I’ve always wanted to learn about the Japanese culture and just see their way of living and experience it myself. When I was entering high school as a freshmen, I had signed up for Josai which is a Foreign Exchange Program for Japan. Josai is a school in Tokyo and Tokyo is where we’d stay with our host families. Josai is more of a “rich kid” school so they have a lot of money to pay for our bus tickets. Ever since I was 12, I had always been fascinated by foreigners and Asia. I would watch Japanese cooking shows, Anime, and music. Korea is also another place i’d love to visit, especially Seoul. I listen to a lot of K-pop (korean pop) especially BTS, a Korean boy group that is popular all over the globe, including the U.S.I do a lot of fundraising for Josai so I can go to Japan after I graduate with Mrs. Anderson and some of the students here from SHHS. We plan to leave the morning of the Senior Night party and take off from there. I’ve also gotten a job at McDonald’s to help me pay for my trip to Japan and it pays minimum wage. This summer, we’re having students from Japan come to Sweet Home for two weeks to experience America and just have fun. The Josai club does a lot of concession stands at football, volleyball, and basketball games. We also clean up the football field and do car washes to help us raise money for our next trip in 2020.My mom has always told me that maybe in my previous life I was an Asian from Japan or Korea because I’m so interested in their culture, movies, shows, people, culture, and music. I also have Anime posters all over my bedroom walls, a Japanese doll on my bookshelf, 2 Japanese cooking books, K-pop Albums, and a Japanese language learning book. I’ve watched a lot of K-dramas like Descendants of the Sun, Train to Busan, Hwarang, and Pandora. When I was in 8th grade, I joined a Japanese club where we watched videos about Japan, learned how to write in Japanese, and took a trip to a Japanese grocery store that was connected to a Japanese book store and after that we had went to a ramen shop where they made it homemade. We had also met up with the Josai club and met the foreign exchange students at Mr. Buzzards house where we had a BBQ and got to know each other and hang out. Usually when the foreign exchange students come to SH we do a lot of activities. Last year we had morning English classes and then went shopping, swimming, eating, went to trampoline parks and had a BBQ. At home I have a Kimono and the sandals that go with them. I had bought a Japanese crate off of Amazon that came with a bunch of Japanese candy. That’s my life kind of, I’m a very private person and I don’t tend to tell people about things like this.

James Charles is a popular gay make-up guru on YouTube, he had 16 million followers 1 week ago but his subs dropped by 3 million due to controversy. Tati Westbrook came out with a video which exposed James for all of his wrong doings. In her video she had talked about how James would hit on straight men, harass them, and catfish men. In one of her videos she had said, during her birthday dinner at a restaurant he kept hitting on the waiter and she had told him “stop he’s straight.” and James had said “it’s okay, I’m a celebrity.” that made everyone angry and especially angry that he was basically a predator. There has been many live streams of James’s and Tati’s subscriber count, James was at 16 million and dropped to 13 million, Tati was at 5 million and went up to 10 million within a week. At one point, someone noticed that his followers suddenly shot up out of nowhere by 2o,000 subs, people began to suspect and realized the James Charles must have bought subs which would have costed $12,000.

James Charles’ Subs still continue to drop and on Instagram many famous people had un-followed him. Examples, Jeffrey Star, Ethan Dolan, Emma Chamberlain, Grayson Dolan, Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Morphe, Tati Westbrook, and much more!

I’m always asked “Karla, why do you like k-pop? you can’t even understand what they’re saying.” There are many resources to knowing the English lyrics and BTS includes English in their songs once in a while. BTS knows they have many American fans because they are the most popular Korean boy band in the world right now. I’ve been listening to BTS since I was 13 or 14 and I’m 16 going onto 17 soon. I didn’t realize it till I got older but when I was younger I had listened to one of their songs on TV when they first debuted in 2013. I’ve always been interested in foreign music, especially k pop and I don’t know why. I can never put it into words about why I love BTS but since I can type it here’s why. BTS loves their fans very much and they have named us “ARMYs”, they always communicate with us on twitter and at their concerts, they have someone who speaks English in their group which helps a lot of us American fans, They always do their best at concerts and when they’re sick they cry and feel bad because they feel that they are disappointing us,. Their songs aren’t your average songs, they try to connect with you through music, they make songs about loving yourself, heartbreak, songs for the fans, and songs about how they are. They’re truly amazing is what I think.

Bangtan Sonyeodan (Bulletproof boys or BTS) is a 7 member Korean boy band, their names are Jeon Jungkook, Kim Taeyung, Kim Namjoon, Kim Seokjin, Park Jimin, Min Yoongi, and Jung Hoseok. Their stage names are Jungkook, V, RM, Jin, Jimin, Suga, and J-Hope. They are super popular in the US and around the world. they’ve been on the Tonight show, Ellen, and more. They’re going on Good Morning America this month to talk about their new Album that they just released called Map Of The Soul: Persona. They’re new hit song/MV Boy With Luv FT. Halsey released on 4/12/19 and has 44M views on YouTube. They’re fans are called ARMY and BTS has 23M subs on YouTube and 19.1M followers on Twitter. They’ve performed on Good Morning America, Ellen, The Tonight Show, Americas Got Talent, and BBMA’s and got Top Social Artist 2 years in a row on the BBMA’s. They attended the GRAMMY’s to present an award. They’ve also broken a lot of records and made history.

BTS first debuted June 12th, 2013 with their Album ‘2 Cool 4 Skool’. Their company is BigHit Entertainment and the Manager is Bang PD (Bang Si-Hyuk), they recently debuted with another group called TXT (TomorrowxTogether) which is their second boy group. The age of each member of BTS is, Jungkook (22), V (24), RM (25), Jin (27), Jimin (23), Suga (26), J-Hope (25).

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton