E.C. -Stuff KMLA Students Love ♥

9.  “Stuff Korean People Like” or “Stuff KMLA Students Like.”  You’ve seen the book in my classroom, and if you haven’t you can read the original source here. This is your chance to write satirically in a comical mode about something you should be familiar with.  Stuff KMLA Students like?  Word Smart quizzes.  Morning Exercise.  Elevators.  Pen twirling.

Optional

1.   YA

      YA is an energy-drink made by a Korean company, Samsung, which helps you stay late at night, as long as for five hours. It is made out of Guarana (which contains good caffeine), red ginseng, and some other ingredients that are highly effective in waking you up. For KMLA students, who usually have to stay late for homework and quizzes, YA is such a good friend. They say it gives you more power than coffee does. When you get on kmlaonline.com, you can easily find some posts titled "I need YAs. Sell me some". Although I have only tried it about three times, I could feel its strong effect on helping me get awakened. Many of my friends consume YA at night to study with fresher brain, especially around the final exams. One of my friends K even ordered boxes of YA. Although uncertain on how healthy it would be for body, the fact that KMLA students love YA is definitely true.

2.   Party

      Party used to be one of the reasons why I had chosen to apply for KMLA. As for a Korean high school, KMLA has unusually many party nights; the biggest ones are Freshmen Party, Minjok Party, and Christmas Party. Whenever the party night comes closer, half of KMLA students are looking up online to find a dress or suits, and some other accessories to wear at the party. It shows how much KMLA students love party nights. The biggest considered one is usually the Minjok Party, which we already had on October. Another upcoming big party is the Christmas Party, which will be held on Monday, nineteenth of December. At party, students get on stage to dance and sing, and some student bands play exciting music to help them enjoy the party. Party became part of the most beloved culture in KMLA!

3.   Music

      Music is definitely one of those that KMLA students literally LOVE. Almost every single student can play at least one instrument; some of them can even play more than three or four instruments. There are many music circles for extracurricular activities at KMLA including KMLA Orchestra, Minjok Orchestra, FITM, PLZ, NAB, Synergy, and etc. I play synthesizer in FITM, which is a band that plays soft rock. Some students are members of more than two circles in the above, playing several instruments.

Even students who can't really sing or play any instruments like to listen to music a lot. They have got their favorite bands or singers for their own. Part of the reason for listening to music, as my friend L commented, is because music makes you feel good -sometimes calm and sometimes excited. Music for KMLA students is one of the most basic needs for living :)

4.  Sports

Apart from music, KMLA students also like to play sports. There are about five sports circles at KMLA: Crossover and Gameover for basketball, CGV for soccer, H2O for swimming, Yagubu for baseball and Hit & Run for softball. Those circles always win the 1st or 2nd places whenever they participate at the State-championships, or even the National-championships. Even for those who are not members of the sports circles, playing sports is one of the ways to express stress and enjoy life at KMLA. Asked why playing basketball, one of the best players at KMLA answered, "Because playing basketball is when I feel most excited!" If they are banned from playing sports, KMLA students might transfer to another school. These are all why KMLA is also known as "Korean Minjok Sports Academy"!

3rd Reading Journal for "The Body"-(focused on the movie)

To tell the truth, I have never thought a movie could be better than the original text that it came from. Though I have seen a lot of films after reading the books, all those movies literally seemed to be “craps”, when compared to the text. For me, they couldn’t give the appropriate expression for each scene. One big example is “Twilight”. About three years ago, I used to be so in love with the “Twilight saga” by Stephenie Meyer. I read the all four series in less than a month and was always waiting for the movie. But when it came out, it was so lousy that I wanted to turn it off while watching. Another one is “The Shawshank Redemption”, which I have watched not so long ago. And as a consequence, I expected the same for the novella “The Body”. But, now I know I was totally wrong in that sense.

