Posts by Jaemin Yi

How to Get By When You Can’t Speak the Language

27 Comments read Travel

I’ve always sucked at foreign languages. Don’t believe me? I grew up with two Korean parents (yes, from Korea) and somehow I managed to NOT learn Korean. In middle school, Pig Latin and Gibberish (and the girls who spoke them) constantly eluded me. In high school, I took 3 years of Spanish and all I got from it was “Donde esta la biblioteca?”

In spite of all this, I somehow thought my Spanish would be up to snuff for my latest trip: living for 5 weeks in Medellin, Colombia. Um, no. This is gonna sound stupid, but when I landed I was actually surprised by how difficult it was to communicate. I guess in my previous travels, I was either surrounded by a ton of other English-speaking travelers (Thailand) or lived in a city where English was a common second-language (Berlin, Germany). Not this time.

Colombia was full on Spanish, all the time. And wow, it was such a different experience trying to live in a country where you can barely speak the language. It was challenging, exciting, frustrating, rewarding, and most definitely a time I’ll never forget. Here are a few things I learned from my experience:

Everything becomes an adventure. Getting groceries. Figuring out the metro. Asking your landlady for toilet paper. When you don’t speak the language, the most mundane things can become epic, monumental tasks.

People will think you’re mentally challenged. I wish I could say it’s all fun, but it can be hard at times too. Some people will literally treat you as if you’re an idiot. They’ll get annoyed that you can’t get your point across and will think you’re dumb because of it. Brush ’em off – for every one of them, there’s 99 other friendly people who will want to genuinely help you and get to know you, regardless of your language barriers.

Continue reading →

I Made You a Mixtape – “From Medellín with Love”

5 Comments read Music

Look, I know we don’t know each other too well. And maybe this is a little forward, but I made you something. It’s a mixtape. Can you dig it?

Now I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. I love to share music but I think the last time I made a playlist for someone was in the 7th grade. And don’t even get me started on all the mixtapes I’ve promised and never delivered (sorry Catherine).

Well, no more. Starting from today, I’m going to start posting mixtapes here on a frequent basis. They’ll feature my favorite songs of the moment, songs that I think you’ll dig too.

This first mixtape features 11 songs that became the soundtrack to my life here in Medellín, Colombia. Let me know what you think. And if you like it, make me a mixtape back.

From Medellín with Love

Download the entire mixtape here.
(Right click and “Save link as…” to download individual songs)

1. Anthem – God of Joy (Dionysus)

Now this song is how you get a morning started. I already loved the original Bag Raiders track but Anthem brings this energetic vibe that gives the song a whole new spin. And yes, he really did drop an Entourage reference and yes, I liked it.

2. Fortune Family – Take Me Away

I’ve never been a huge fan of the chipmunk-style sped-up samples (thanks Kanye), but as soon as the beat drops on this, I’m nodding my head too hard to even care.

Continue reading →

Don’t Travel Without a Purpose

5 Comments read Travel

To be honest, I was pretty worried. I was gearing up for my month-long Germany trip but unlike my other travels, I was going to spend most of my time living in one city: Berlin.

I had heard all the benefits of long-term travelling vs. backpack travelling but I still had millions of doubts. How am I going to make friends without staying in hostels? How will I fill my days if I’m not constantly jumping from city to city? Will I spend every day aimlessly wandering the lonely streets of Germany only to return to an even lonelier apartment?

So I asked my friend Lindsay, a fellow traveller I met in Thailand who was living there for a few months. She promised me I’d have nothing to worry about, and then said:

“One thing I have learned is I CANNOT stay in a place long without having a purpose. I hit a miss moment at LubDee [Bangkok hostel], because I hadn’t really found that. But now I’m working on my own fashion line and an art gallery exhibit…I have something that makes me happy, that I can focus my time on.”

And you know what? She was completely right. From that moment on, I decided to give myself a travel purpose for my time in Germany – and then I went on to have one of the most amazing months of my life. If you’re going to travel, especially longer-term travel, you should have a purpose and here’s why:

Continue reading →

8 Lessons From My 28 Day Song Challenge

2 Comments read Music

The sun was already up, I was barely awake, and my voice had given up on me – but I was still grinning from ear to ear as I hit the “upload” button. It was 6am, February 28th, and I had officially completed my insane 28 Day Song Challenge.

I’ve never made a song before. Never played with Logic Pro. Hell, I even had issues about showing others my creative work. But here we are, 28 days and 28 songs later. It was definitely one of the toughest months in recent memory – trying to move out of an apartment, finish two video projects, letting my health and social life down a hole, all while posting up a song a day. But this has been of my proudest and most rewarding months ever: it threw music back into my life 100%, taught me tons about songwriting and beat production, proved to myself that I still got that willpower, and got me creatively engaged in a way that I haven’t felt in over 8 years!

You can check out all the songs on my Youtube channel and although they’re not all winners, just know that those songs represent a monumental month in my life. And without further ado, let me share some of the things I learned in that month:

Continue reading →

28 Day Song Challenge – Nothing To See feat. Lil Wayne (Day 28)

1 Comment read Made by Jaemin, Music

Holy shit, I can’t believe it. It’s already Day 28? This insane, fun, inspiring, stressful, and completely life-consuming challenge is finally DONE?? Wow, I’m gonna need a moment.

All I have to say is it’s pretty crazy to think that 28 days ago I had never even made ONE song – and now I’m looking at my iTunes and there are 28 tracks with my name on it. It blows my mind realizing that I made all of these and did them all in just one month. Crazy.

Big ups to my homie Lil Wayne for jumping on this track and helping me close this 28 Day Song Challenge. Thanks Weezy, I owe you one!

Stay tuned, I’ll have a wrap-up blog post coming soon just as soon as I gather my thoughts. Oh and could you guys do me a favor? Could you please comment and let me know which were your favorite tracks? I’m thinking of picking a few to polish and actually turn into decent songs.

Thanks again y’all for listening and putting up with my shitty music haha. Now it’s time for – yup, you guessed it – SLEEP!

Read about my 28 Day Song Challenge here.

Continue reading →

28 Day Song Challenge – Ghost (Day 26)

0 Comments read Made by Jaemin, Music

Gotta make this another quick one – busy, busy day but got to say goodbye to some awesome people and even got to have a guitar jam session at 2am. Thought this track was gonna turn out a lot shittier then it actually did! Time for bed, see ya tomorrow.

Read about my 28 Day Song Challenge here.