I would like you to disregard the post times for all of my past posts, becuase before now I hadn't taken the time to change the time to Seoul time. It will be very helpful to have it on the correct time, because I am not making my posts at all hours of the night.

P.S. Soon I will add more pictures and information about the Chuseok (Thanksgiving) Holiday. I had enough writing to take you half an hour to read it, so it might take me awhile to feel like going through the task of writing it again. Not to mention the time enough to be anti-social for that long. I also would like to update you on my birthday events. I turned 18 on Sunday, September 25, 2005. Now I am legally an adult in the United States. I will get to enjoy the privileges that come with it for two months in the US before I turn 19.

Thank you for reading. I hope to give you a long update soon then nice short ones for awhile after that. I have had some requests for certain information, and I promise that I will get it on here sometime, but you all know that I am busy with life here and taking time on the computer, especially since I am only a mediocre typer takes a lot of time.

The final piece in the tryptych is empty silhouettes faces many different directions. This shows both that sometimes I feel empty because I miss my home and the beautiful sunsets and that now I am starting a brand new part of my life and there is so much knowledge that I need to gain. Looking at the new life aspect, the people are empty because there is so much empty space for the knowledge to go. With missing home, the sunset has faded leaving everything white. (Something to notice is that the black background on this picture is the same as the sand on the first picture) 

The second picture in my art series can also be depicted as: I am in a new environment with a strange setting. Everything is no longer a clear picture, but instead it looks piecey and I do no understand everything. I can make out bits and pieces, but the logic won't all blend together. The person is brought closer to the middle and larger, because now I have myself to depend on, and I am beginning to learn more and more about myself.

This is my first abstraction. It looks very childish and seperated scribbley. Sometimes I wish that I was still a child at home and I didn't have to deal with going out and living my dream. The seperation of the colors also shows that sometimes I feel very seperated and that I can not blend very well. The Silouette in this picture represents family and friends and the fact that it is closer shows that I am thinking about them more and more. 

I just realized that these pictures are going to be in the opposite order that I wanted you to view them, so I reccomend scrolling up to view them. This is my depiction of that sunset in colored pencil. I think that the sillouete is Bobby, which makes the picture even better. I'm not sure, It might be Dylan? If one of you could comment and clarify this for me, it would be great. I absolutely loved drawing this picture and I am going to try to do another sunset. If anyone takes pictures of the sunset on the lake or anywhere near home, please send them to me, I really miss it. 

In art class we were asked to do an art project using abstract art. We had to do it in a three part process following the feelings that the original piece gave us. When I think about feelings, the first thing that comes to mind is the sky and all that I could do was draw the sunset at the lake. This is the picture that the art project is based on. I believe it was taken the day before Stephanie left for Austria. 

Sometimes I hate technology

I just lost two hours of blogging because of a simple click on the mouse, so you get to learn about the sad part of being away from home. This is an email I just sent to my daddy. I don’t think he will mind that I’m posting it. It may be a couple days before I retype everything else.

Daddy-If you don't send me anything else, can you please send me my Red House Painters "Ocean Beach" cd. It is just a blus burned cd. Even if you could send it seperate in a faster package, I really need it. Thats the one cd that I can listen to anytime, it really doesn't matter, but my favorite time to listen is when I am sad. Today I spent two hours typing my blog. I wrote absolutely everything that I did over the Chuseok holiday. Then my sister sat on my computer and I think she changed the site to look at my blog wihout saving what I had written. I didn't know, then I came to my computer to finish typing after dinner and everything was gone. I had to cry and now I can't stop. Its only the second time I've cried since I've been here and both times were sparked by technology difficulties. Its not completely homesickness, it's realizing that I spent so much time doing something and then it just disappears. Right now I'm listening to Bright Eyes which is also really good, but its not quite my Red House Painters. The biggest problem is that the cd isn't for sale at the i-tunes store and I don't know where else I can download songs directly onto my computer. I'll rewrite almost the same thing that I wrote before, because I really want everyone to know what Chuseok is like, but right now I'm just not up for the task. I'll try to post some pictures, but other than that I'm going to do handwritten journal and read "Invisible Man" in English, because after losing all of that I don't think I can take anything else right now. Especially with technology. By the way, Bright Eyes is helping alot. I love you. By the way, everything else is going pretty good, I was just really excited about finally updating my blog and then finding out that the two hours that I didn't have time for were wasted. Tomorrow I have dinner with Mia to celebrate my birthday and the fact that we are now both in Korea and on Friday there is an International Festival with all kinds of cultures and foods in Itaewon. There is no way that I am not going to that. You can read about it at Korea.net. Again I love you and I'm also going to ask Erik to burn a bunch of cds for me if he ever reads my emails. They don't need to be sent with Red House Painters though.-Your favorite middle child,Kimberly Ann DeLanghe (Kimmy)

1. 인사동 (Insadong). A place in Northern Seoul where you can find many foriegners. It reminds me of a mix between an arts festival and a tourist quarters.

