts what happened. http://www.phillymag.com/home/articles/mystery_sideswiped/. Apparently this past April a woman stumbled out of a moving car and she bled from her head and her eyes to death. The divorced mother of two kids, she had graduated from the same school district as I did. Her boyfriend, a D.A. from my county, was driving the car and people who know him say that they aren't surprised that he is caught up in something shady like this. I stood in the middle of the aisle reading this with my mouth gaping. No one at all mentioned this to me. It's a restaurant that everyone goes to; I went in its first week of opening and decided that it's a sham of an Italian restaurant and have never gone back. But we all go to the Rita's right next to it all the time. To think that possible murder happened in the parking lot of a neighborhood restaurant next to a children's destination is so weird. And it's a place where the biggest nuisance comes from cops who like to pull you over for speeding. so weird. I swam in the same pool as this woman in high school.

The cover story of this same issue is about how Philadelphians ruin their kids because of their wealth. Particularly the ones that live in the Main Line area- which is where Bryn Mawr is. These terrible kids are the same ones that students on our campus babysit part-time. It's weird. The highly-paid nannies and babysitters that the articles mention are my classmates. And I almost was one of them- a woman in the voting line in 2004 asked me for my number so I could sit for her kids. She seemed kind of psycho so I deliberately missed her call.

I'm so grateful to ABC for putting their shows online. Ugly Betty is a great show. It distracts me from the crazy amount of work I should be doing. wuteva.

broken hearts

seriously. why all the drama and heartache? what goes on in the brains of those who cheat, lie, and steal?

stop it.

stories

I'm a sucker for stories. There's something about discovering things about other people, fictional and real, and their experiences that captivates me. Not like that's particular only to me, but I'm just saying that I'm a real sucker for them. When I was younger I would read 3-4 books at a time, and I would rotate each book after a certain number of chapters. I read in the dark, crossing the streets in New York, in the car, and in the bathroom. Now as a 21-year-old "adult" I've strayed from reading that many simultaneously, but instead get so wrapped up in the plot that I stay up til 5am reading the latest Harry Potter installment. Thank God there are no more due out because I'd lose too much precious time.

I'm an even bigger sucker for testimonies. It amazes me how personal it allows a person to become in front of an audience of some sort. And it's not for the glorification of the individual giving the testimony-- if anything it shows that bad parts of that person. Rather it distinguishes the way in which the almighty God made himself somewhat tangible and reachable to the guy, the girl, you, me. It blows me away; sometimes more powerfully than others, but I'm blown away regardless. To be honest, the fact that God is not for my own escapes me occasionally and it's pleasantly shocking when I'm reminded that there are others out there who have been offered and accepted the same love and grace as me. But in such different manners. There's that lil kid song that goes "my God is so big, so strong and so mighty, there's nothing my God cannot do" (clap clap). And that rings true whenever I hear others' stories. There are the simple "I grew up in church and I just love Jesus" stories, then there are the stories involving gangs and drug use and near-death experiences. There are the miraculous encounters and the intellectual epiphanies that introduced people to the Big Man. And there are the testimonies of after the initial introduction, of times of trial and tribulation, of joy, of abundant blessings and challenges. There are also those crazy missions encounters, where government officials gave people ultimatums but things crazily worked out in their favor.

And there are the testimonies of every day occurrences. Of seeing a baby smile at you without the reason being gas. Of the other car waving you the favor of merging in front of them. Those wouldn't really be referred to as testimonies, but rather they're more generally stories. Little events. But the little events are the things that make up stories and testimonies, and they're essentially the same thing, aren't they. I love stories. I admired, and still admire, the stories of others and the events of their lives that seemed so awesome and exciting. I'd silently envy their amazing lives and cool experiences, and my stories weren't much compared to theirs. My stories didn't seem to compare. Then I embarked on journeys and experiences of my own that I guess others may have envied. But despite my own exciting stories, others' always trumped mine.

It's funny that this summer is the first one in a long time that was supposed to be uneventful. Without any plans, I didn't expect it to turn out so full. Denmark and the rest of Europe's made me see the good in those little things, the boring things like sitting and talking to a Danish man about prisons over tea. I keep referring to how this summer is a quiet and relaxing one, but it's been more than that. There are a lot of stories to it, and I keep thinking of my past ones. And it's so ... humbling. And silencing. And wonderful.

Now if only I could find a way to express and tell them without being boring or sounding too pompous that'd be great.