About
ME
"This is the story of a girl, who cried a river and drowned the whole world, and though she looks so sad in photographs I absolutely love her....when she smiles..."
by a band called Nine Days
I was born in the hustling-bustling, exciting city of Los Angeles, at the Queen of Angels Hospital on Bellevue Avenue. My mom was rather amazed because I was so small. Yup, a teeny-weeny 6 lbs., 11.5 oz. Even now, after all this time, I'm only a petite 5'02", in drastic comparison to my monstrously tall older brother (he's 6'02"). Just playin'... heehee... he's not all that bad for an older brother... :)
My family consists of four: my dad, my mom, my brother Charles, and myself. My parents came to the States in 1977, while my mom was pregnant with my brother. My dad had wanted to try his hand at running and maintaining a produce farm, and therefore my earliest memories of childhood bliss revolve around playing among vegetable patches, alongside my parents working, with rows upon rows of lettuce, radishes, and cabbages stretching as far as the eye can see. I could tell you scores and scores about other adventures I had growing up~ maybe I will someday, but not yet.
Hmmm... you're probably wondering where my name came from. "Rosette? Rosett-a?" "NO... Rose-ETTE." "Oh...I've never met a Korean 'Rosette' before..." Sigh... the story of my life. Actually, here's the real story, or at least the version my mom likes to tell. My dad's the one who thought of my name. In the musical Les Miserables, there's this character named "Cosette." Only, my dad changed the "C" to an "R" and came up with "Rosette." And the rest... goes down in history.
I've lived around L.A. pretty much my whole life, 'cept for four very-long-and-yet-very-short years when I dwelt among bison farms and sheep farms in an ol' rustic place called the Pioneer Valley, home to everything quite unusual and eccentric as well as five institutions of higher learning: UMass Amherst, Amherst College, Mt. Holyoke, Hampshire, and most notably my own school, Smith College.
I consider myself a true Californian, to the very core of my being as an individual, for even while I was 3000 miles away delving into my studies and classes, I missed the sunshine, the warmth on my face and the breeze whipping through my hair as I cruised down the 10 Freeway with the car windows down and the station tuned to 102.7, KIIS-FM. Heeheeheee... :)
SOME RANDOM TIDBITS ABOUT ME:
According to Myers-Briggs, I'm an INFP (an Idealist-Intuitive-Feeling-Perceiving) Healer. If I could pick any animal I would want to be, I'd pick a labrador puppy or a dolphin.
Are you interested in taking this personality test? Just go to www.keirsey.com. Then, there's this other personality test that labels me as a H.W.F.M.C.O.T.I. (Helper who finds missing childrin over the Internet). That's from the Spark Personality Test (www.theSpark.com). Go figger...
Some people call me "Rosie" among other nicknames. When that name first came around, it used to be a term of endearment that only a few would affectionately use on me. Somehow, it spread. Now, a plethora of people call me "Rosie." I'm not saying that's bad... I'm just saying...
I absolutely love animals. During the summer of my freshman year in college, I volunteered at the animal shelter as a pet adoption counselor. Over the years, I've had many pets, but the lot of them have tragic endings, a few of which I still grieve over...
Another thing I love is music. Not just listening to it, but playing it. I took piano lessons from age six to age sixteen, but I never disciplined myself to practice and enter competitions. I did play keyboards for my youth group and college ministry praise teams starting my sophomore year in high school. My friend Susan said that for some people, the desire to play music is just inherent. I suppose that is true...
I attended private schools my whole life...ever since I could remember. And not just private schools, but Christian schools at that. First there was Chino Hills Community Methodist School, which I attended until the end of second-grade, and then I went to Ontario Christian School, the school I attribute the most to my "growing up." I loved that school and the teachers and my friends. I was too young to realize that I was one of few non-white Americans and that pretty much everyone who was a minority mysteriously and quietly disappeared in a couple years. Even my brother faced racial discrimination from his peers. But I was, as always, secluded into my private little world.
I went to that school until the end of junior high. By this time, my family had moved to a mainly white, upper and middle class, family-oriented community called Claremont, and my mom wanted me to attend Claremont High because she thought I'd have a better chance of going to an academically prestigious college. Needless to say, I resisted quite forcefully. All my friends were going on to Ontario Christian High School; why couldn't I? But Mom's rules were the ultimatum.
For those of you who have known me since I was very young, you might also be able to testify that I was painfully shy back then. I'm still a little shy today, but I've gotten much better at talking. Heehee :) Anyways, CHS really boggled and even scared me those first few days I was there. But after a while, I forged a little niche for myself with a group of close friends. Most of us have gone our own ways by now, but there are some memories I know I will remember for a long time to come...
If you equate music as being a form of art, then I guess you'd have to say that I love art, period. I've taken drawing/painting lessons off-and-on ever since I was a wee lil' thing in elementary school.
And I enjoy writing... stories, poems... I have journals and diaries still from when I was, like, five years old! When I am feeling upset, lonely, or even just a tad bit melancholy, I write out my thoughts. Or I play the piano. Or I draw. These methods of creating envelope me into a world I know exists somewhere out there. And after I have finished doing what I do, the world that I come back to doesn't seem to be half as dreary and gloomy anymore.
Some of the bands I like... hmmm, I have a quite eclectic taste in music, but I'll try... anywhere from The Backstreet Boys (yes, I am a teenybopper at heart) to Radiohead and Blink-182, to Jars of Clay and Caedmon's Call, and even Eminem. See, I told you I was eclectic. :)
So enough about my childhood and adolescence. If you want to dive further into the deeper and more tender corners of my heart, you'll have to ask me personally later on. College is what follows naturally after all of this, but that is another chapter in my life. A tumultuous four years, but the experience of a lifetime.