I was bored on the plane and didn’t know what to do so I opened up my diary and decided to write this, “Don’t really know how to start these things. So my name is Anita and I decided to start writing these diaries of things that I happened to me. My memory is really good and when I tell stories my friends and family say it sounds like I am writing a novel. I decided why not and just do it. As the annoying kids at school say, you only live once. On this day it was a normal day I being just a teenage girl in love with a music genre called Korean pop or as it is also known as KPOP. I have fallen in love with the genre since I first caught of glimpse of it on YouTube. From that day on I only listened to KPOP I even tried learning the language. It isn’t easy let me tell you right now. It is really hard and no one around me understands why I love it. I felt so alone and then I found Tumblr. A site where there were people like me, sharing the same feelings as me. So on this particular day I went on Tumblr and saw what was on the tags. I go to the EXO K tag and see a link titled “KPOP Chat”.

            I decide to click it and end up talking to this great group of girls and they asked me to join their all girl kpop group. They seemed like they had been friends for years and they welcomed me with open arms. I felt so comfortable there and some of the girls actually lived near me and were also trying to learn Korean too. I was really happy and decide to go back the following day. That is when “he” came into our lives.

            We were chatting about tumblr and someone comes in and starts typing in Hangul. At this point I just wished I knew more about Korean to be able to talk to them. No one was paying attention to him or her so I decide to go on Google Translator and translate what he or she said. I know Google Translator isn’t the best thing in the world, but I was desperate and I really wanted to talk to them. They said “Hi, how are you?”

            I translated from English to Korean “I am fine. How are you?” I posted that in the chat and felt really cool. Like this person and I are in our own little world and I can make them feel included in some way like the girls did for me the previous night. We went back and forth just small talking about the chat and I look at the name and it says Chanyeol. I froze and was trying to come up with a coherent thought. My first thought was “Wait like the guy from EXO K?” My second thought was, “Oh my god if this is the real Chanyeol I will scream and die from happiness.” I have learned from many chats when in doubt it must be a troll/imposter. I am in a good mood that day and decide to entertain the troll and play along. I always love a good troll and it is just fun to mess with them and troll back.

            I look at the chat and one of the girls named Jackie typed “Anita, do you know how to type in Korean?” Jackie is wicked cool. She is a year older than me and lives in Ohio. I never met anyone from Ohio!

            I giggle and wrote “Nope. Google Translator.” I wanted to be honest so I was. Nothing wrong with telling the truth. Or at least that’s what I thought.

            Until someone wrote, “That’s cheating.” Well I don’t know Korean yet.  I am slowly learning and plus I don’t have Hangul letters on my keyboard. So I would still have to go to Google Translator so I can use the little Hangul keyboard thing. I am not the best at explaining some things.

            Chanyeol started asking where we were from. Jackie wanted me to act as translator and to tell them what Chanyeol is saying. I said to Chanyeol that we are from America. Jackie told me to let him know that we have someone that comes in the chat from Canada (Jace). She wasn’t there at the time, but she will be there and she knows Korean. She said that she would help Emmy and me with my Korean and I was so excited for that.

            He asked, “Is she pretty? Kris says girls from Canada are pretty.” And then he added, “America fat.” For anyone that doesn’t know about EXO they have a member name Kris and he was born and raised in Canada and then he got casted to be a trainee for this big entertainment company so he moved there and learned how to speak Korean and Mandarin.

            I replied, “I know America is fat. And yes she is pretty.” I told Jackie and she laughed about it.

            Chanyeol then wrote, “Your Korean isn’t very good.” Oi I knew this was going to come up.

            I chuckled and shook my head while I wrote, “I know. I am using Google Translator. I am trying to learn.”

            “He wrote back “Kris is helping me with my English.”

            I informed Jackie on the conversation and she says, “Google sometimes fails. We need to learn Korean.” I agreed. Next thing I know Jackie is on camera and I get on as well.  Everyone doesn’t mind being on webcams it just takes that one person to start. Yet I think that night it was different considering that well the girls were freaking out thinking that the actual Chanyeol was in the room. My mind roamed to think of well it would be cool, but also knowing that it was highly unlikely.

            Jackie was holding her pillow pet and said, “I love my pillow pet. I could just sleep.” We call Jackie our leader since she is the oldest out of all of us and she says she doesn’t have ageyo, which means cuteness in Korean. Yet she was oozing with cuteness when she said that.

