(Photo: Gongju Gongsanseong Fortress)
“Ms. O’Leary, we lose all!”
It’s one of my favorite memories of my students in Malaysia. My friend Shelby was leading a group of her students back to class after one of their basketball games and one of them saw me coming down the hallway across the courtyard. He had the biggest, happiest grin on his face as he announced his team’s failure.
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“When are you coming back home?”
It’s a question I get every time I return home.
What’s different about it now is that I get it from two different places when I return.
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Everything changed when the third grade attacked.
Okay, I’m being dramatic and just like to channel Avatar: The Last Air Bender at any and every given moment. But the last few weeks have flown by in the slowest way possible – yes, somehow it is true to blink and a month has gone by, but every day feels like a week long.
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Some people are surprised to find out that I’m an introvert. And granted, I’m a little surprised at how much I’ve changed too.
I used to be much more outwardly visible as an introvert – didn’t speak up much, was shy around strangers, vanished at parties after a while.
Lately, I’m much more likely to speak up and meet new people (though inwardly a lot of the time I’m still cringing about how much I don’t like doing these kinds of things). But honestly, I am getting better at it. I’m not quite the awkward turtleduck in conversation that I used to be – I even, dare I say it, enjoy it sometimes?
Continue reading![Stray Kids brew up a storm in Thunderous new music video [WATCH]](https://i.zoomtventertainment.com/story/Stray_Kids_Thunderous_NOEASY_0.png?tr=w-1200,h-900)
Warning: Nerd Post Alert.
With that out of the way, to no one’s great surprise, I love music (I mean, don’t we all love some form of music?). But more than that, I like “noisy” music. And I like learning about the writing/producing process behind albums.
So you can imagine my delight when my favorite kpop group, Stray Kids (yes, they’ve replaced BTS), came out with a new album named Noi(ea)sy. Even better when I found out they made it as a response to criticism that their music was “noise.”
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I don’t why I always end up circling back to food when I write, but I do.
I really love food and it is one of my great delights to try lots of new foods. I can’t always say that these ventures are successful – sometimes I end up like Dean Winchester in the image above where a lizard is a lizard and cannot be improved upon – but I will at least try everything once. If I don’t like it, sorry, I probably won’t eat it again.
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I used to be top dog priority in my house before I went overseas.
I don’t mean in a “I was more important than everyone else in the household.” I was just literally my dogs’ top priority. Any time I went upstairs, there was a scramble of paws on the staircase behind me as my dogs raced me to the top to join me in taking a nap, working on homework, reading a book; really whatever it was, they just wanted to be a part of it. To sit at the foot of my bed and maybe get in a belly rub while they were at it.
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“It’s mango season. Can get so many for little!” This explanation accompanied my friend giving me a bag of three ripe mangos.
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We are fast approaching the end of our school year. We have exactly seven days of school left and the flight to visit home is becoming more real. (I’ll be back, Lord willing, Malaysian friends, just gotta go home this summer and get some well-needed hugs from the fam!).
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ali oleary 