10,000th Post: SNE 2012, Jdawg91 Style (+ more!)
08-30-2012
, 06:51 AM
Okay, not sure how many people will be interested but I've definitely been asked about my 'past' or younger years etc, so I randomly decided tonight to write a longer post about a bit of my story, sorry in advance for the tl;dr.
So I think I've mentioned this before, but since 9th grade, my mom has worked as an agent for a foreign exchange student company, ISE. As a part of her job, along with placing kids in homes and dealing with their agents from their foreign countries back home (she places 40-60 kids every year), my family also has to host at least 1 student ourselves. So, every year I've had at least one 'brother' for the year, although we've had long term students stay with us on 2 different occasions now.
My Freshman and Sophomore years in HS I didn't really become that close with either of our students as I just didn't relate to them that well, but Jiseung 'Ji' Cheung who lived with my family and went to the same HS as myself my Sophomore year still comes back to my family's home every spring break as he is attending college currently at the University of Illinois which is about 3 hrs south of me.
My Junior year in HS we had a kid from Munich, Germany named Fabian (Fabi) who went to the same school as I did and him and I became pretty close friends, doing almost everything together. My group of friends in HS really liked him too and he was instantly accepted by the group which was awesome. I still talk to him once in a while on FB and he actually came back to the US soon before I went to vegas for a visit, so we got to chill again IRL for the first time in ~2 yrs.
Every year the foreign exchange student company sponsors an all expenses paid trip for their top workers and the year that Fabi lived with us was the first time I got to go, as did he. We went to Lisbon, Portugal for 5 days. It was a mix of guided tours and then your own time to do whatever you wanted, but for the most part everything was paid for. Lisbon was super nice, I loved the city itself and one of the most fun times I had with Fabi was when we left the group tour and went exploring on our own, we ended up climbing stairs/walking for about 50 mins to reach St. George's Castle which overlooks Lisbon....castle built in the 10th century that is open for the public today. Was pretty sick and well worth the trouble we got in with my Mom for leaving the tour group
. Below is pictures of the castle and then some more places we toured, unfortunately my mom doesn't have any pics uploaded to FB from our Lisbon trip.
St. Georges Castle:
Lisbon Cathedral: Was built in 1150 on the site of an old monastery. If I am remembering correctly, it was illegal to take pictures inside the Cathedral...there was some super sick murals inside iirc, was a long time ago but I think I'm remembering right.
Main Alter:
Those are the only 2 places I can remember the names of offhand that we visited, we ended up doing 6 or 7 guided tours and then did a lot of walking around on the different squares doing shopping etc.
My senior year we had our first long term student move in when Jae 'Jimmy' Lee moved in. He lived with us from my Senior year in HS (his SR year as well) until the present...he went to the same Junior College that I went to (my 1 semester) for a year and then returned home to Korea to do his mandatory 20 months of military service, and then last winter he returned and is back going to college in Illinois at the present and living at my home still. We didn't actually go to the same high school as I went to public school and he went to a private school about 20 mins away, but we still became pretty close friends.
That year we also had another student named Pete from Thailand who went to the same school as Jimmy. He ended up only staying until right after Christmas break and then ended up going to a boarding school somewhere else, and Vince, another kid from Germany came for the 2nd semester that year. I didn't really get along that well with Pete, he was an arrogant prick, but Vince on the other hand was the funniest ****** kid ever, always cracked me up. Anyway below is some pics from that year.
Jimmy, myself and Vince:
Jimmy and my graduation party:
After my graduation: My aunt, myself, my mom, jimmy and my dad in the back
Jimmy and Vince at Jimmy's graduation:
Our trip that year was to Athens, Greece which was superrrr sick. Jimmy, Pete and myself actually had our own room and then my parents were a few floors away, so we got into a fair bit of trouble at night in Athens. I remember we had a huge like 2lb thing of skittles you can get from Sams Club or Costco and we would compete to see who could hit the most cars with handfuls of skittles being thrown off the 10th floor down to the street below, LOL. Good times, good times (sun). Athens was super sick, below is some pics of 2 few places I remember touring....my memory is bad .