            Chanyeol then wrote in English. “Tao. Pillow pet.” Everyone in the room was confused as to what Chanyeol meant by that. I am really good at deciphering people. Since I didn’t know really how to talk until I was three and when I would talk I was talking in my own language. So as I got older and as I met people who were like me I was able to think like them and figure out what they were trying to say.

            I said, “Does Tao have a pillow pet?”

            He wrote in English, “Yes. Panda. No touch.”

            “He won’t let you guys touch it?”

            “Yes.” Aw that is so cute. Tao’s nickname is Kung Fu Panda too. Tao is another member of EXO and he is the youngest in the sub-group of EXO M meaning Mandarin. This troll knows what they’re doing, but this is fun. Someone in the chat wanted to verify if this was Chanyeol and wanted me to ask him to get on camera. Yet I knew it was a long shot I still obeyed them.

            I asked him and he wrote, “Camera bad.”

            “You are not allowed on camera?”

            “Yes.” There would be no way that a high profile idol would be able to be on webcam with out some kind of consequence from their label. I mean it is different in the states since there isn’t a lot that a label can do to you if you do that. Yet over there if their artist step out of line just a little bit they can get hit with no promotions, no activities, more rehearsals and it is just too much for someone.             Jackie was then wondering if he had a twitter. I asked and he wrote back. “Yes. No name.” No name? Well that doesn’t really make sense. Anyone that is on Twitter has a username. There is no way to not have a name on twitter. Everyone was so confused by this and I just tried to put my feet into his shoes. So like I stated before this is a high profile idol. If he had a twitter everyone would know about this. So for us to ask about it is sort of stupid. Yet what if he had one during pre-debut. Would he be allowed to share that one?

            “Are you not allowed to tell us your name?”

            “Yes.” Again sort of obvious also considering that they just debuted a couple weeks prior to this chat.  

            I had SHINee’s song “Sherlock” stuck in my head from listening to it earlier and I had forgotten I was on camera during that. Hey don’t you judge me it happens. I go into my own little world and just start humming any song that is in my head. I guess I was humming loud enough for Chanyeol to hear and he wrote, “Hyung!” Hyung being what a younger boy calls an older boy and SHINee is hyung to him.

            I nodded excitedly and said, “Yes. We love them as well as-“ I got cut off by Jackie freaking out and she started listing all of the bands that she liked and then Chanyeol wrote in Hangul “Don’t talk over each other. Talk slower.”

            I blushed and felt bad that he couldn’t understand us. Jackie took over and said, “We love SHINee as well as other artists from SM.” She grabbed her mug that had Super Junior on it and said, “See we even love Super Junior. See?”

            I guess Chanyeol understood considering he wrote next, “You. Know me?”

            I decided to take the reins on this and nodded and said, “Yes we know who you are. We like EXO a lot.”

            “Stalker.” I waved my hand frantically and shook my head.

            “No we are not stalkers. We are fans.”

            “Pans?” I forgot people in Korean don’t really use the letter F, L, or V. I typed out fan and replied with a yes. He asked what our names were. I said my name, which is obviously Anita. He wrote, “Anita preti.” Meaning pretty.

            “My name is pretty?”

            “Yes.” Aw I love this troll. Jackie said her name and he wrote, “Jackie. Boy name.” I felt really bad for Jackie, but I could help but laugh my off. I mean for us in the states it is normal for a girl to have Jackie be a nickname. Yet I guess over there, not so much.

            Jackie tried to clarify to Chanyeol that her name is a nickname and that her real name is Jacquelyn, but he just kept saying the same thing over again, “Jackie. Boy name.”

            I guess I was laughing too much because then Chanyeol wrote in Hangul, “I am not stupid.”

            I said, “I know. I am stupid. I am the pabo because I can’t stop laughing.” Pabo, which means idiot in Korean.

            He kept getting even madder and wrote, “ you.” Seriously I was even saying that I was stupid even though I wasn’t. Some how we calmed him down and we were okay again. He said he had to leave soon and wanted to know if we would be there later.

            “Yeah we usually are here til late, Take the url above and email it or text it to yourself.”

            “Why not just bookmark it?”

            “He doesn’t know hot and he is on his phone.”