2. My cell phone. Yes, it's in color. It has a camera and it connects to the radio. The outside is baby blue.
















3. My mom's friends. We went to Insadong to see the woman who is down on one knee's art. The art behind us is her creation and this is the first time she's ever had an exhibit.

4. (Left to right) Hyung-Kyung, Torie's host sister, and Myung-hae "Meikei", my sister at McDonald's. We were eating chocolate Oreo McFlurries at the COEX mall.

5. Yes, that's me in my school uniform. There's even a business style jacket for the winter.

1. A leaf from (I think) a poplar tree. It's for Steph if I can get it to her. It's being pressed on my desk with three other leaves right now.

2. Most of the students fall asleep in between classes or during classes in which they are allowed to sleep. In this picture Torie is just faking it.

3. Torie can break all of these, but I can only do all the red ones. (That's really all you need to be able to do to get a black belt. J/k)

4. These are first year girls from one of my art classes.

5. This is my school. It's long, but narrow and the dirt in front is a soccer field/our gym class area.

My internet has been down, and I've been very busy at school, so I haven't had time to update. Right now I'm at the school even though I am done with classes, because it is absolutely pouring outside and I forgot my umbrella at home. (Actually it wasn't raining when I left and I just didn't feel like hauling it around.)
So many things have happened since I last wrote. First of all, I bought a cell phone. It's really cute. I'll post a picture of it when I'm at home. In Korea everyone has cellphones. Adults, children, but most of all high school students. Everyone text messages. Almost non-stop, but the good thing about text messaging in Korean is that it is easier to type messages. (At least if you use the slow way like I did in the states where if you want a letter on the same key you have to wait) I don't know how to describe it, but it's easier. This month I can't text very much, because I don't have the right plan for it, but next month and from then on I'll be able to talk as much as I want. It's much easier for me to understand and to form sentences in writing than it is in speech. Using text messages will make it much easier for me to keep in contact with friends. Instead of sitting at home and studying Korean in my many books (which is a good way to learn the basics). I will be able to emerse myself into situations where I need to speak the language (which is the scariest part.
Anyway, about the books. I haven't told my parents yet, but I've spent about 60,000 won (which is near $60, a little less) on Korean studying materials plus I just realized that I have to go back to the COEX and buy another book, probably on Friday. (The COEX is the biggest mall in Seoul, but it's only about fifteen minutes from my apartment.) So far I have bought 피타팬 (Peter Pan written in Korean.), which I found in the children's section of the Kyobo bookstore after church on Sunday. Then my Korean teacher, Mr. Lee (Moon) told me that I needed to get a grammar book, so I bought a Korean Practice book. He said that it didn't have grammar in it, so today I went to COEX and bought a grammar workbook and the cds that go with the Korean Practice book. I also bought a planner (the coolest planner I've ever seen) which I decided to only write in using Korean. None of you will be able to read it, but that's okay. I'll explain (hopefully telling the truth). Oh yeah, the other book that I have to buy is still the grammar book, because I realized that I need that book to use the workbook. I've also been using my sister Myung-hae or Meikei (her nick name)'s electronic and paper dictionaries to do my homework. I will buy my own sometime, but I haven't seen any as good as hers and I suspect that they are very expensive. With all of this (which includes the cell phone) I should be able to understand Korean in no time. I just hope that my budget decreases soon. I've been spending so much money in this first month.
Yesterday was the first Rotary meeting that I attended. It was a district meeting held at 7:20am at the HYATT hotel. I had to wake up at six o'clock and I hadn't gone to bed until 11:30pm. That was early, because now that I live within walking distance from school I don't have to wake up until 7am (I still use a cell phone as my alarm clock). Back to Rotary. It was a breakfast, but in Korea that does not mean that we ate bacon and eggs or belgian waffles and sausage. There was rice (밥), because a meal is not complete without rice, soup, but not any kind of soup you've probably ever had (which is also a meal neccesity), salmon, shrimp, lettuce salad, kim (dried seaweed), fresh fruit, a meat and potatoes thing (I don't know the name), and chinese side dishes of ginger, a radish that taste like ginger, and baby sweet onions. There I met my Rotary Counselor for the first time, because at our arrival he was abroad. His name is Mr. Keun-Soo Lee and I am being Sponsored by the Seoul-Jangchung Rotary Club in Korea along with the Rotary club back in Cannon Falls. I would like to say thank you to both clubs. We did not spend much time at the meeting, because we were missing school. We didn't get to meet the two other exchange students who are here from (I think) Illinois, but we did get to see them.