In the first place, the film turned one boring story into an excellent piece of art that reminds you of childhood memories and friendship. Every single line of the characters’ conversation, every single stream of music in the background, and even the tiniest details were set to fit with the mood and theme of the story. For example, though it was such a small detail, I liked how it was not Denny, but Gordie’s father who appears in Gordie’s dream and tells him “It should have been you (who got killed)”, in the movie.

For some reason, while I was reading the book, I had this perception that Denny should always be the nice one, and this was why I felt weird when Denny’s corpse came out and said such a statement. Although the book did not mean to portray him as a mean figure or anything, I just did not like that part. I was extremely surprised when I found out that the movie modified that very part. The scene in the movie also drew a dramatic effect on forming the “bad” image of Gordie’s dad.

Another thing is that the movie eliminated those unimportant parts in the book, and showed only the main scenes that would either affect the storyline or the mood. There were two metafictions in the book: one that Gordie wrote, and the other one that Gordie told his friends in the middle of their journey. It was a wise decision of the film producer to erase the first one, “The Stud City”, and to accentuate the other one, “The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan”. The Lard Ass one helped forming the mood of fun childhood talking time. But if the Stud City were described in the film, it would have been more like a serious group of children being lost in their teenage. And the movie would have been rated “mature”, frankly.

Last but not least, I loved how they changed the title “The Body” into “Stand by Me”. “The Body” was such an odd title for me. I wondered why the body had to have that much importance. I felt friendship and the childhood memories were the themes shown throughout the story. Finding the body was just a mere justification for the children leave home and have their time with each other. And the title “Stand by Me” fit perfectly with the image that I had in my mind. Whenever I imagine someone is always standing by me, I feel safe and secure. I strongly believe it tells the overall mood of the story way better than the original title.

             Making compliments toward the movie does not mean I did not like the book. I loved the original story, but then I loved the film more. It was such a great chance for me to notice how there are films that are better than the text; and to stop and think about my own friendship. I hope to watch the movie later in life!

p.s. Mr. Garrioch, do you think i should put this piece as a review on the movie for E.C., or just one of the reading journals.....?

I Want A Wife

I Want a Wife 

 by   Judy Brady

I belong to that classification of people known as wives. I am a Wife. And, not altogether incidentally, I am a mother.

Not too long ago a male friend of mine appeared on the scene from the Midwest fresh from a recent divorce. He had one child, who is, of course, with his ex-wife. He is obviously looking for another wife. As I thought about him while I was ironing one evening, it suddenly occurred to me that I, too, would like to have a wife. Why do I want a wife?

I would like to go back to school, so that I can become economically independent, support myself, and, if need be, support those dependent upon me. I want a wife who will work and send me to school. And while I am going to school I want a wife to take care of my children. I want a wife to keep track of the children's doctor and dentist appointments. And to keep track of mine, too. I want a wife to make sure my children eat properly and are kept clean. I want a wife who will wash the children's clothes and keep them mended. I want a wife who is a good nurturant attendant to my children, arranges for their schooling, makes sure that they adequate social life with their peers, takes them to the park, the zoo, etc. I want a wife who takes care of the children when they are sick, a wife who arranges to be around when the children need special care, because, of course, I cannot miss classes at school. My wife must arrange to lose time at work and not lose the job. It may mean a small cut in my wife's income from time to time, but I guess I can tolerate that. Needless to say, my wife will arrange and pay for the care of the children while my wife is working.

I want a wife who will take care of my physical needs. I want a wife who will keep my house clean. A wife who will pick up after my children, a wife who will pick up after me. I want a wife who will keep my clothes clean, ironed, mended, replaced when need be, and who will see to it that my personal things are kept in their proper place so that I can find what I need the minute I need it. I want a wife who cooks the meals, a wife who is a good cook. I want a wife who will plan the menus, do the necessary grocery shopping, prepare the meals, serve them pleasantly, and then do the cleaning up while I do my studying. I want a wife who will care for me when I am sick and sympathize with my pain and loss of time from school. I want a wife to go along when our family takes a vacation so that someone can continue to care for me and my children when I need a rest and a change of scene.