The Athens Acropolis and Parthenon:
The Temple of Poseidon:
After I graduated from HS, Jimmy and myself went to Rock Valley college and we had a Brazilian, Filipe staying with us and he went to my former HS. He was a pretty quiet and timid kid when he first came, but my house quickly ruined him and he's now a bit of a party animal back in Brazil
. He was a pretty cool kid but didn't get to know him that well as I was going to college, working and playing poker and then when I dropped out of school after 1 semester, I moved to Vegas. For whatever reason that year, my family didn't go on the trip, iirc it was to Ireland and my dad was pissed that we didn't go (hes a big drinker 
).
The following year we had another student from Germany, Patrick Sigg. Wasn't really a fan of him myself but we got along well enouhg. Midway through the first semester, we had our 2nd long term student, Seo Jin Kim, moved in with my family midway through his freshman year, November, 2010. He started his senior year a few days ago and still lives with my family, been here a pretty long time! I've been in and out of my house a few times since then and have gotten to know him pretty well, hes a pretty funny kid and definitely like hangin out with him when I'm back home visiting.
November 2010: Seo, myself, my mom, my dad and Patrick Sigg
Besides hosting foreign exchange students, my family has also hosted minor league baseballs players since 1998 when I was in first grade. My mom now runs the host family program for the Rockford Riverhawks which is a minor league baseball team from back home. I've definitely posted about this before, our first player that we hosted was Kyle Lohse who now pitches for the St. Louis Cardinals and has a World Series Ring. He was close friends with Jon Garland so he was always around as well, Jon pitched for the Chicago Whitesox for a long time after he first made it to the big leagues and my family traveled to see him often.
In 1999, we hosted an apartment instead of having players live with us and our apartment had Adam Dunn, Austin Kearns and 2 others in it. At the time, Adam had just gotten a huge signing bonus from the Reds and was making about 50x more money than any of the other guys for the Rockford Reds. He was superrr irresponsible, I remember my mom finding out about him just wearing his clothes a few times and then throwing them out as he was too lazy to do his own laundry...needless to say, my mom started to do it for him. Another funny story from that year is that Austin Kearns got caught on a river boat in Iowa underage, and my parents had to go pick him up to keep him out of jail .
This has gone on progressively throughout the summers, and I've gotten used to having extra people in my house. Definitely lucky to have had these experiences though! We still keep in touch with Kyle quite a bit, his GF at the time, Gaby, ended up marrying him so my mom and her still talk a bit, my parents actually just were in St. Louis about a month ago to visit them
Kyle, Gabby and their 2 kids
My parents with the Lohses
Heh, so this post came out to be longer than I thought it would be, I didn't even detail my month long trip to Australia after 8th grade when I represented People to People Student Ambassadors, that will have to wait for a further blog post.
So I think I've mentioned this before, but since 9th grade, my mom has worked as an agent for a foreign exchange student company, ISE. As a part of her job, along with placing kids in homes and dealing with their agents from their foreign countries back home (she places 40-60 kids every year), my family also has to host at least 1 student ourselves. So, every year I've had at least one 'brother' for the year, although we've had long term students stay with us on 2 different occasions now.
My Freshman and Sophomore years in HS I didn't really become that close with either of our students as I just didn't relate to them that well, but Jiseung 'Ji' Cheung who lived with my family and went to the same HS as myself my Sophomore year still comes back to my family's home every spring break as he is attending college currently at the University of Illinois which is about 3 hrs south of me.
My Junior year in HS we had a kid from Munich, Germany named Fabian (Fabi) who went to the same school as I did and him and I became pretty close friends, doing almost everything together. My group of friends in HS really liked him too and he was instantly accepted by the group which was awesome. I still talk to him once in a while on FB and he actually came back to the US soon before I went to vegas for a visit, so we got to chill again IRL for the first time in ~2 yrs.
Every year the foreign exchange student company sponsors an all expenses paid trip for their top workers and the year that Fabi lived with us was the first time I got to go, as did he. We went to Lisbon, Portugal for 5 days. It was a mix of guided tours and then your own time to do whatever you wanted, but for the most part everything was paid for. Lisbon was super nice, I loved the city itself and one of the most fun times I had with Fabi was when we left the group tour and went exploring on our own, we ended up climbing stairs/walking for about 50 mins to reach St. George's Castle which overlooks Lisbon....castle built in the 10th century that is open for the public today. Was pretty sick and well worth the trouble we got in with my Mom for leaving the tour group
. Below is pictures of the castle and then some more places we toured, unfortunately my mom doesn't have any pics uploaded to FB from our Lisbon trip.St. Georges Castle:
Lisbon Cathedral: Was built in 1150 on the site of an old monastery. If I am remembering correctly, it was illegal to take pictures inside the Cathedral...there was some super sick murals inside iirc, was a long time ago but I think I'm remembering right
.Main Alter:
Those are the only 2 places I can remember the names of offhand that we visited, we ended up doing 6 or 7 guided tours and then did a lot of walking around on the different squares doing shopping etc.