I've spent so much time on the computer, I better go. I'll post some pictures for you to wonder about and hopefully comment on them later. Pleasant Reading...-Kim

I really need to start taking more pictures. There are some things that just need to be remembered. And there are people who I would like to post pictures of and talk about. Truthfully though, I wish that I could be doing all of this typing in Korean or at least speaking Korean more, but it takes so much concentration and my body is working to hard physically to do all that concentrating mentally.
In Minnesota I was usually physically inactive in the past year. My exercise was working in our farmer's market size vegetable garden, but here I have Tae Kwan Do six days a week and on Sunday I climbed our "mountain" to the top. It is actually a very small mountain, like the size of a large hill, but it has amazing hiking paths and it worked my legs very hard. Also, everywhere I go I am walking and climbing and decending stairs from class to class. The point I am getting to is that today in phy-ed (gym class) we ran a 50 meter dash for presidential standards tests, but as I was running my thigh muscles got so tight that I had to sit down and massage my legs for about half an hour, because I could barely walk. My gym teacher took me to the nurse after class and she gave me a muscle relaxant to help the pain. I've been stretching often, but I guess I'll have to do it about three times a day and make sure that I get all the muscles. Today I took the day off from Tae Kwan Do.
Tonight I have to study my Korean and maybe some Japanese. I also need to stretch and generally just rest. I haven't written for awhile, but on Saturday the Grand Master took Torie and I to the world Tae Kwan Do headquarters. I can not remember the name of it, but it is the only gym in the whole world where one can become a grand master, and we were there to watch the 6 dun testing. After recieving a black belt it takes 4 dun to become a master and 6 dun to become a grand master. We watched about 200 masters testing to move to the level of Grand Master. Our Grand Master said that only about 50 of them would actually pass.
It was a very interesting and surreal day.

Guess What. I'm in Korea. It's still very difficult to believe. I'm having a great time, but sometimes confusion ways me down pretty hard and I need to just take some time out to think. Today for example was my first day of math class, yes I decided to take a math class. I haven't had math for a year so the language of math was almost as difficult as the Korean language for me to understand. I took some time out and read an entry in my journal from Erik Peterson that said to pray when I get completely lost. I'm going to have to start taking his advice to heart and hope for guidience or at least a little more clarity during certain classes. Anyway, this is my schedule (each class is 50 minutes long and classes begin at 8:30)...Monday 1.Japanese 2.Korean (Like KSL or something, basic Korean for Torie, the other exchange student, and me) 3. Gym 4. Music Tuesday 1. Korean 2. English listening 3. English Speaking with 2nd year students 4. English Speaking with 1st year students. Wednesday 1. Computer 2. Art 3. English Speaking (exactly the same as the day before, so we might drop the other one and spend that hour in the library studying Korean or Tae Kwan Do.) 4. Korean. Thursday 1.Chapel (it is a christian school) 2. Math 3. Gym (today we ran a Kilometer. I did it in 7min 30secs. I was the 4th or 5th girl in my class to finish.) 4. Korean. Friday 1. Japanese 2. Music 3. Art 4. Korean. Torie (Her full name is Victoria Scovill and she's from Wayzeta by the way) and I are finished with school after 4th hour and lunch. We then have Tae Kwan Do for two hours sometime in the afternoon. We're working very hard and most of the class is in Korean with bits of broken English for our sake. Tae Kwon Do is my favorite place in Korea so far. We usually have class with elementary children,and although the Grand Master of our gym, Keun Hyung Cho, is internationally recognized and even has a street in Riverside California named after his demonstration team, we recieve most of our instruction from Seung Bum Kim who is actually still in middle school. He's 14 or 15 years old. I get confused by the Korean age system (a system that makes me currently 19 years old) Anyway although he is very young I am absolutely amazed by him, because he is on the demonstration team that travels internationally and he is also one of the main instructors at the gym. It is nice learning from someone nearly the same age and actually younger then us, because then we know it is possible to become that accomplished. We also watch elementary kids who can do amazing things.