I want a wife who will take care of details of my social life. When my wife and I are invited out by my friends, I want a wife who will take care of the babysitting arrangements. When I meet people at school that I like and want to certain, I want a wife who will have the house clean, will prepare a special meal, serve it to me and my friends, and not interrupt when I talk about the things that interest me and my friends. I want a wife who will have arranged that the children are fed and ready for bed before my guests arrive so that the children do not bother us. I want a wife who takes care of the needs of my guests so that they feel comfortable, who makes sure that they have an ashtray, that they are passed the hors d'oeuvres, that they helping of the food, that their wine glasses are replenished when necessary, that their coffee is served to them as they like it. And I want a wife who knows that sometimes I need a night to myself.

I want a wife who is sensitive to my sexual needs, a wife who makes love passionately and eagerly when I feel like it, a wife who makes sure that I am satisfied. And, of course, I want a wife who will not demand sexual attention when I am not in the mood for it. I want a wife who assumes the complete responsibility for birth control, because I do not want more children. I want a wife who will remain sexually faithful to me so that I do not have to clutter up my intellectual life with jealousies. And I want a wife who understands that my sexual needs may entail more than strict adherence to monogamy. I must, after all, be able to relate to people as fully as possible.

If, by chance, I find another person more suitable as a wife than the wife I already have, I want the liberty to replace my present wife with another one. Naturally, I will expect a fresh, new life; my wife will take the children and be solely responsible for them so that I am left free.

When I am through with school and have acquired a job, I want my wife to quit working and remain at home so that my wife can more fully and completely take care of a wife's duties.

My God, who wouldn't want a wife?  

This is one of my favorite pieces of writing since long time ago :)
Wanted to share with everyone! 

Stand by Me (2nd Reading journal for The Body)

For some reason I have always considered girlfriends’ friendship as to be higher in intimidation, thus a better and a closer one. Although I cannot be one hundred percent sure for now, I guess I was wrong in that sense. I have never been a boy. But, if their friendship is like the one in “The Body”, I would pay great amount of respects towards them. As much as that, “friends” I found in “The Body” had something more than that can be expressed in a word “friendship”. If I had to name it, I would say it is a “friendship for real”.

In my point of view, real friends have to be just friends, meaning they should not have any barrier between themselves for any kind of reason. I specially want to mention the “barrier by background” for now. When people are young, most of them tend to make friends regardless of each others’ background. Rather than that, they think more of how well they fit into each other in person to person. But then when they grow up, being adults, they tend to calculate how much beneficial their friends would be to them. It is just a natural consequence, well a bad consequence, while growing up as adults. This might be part of the reason why Stephen King portrayed children, not grown-ups, to be his models of “friends”.

In “The Body”, all four friends in the gang have unhappy family background; Gordie, the main character, is an invisible son after his brother Denny’s death; Chris is poor; Vern has imprisoned brothers; Teddy has deformed ears because he was child-abused by his father. They get along with each other not because they are childhood buddies, but because they understand each other. Whenever Gordie’s father tells him not to hang out with those “thieves” and “poors”, he never listens. I believe this is what childhood friendship’s innocence is, and at the same time what the real friendship is. I felt shamefully embarrassed of myself sometimes being picky when choosing friends. And now I learned that I can’t really “choose” friends, but it just forms naturally.

 “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve.  Jesus, does anyone?”

Another value of having real friendship is standing by each other all the time. Especially when they feel lonely or depressed, friends are the ones who can give them power just by being next to them. Even if they don’t do anything special, “standing by one another” would be enough. In this sense, I would specially like to portray Gordie and Chris. Although all four of them are good friends, I found those two most stand-by-me-ish. They form a "mutual support bond" between themselves. Chris supports Gordie's writing, and believes in his ability when other kids make fun of it. He tells Gordie, "Kids lose everything unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks are too fucked up to do it then maybe i ought to," which means he would always be next to Gordie whenever he needs support and someone to lean on. Later on in life, Gordie encourages and helps Chris to keep up studying and get into university.