My senior year we had our first long term student move in when Jae 'Jimmy' Lee moved in. He lived with us from my Senior year in HS (his SR year as well) until the present...he went to the same Junior College that I went to (my 1 semester) for a year and then returned home to Korea to do his mandatory 20 months of military service, and then last winter he returned and is back going to college in Illinois at the present and living at my home still. We didn't actually go to the same high school as I went to public school and he went to a private school about 20 mins away, but we still became pretty close friends.
That year we also had another student named Pete from Thailand who went to the same school as Jimmy. He ended up only staying until right after Christmas break and then ended up going to a boarding school somewhere else, and Vince, another kid from Germany came for the 2nd semester that year. I didn't really get along that well with Pete, he was an arrogant prick, but Vince on the other hand was the funniest ****** kid ever, always cracked me up. Anyway below is some pics from that year.
Jimmy, myself and Vince:
Jimmy and my graduation party:
After my graduation: My aunt, myself, my mom, jimmy and my dad in the back
Jimmy and Vince at Jimmy's graduation:
Our trip that year was to Athens, Greece which was superrrr sick. Jimmy, Pete and myself actually had our own room and then my parents were a few floors away, so we got into a fair bit of trouble at night in Athens
. I remember we had a huge like 2lb thing of skittles you can get from Sams Club or Costco and we would compete to see who could hit the most cars with handfuls of skittles being thrown off the 10th floor down to the street below, LOL. Good times, good times (sun). Athens was super sick, below is some pics of 2 few places I remember touring....my memory is bad .The Athens Acropolis and Parthenon:
The Temple of Poseidon:
After I graduated from HS, Jimmy and myself went to Rock Valley college and we had a Brazilian, Filipe staying with us and he went to my former HS. He was a pretty quiet and timid kid when he first came, but my house quickly ruined him and he's now a bit of a party animal back in Brazil
. He was a pretty cool kid but didn't get to know him that well as I was going to college, working and playing poker and then when I dropped out of school after 1 semester, I moved to Vegas. For whatever reason that year, my family didn't go on the trip, iirc it was to Ireland and my dad was pissed that we didn't go (hes a big drinker ). The following year we had another student from Germany, Patrick Sigg. Wasn't really a fan of him myself but we got along well enouhg
. Midway through the first semester, we had our 2nd long term student, Seo Jin Kim, moved in with my family midway through his freshman year, November, 2010. He started his senior year a few days ago and still lives with my family, been here a pretty long time! I've been in and out of my house a few times since then and have gotten to know him pretty well, hes a pretty funny kid and definitely like hangin out with him when I'm back home visiting. November 2010: Seo, myself, my mom, my dad and Patrick Sigg
Besides hosting foreign exchange students, my family has also hosted minor league baseballs players since 1998 when I was in first grade. My mom now runs the host family program for the Rockford Riverhawks which is a minor league baseball team from back home. I've definitely posted about this before, our first player that we hosted was Kyle Lohse who now pitches for the St. Louis Cardinals and has a World Series Ring. He was close friends with Jon Garland so he was always around as well, Jon pitched for the Chicago Whitesox for a long time after he first made it to the big leagues and my family traveled to see him often.
In 1999, we hosted an apartment instead of having players live with us and our apartment had Adam Dunn, Austin Kearns and 2 others in it. At the time, Adam had just gotten a huge signing bonus from the Reds and was making about 50x more money than any of the other guys for the Rockford Reds. He was superrr irresponsible, I remember my mom finding out about him just wearing his clothes a few times and then throwing them out as he was too lazy to do his own laundry...needless to say, my mom started to do it for him
. Another funny story from that year is that Austin Kearns got caught on a river boat in Iowa underage, and my parents had to go pick him up to keep him out of jail .This has gone on progressively throughout the summers, and I've gotten used to having extra people in my house
. Definitely lucky to have had these experiences though! We still keep in touch with Kyle quite a bit, his GF at the time, Gaby, ended up marrying him so my mom and her still talk a bit, my parents actually just were in St. Louis about a month ago to visit themKyle, Gabby and their 2 kids
My parents with the Lohses
Heh, so this post came out to be longer than I thought it would be, I didn't even detail my month long trip to Australia after 8th grade when I represented People to People Student Ambassadors, that will have to wait for a further blog post
.