“That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”

Chris also shows Gordie his heart and how much he was disappointed at the teacher about the milk incident. Gordie understands Chris sincerely. To look at this in the viewpoint of ordinary teenager, it might seem to be just a normal conversation that would go on between friends. But then if we think of it from their perspective, this kind of conversation would not have been an easy one. They had to pull out all their family background and some other private issues. Chris had to tell that he was from a poor background, and Gordie knew it. Chris trusted Gordie enough to tell his innermost worry, and Gordie trusted Chris enough to give him sincere comments. It valued much more than just some middle classed teenagers whining and responding. Without exaggeration, it was their whole life in a longer view.

Taking out memories with friends, to be frank, I did not have any friends like Gordie or Chris when I was their age. I was not mature -in mind- enough to listen to my friends’ worry and be truly concerned about them. But I don’t regret my past for not building friendship like the “gang” in this book. It is just I was a bit slower than them. I am now happy to have bunch of friends that I can show deep inside my heart. Because of this book, I could think of what my friends mean to me and what I mean to them.

Overall, I prefer the title “Stand by Me” rather than “The Body”. The journey was important for them not because they wanted to find a dead body, but because they could get together and grow more tightened “real” friendship. At least I believe their goal in the first place was not to leave home; they just wanted to be “standing” by each other for a long time. And how FANTASTIC is that.

"Me? I'm a writer now.  Like I said."

There you go. This is the power of true friendship.

Me in 15 years!

7. Creative Essay about where you’ll be in life in either 10, 15, or 20 years from now.  Must be written in First Person narrative as if you are experiencing a particular day at that time.


12.06.2026 (SUN)

It was a cold day today. As always, I just got back home from curing South and North Korean citizens who are mentally disturbed, but not mentally sick. They are suffering from the aftereffect of the Korean Unification War that happened in 2023, when I was 29 and just back to Korea after getting the Ph.D. Degrees for political psychology at Stanford.

At the time when I was getting into Swarthmore as a freshman, double majoring in politics and psychology, I could never expect this kind of situation at all. I dreamed of myself at UN, working as a diplomat. I have spent my young ages just for studying, for almost ten years. It was inevitable for me- excuse me- to be a bit indifferent about what was going on in my own country. Thus it was such a shock for me to learn there was a war going on. Perhaps it was because I left Korea because I felt certainly unpatriotic toward the country where the riches literally ruled the whole society. Well, still I am a professor now, at Korea University. But I spend majority of time to counsel and cure those mentally affected people. It’s a volunteer work, just to let you know.

The one that I met today was a North Korean woman in my age, perhaps a little older than me. Compared to other people that I have met for three years, she was quite close to normal. It was just that she couldn’t really look into people’s eyes when having a conversation. She told me that she keeps remembering her sister’s eyes, who died while coming down to Seoul from Pyeongyang. For this kind of case, I cannot really do anything except for soothing her grief and praying for her to get better soon. She left as soon as we made our next appointment at my office.

Since that was the only meeting scheduled for this morning, I left my office to have lunch together with my husband Kyle. Kyle’s office is right next to mine, so we can see each other whenever we can. If I say I want to see his face even right after seeing him, that’s a lie. We had lunch at Panera’s, talking about my patient in the morning. Again just to let you know, he doesn’t do any volunteer work; he is a hard working professor unlike me.

After the lunch, I had to run as fast as possible because I had a lecture at 1:00 p.m. Although I am not concentrating just onto my job as a professor, giving lectures to my students is always fun. I try to be as “just” as possible, and to “awake” the students, since I remember how helpful my chemistry teacher was for me to realize the need to reform the rotten society long time ago. It feels so good when they ask me such radical questions. Even though Korea is already unified, there are more serious problems left here.

I had some time to read books after the lecture. It is the most pleasant time when I am reading a book alone in my office. The most recent book that I read was “The Body” by Stephen King. I still remember I had to read that novella for my English class when I was a freshman at KMLA. Though I have read it for over ten times, whenever I read this story, I feel calm and pleased, trying to get a stream of memory on my highschool friendship.

The peaceful reading time is always short. I had to meet two more patients in order. But it doesn’t really matter since I love this work too. Those two were friends, and had the same phobia. They were both afraid of something sharp because their parents were killed by knives that South Korean soldiers used, accusing them for being “Reds”. My patients said they get to think of those knives whenever seeing a sharp material. I cried, thinking how cruel a human being could be.

Every day after the meetings, I try not to get too angry at the cruelty and wickedness of human beings. I don’t think I have changed at all. I have thought the same and felt the same, at least in my mind, since I was a teenager. I am happy that I didn’t change. And I hope I don’t change even when I get older and richer. Please god.

Assignment : Real-Tech

5.  Review a TED video of your choice (not Ken Robinson), and include aminimum of 20 SAT words within your writing.  Underline them in bold. If you want to use more without sounding ridiculous, you are welcome to try.  Select them carefully before you write.

Required

Whenever Granny tells me how much she is confused of the high digital technology, I have been having this obsession that I should not be like that since I am a young adult who is living through the 21^st century. To be candid, I have felt the same way as Granny does. All I can do is to use my laptop to do my homework and get on Facebook, and my Android phone to text message my friends and play with game applications. Though people call my generation as the one that will lead the future world with enhanced science and technology, I have been indifferent and ignores about anything related to digital technology. That’s why I got really interested when I saw this laudable sixth-sense-technology idea by Pranav Mistry on Ted.com.

The main idea of Mistry was to combine the digital world and the real world by taking some objects from the real world into the digital world. This might seem quite obscure to understand by words, but it’s actually a very simple idea. For example, when you have a piece of paper, you get to put anything on there just by moving your fingers in the air. If you want to put a picture of your friend on it, you can just click the face and drag it superficially into the paper, in reality! What is even cooler is that you can even augment your friend’s face, using Photoshop, again with your fingers, on the paper itself. In the video, Mistry showed his own experience in decomposing his mouse(as a computer device) and made that into a cool device in which he put it on his hand, and when he did that, the motions of his hand was shown on the monitor as 3D motions. Actually, this kind of technology is used in action-movie film making process, such as the movie called Avatar.

While watching this video, I could remember my own example of digital-and-real-combined machine. I first thought of this idea when I was in fourth grade. I was doing my tedious math homework at the library and was very frustrated with some complicated questions. The answer sheet was too ambiguous for me to understand; I called my mom, whom I believed to be an innately perfect mathematician. However, I could not get any point through a phone call. I wanted someone next me to teach me whenever I wanted to.

At that time, I thought of a machine, which not only has a function of scanner and fax, but something that we can also write on it. What I mean by “writing” on it is different from just writing on a sheet of paper or typing on a laptop; it is a combination of both! If I put my math textbook on the machine, someone on the other side, such as my mom, can get the image of it and write on it through the machine. And when she does that, the things that she writes on the machine, is shown on my textbook automatically. Although I consider it to be one step lower than the idea of Mistry in a sense that I still thought of “machine”, where he thought of just combining the digital world and the real world directly with the objects themselves, the basic idea is quite similar. I was happy to hear Mistry being resolute about developing this kind of technology very soon, thinking I might be able to make my own machine that I have imagined long time ago, someday in a near future.

Another thing that flashed through my mind while watching the video was a novella by Bernard Werber, which I cannot remember the name of it. It was about a man who could get all the information of a person, on that person’s body, just by looking at it. Mistry had a similar example of this idea. When we look at an object, we get to know everything about it. For instance, when we have a train ticket, we get to know the pathway, delaying time, and everything. I was astonished while imagining how wonderful it would be to learn about all the things as soon as I see them. It would deter people from squandering their time by expediting their routines. The only problem that rose up to my head was the privacy issue. But I believe it would be innocuous if that function works only on objects, not human beings.

Overall, I was very impressed to find someone who is brilliant enough to not only get the idea, but also scrutinize objects near him and try some experiments on them. I loved how he had tons of examples to make it lucid. I almost revere Mistry now in a sense that he is not really planning to make any new machines, but is just simply trying to combine the digital world and the real world. It is not just an abstract idea of a crazy scientist anymore. It is more likely to be inevitable in a near future. I am looking forward to stare at some food in the cafeteria and get all the information about it very soon!

Review on the Latest Court

3. A Review.  You are allowed to review anything you want – a book, movie, video, album, game,  restaurant, hotel…. Just about anything.  You should have personal experience with that thing, and supply factual data to dress up your writing (Rotten Tomatoes, Amazon, IMDB, and Metacritic etc).  React to opposing or supporting reviews that might add to your response.  You must include a rating system.  Stars, thumbs, out of ten or our of five, A- or C+ etc.

Required

“All rise, Kookki eh daehan gyeongrye, sit.” Starting with the phrase as always, the 26^th court held in the Dasan Auditorium, however, was done quite differently in a good sense. Wise time management and some educational comments would be the main reasons why so. Though some of the students’ attitude could have made the mood of the court a bit aggressive, overall it was all managed pretty well.

Time management is one of the most important factors that decide how it felt after attending the court. The 26^th court was very efficient in managing the time. It was partly because there was comparably few people accused that week and partly because Mr. Sung was more generous that day. According to the 26^th Court List, there were exactly 118 people accused of violating school rules. It was not many, but not that little either. Here, the Judicial Branch was wise enough to call out as many people as possible at once, those who were accused for the same violations. Since the judge called out 10 or more students at the same time, the whole process of calling out people was finished in less than 30 minutes. Although Mr. Sung’s comments took about an hour, it was far less compared to the usual ending-at-9-whatsoever comments.

             With this good time management, students’ attitude was one thing that could have improved the whole process even more, if it were a bit better. Though only few students were dozing at the court, a lot of people used their cell phones to either text message or play Smartphone racing car games. Some of them were even being noisy. They gave up whispering; now they were just saying out loud however they wanted to. For example, the one sitting near me was text messaging for the whole time, and sometimes talked to me with a high pitch voice, no matter what the judge was saying. Some students were violating even the very basic rules by wearing inappropriate jackets that were not KMLA Noobies.

             Luckily for the students, there was only one final defending speech, with one petition of appeal- so actually two speeches. Whether there were one or two, it was way less than usual, considering that there used to be four or more speeches in average. The juries seemed to have made judicious decisions about what to accept and what to reject. They accepted the petition of appeal with new evidence given by the defendant, which was about violating teacher’s direction. But the final defending speech about violating self-study regulation was rejected for having too few evidence. I believe the decisions were made very wisely in a sense that the juries had strict standards. Amount of evidence and the accuracy of it are the only ways that the juries can make judgments.

             For this court, Mr. Sung had a big role in forming the bright mood. For most of the courts in the past, he was always accusing students, making them stand up one by one and yelling for the whole time. When he was not yelling, he was either staring at the Court List to find whom to accuse, or talking to himself. But on that day, he left a very remarkable comment that I would remember for my life, probably. I still remember the whole phrase: “You might feel very annoyed about the teachers scolding you for now, but in the future, by the time when you get to my age, it will be very lonely and depressing to have no one in your life yelling at you for doing something wrong”. It was the best comment that Mr. Sung had ever made at the court, I believe. I bet most of the students, not only me, thought it was valuable enough to think about the comment for a while.

             Overall, the mood of the court was comfortable and fun with some jokes. How much was it? As much as I would not want to go to the court in the future, not because it is boring, but because I don’t want to get disappointed at another court, while comparing it to the 26^th one. I would not recommend you to try to go to the court for a time, but I can definitely say that those who were accused for the 26^th court was lucky to be called on that day. (Almost) FIVE STAR COURT!