08-30-2012
, 10:36 AM
08-30-2012
, 11:12 AM
08-30-2012
, 03:11 PM
Hahaha srsly, so much love
Lol yea, so sick how dumb he was, guess that's what money can do to ya.
____________________________________________
Got my code to my condo about an hour ago and already have everything moved into the place besides my grind setup as I don't have internet yet. I took some photos real quick before I destroy the place, so heres a link to that album
http://imgur.com/a/BNwRR#0
Will be back and forth a lot today, might grind a bit too, not sure yet!
Lol yea, so sick how dumb he was, guess that's what money can do to ya
.____________________________________________
Got my code to my condo about an hour ago and already have everything moved into the place besides my grind setup as I don't have internet yet. I took some photos real quick before I destroy the place, so heres a link to that album
http://imgur.com/a/BNwRR#0
Will be back and forth a lot today, might grind a bit too, not sure yet!
How much USA dollars is a place like that a month? Place like that would go for like 2.5-3k $/month here, mayb bit more 
.
08-30-2012
, 03:43 PM
My old unit 3 floors above is $950/month + utilities total (so $500 for my old roommate who had the master and $450 for me)....the place is nowhere near as nice with the furnishing etc though
08-30-2012
, 04:55 PM
08-30-2012
, 05:05 PM
08-30-2012
, 10:50 PM
08-31-2012
, 12:46 AM
Didn't get in much volume as I expected, I'm going to grind as much as possible this weekend but my internet is not getting set up until monday so not sure exactly how much I'll be playing.
Ran super bad today but all good, happy that my redline made a bit of a turnaround after the downswing it went on.
Gla on the grind!
Definitely, I'm very very satisfied with my decision to get my own place and this bed is gonna be such a life improver, I'm so tired right now all the time that it's unreal, sleeping on 2 ****ty like $75 twin beds kinda pushed together just doesn't work that well 
.
Hahah i laughed mr max cut.
Heres what I use for my wrists, the smartglove. Definitely has improved the amount of wrist pain I get, very well worth it
http://www.imakproducts.com/product....al+Tunnel&s=10
Ran super bad today but all good, happy that my redline made a bit of a turnaround after the downswing it went on.
Gla on the grind!
.Hahah i laughed mr max cut
.Heres what I use for my wrists, the smartglove. Definitely has improved the amount of wrist pain I get, very well worth it
http://www.imakproducts.com/product....al+Tunnel&s=10
08-31-2012
, 02:57 PM
____________________________________________
Okay so I'm still taking care of a lot of BS with my condo, my ****ing electricity and water still isn't on and as I said, internet wont be installed til Monday, getting very tilted about the internet/electricity as they said it would be on first thing in the morning yesterday at the very latest.
Anyway, I'll go through and grab info to payout August goals I didn't hit, I don't think I hit the games target and obv not the LB.
September Goals: Draft your freerolls!
175k vpps: $50 (10 freerolls available)
ALL DRAFTED 10k+ profit after RB: $50 (5 freerolls available)
2 or less nights in strip clubs (Tijuana or Rosarito) on the month: $50 (5 freerolls available
Fwiw, the strip club one isn't as much value as it used to be as I really haven't gone to TJ that much lately (maybe 6 times the last 2 months) but anytime I go on a downswing, I tend to just snap start going, so hopefully this will stop that in case I do have a big downer
.I'll be back in a bit to count up freerolls etc and I'll post august results at the end of the night and pay out freerolls!
Last edited by slayerv1fan; 08-31-2012 at 03:13 PM.
08-31-2012
, 03:02 PM
08-31-2012
, 03:06 PM
08-31-2012
, 03:09 PM
08-31-2012
, 03:13 PM
08-31-2012
, 03:15 PM
08-31-2012
, 03:17 PM
08-31-2012
, 03:28 PM