            “What kind of phone?”

            “Samsung Galaxy.”

            “Oh.”

            “Did you get it?” Chanyeol wrote yes. Then Tae wrote “Chanyeol tell Kai I love him.” Jackie and I laughed, oh our little maknae (that means the youngest person in the group). She is still so young and naïve.

            He wrote, “Kai says no.” Oh no, Kai denied her. Kai is another member from EXO. So far you know that in EXO there is Chanyeol, Kai, Kris and Tao. There are 8 other members in the band, but you don’t really need to know all of their names.

            I felt a little bad for her. When Chanyeol had to leave he wrote, “Kai mad.” Then Tae said to Chanyeol “Will you marry me?” I shook my head at Tae. First she wanted to be with Kai and then switched to Chanyeol? Yet I think Chanyeol was not taught the term of marrying because he was confused and Jackie and I tried explaining it to him and it finally clicked.

            He wrote, “No.”

            Jackie and I couldn’t help us and said to Tae, “Tae you are too young for Chanyeol. We don’t want him in jail.”

            Chanyeol asked Tae, “How old are you?” She replied with 16. So yes you are correct this is a 16 year old who just asked a 19 year old to marry her. There is something wrong with the younger generation. What happened to you knows meeting someone then getting to know them and then dating and down the road maybe marrying them. She skipped all of those steps and went straight to marriage.

            “Oh too young” he wrote. I feel really bad for laughing at Tae’s misfortune, but is was funny. We said our goodbyes and once he was off Jackie started to freak out. I mean like the dictionary term of freaking out. Screaming, flailing, hyperventilating and I was just sitting there laughing at her keeping my cool. Her reaction was just priceless. WE concluded that even if they were a troll they were at least a Korean troll/ I had church the following day so I went to bed and I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

            The following day I thought wouldn’t it be cool if he came back. I got on the chat and the first thing Jackie says when she realized I was there was “Chanyeol came back. When you went to bed he came back around 4 a.m.” My mouth dropped and I couldn’t believe he came back. “And he came in earlier today.” I can’t believe I missed him twice. Wow if this is a troll they are really dedicated.

            I typed “Oh I wish I was there for that. Stupid church.”

            Jackie then said, “Oh you will love this. When he came back he asked if the reason why you weren’t there was because you were mad at him. He was really sad you weren’t there. We told him that you weren’t mad and just had to go to bed.” Aw this troll was so nice. He was actually concern if I was mad at them or not.

            I replied, “Awwwwww I hope he comes back and I can tell him I am not mad.”

            “Oh and because Tae brought up Hunhan we had to explain shipping to him, Do you know how hard it is to explain shipping in very broken English? We ended up explaining the bromance and friendship aspect of it. We didn’t dare go into the other type of shipping.” I giggled. Oh the day when artists realize that people pair them ually and actually believe it’s real will be a funny day. “He said he shipped his bromance with Suho and our friendship with him” Aw he thinks we are his friends. I like having friends. “Oh and he said he hurt his wrist and Suho was helping him type.” I thought no wander it said Suho instead of Baekhyun. But oh if it was really hurt I hope he gets better. But wait this is a troll he is probably lying. Jace came in and we all thought she was the troll she starts freaking out. She wished she was there. We mentioned that his wrist was injured and she said that she read a Korean article about it earlier that day. We freaked out and asked her to get the article. She said she couldn’t find it anymore. This made me think even more that she was the troll. After that we talked about B. A.P and UKiss and went on like normal.

            Later Chanyeol came in and Jackie and I definitely were on camera. We kind of warned people that when he was in the room to not freak out. Chaos said “I will just be mean to him. See that way I won’t freak out.” Emy was on microphone and was slightly freaking out and Jackie had to remind her to chill out. Jackie, Chaos and I had Google Translator open in the next tab.

            Chaos started saying all these negative things to Chanyeol. He was getting mad and ended up calling her a . Jackie and I both were trying to make Chaos behave and told Chanyeol to just ignore her. Chanyeol ended up writin gin Hangul “She is ugly.” We laughed because she wasn’t on camera so he had no idea what she looked like.

            Just for curiosity purposes I asked him, “Am I pretty?”

            He replied, “Anita? Anita preti.” (Note: some English words were spelt wrong, what he meant was “pretty” like last night.)

            I made a heart with my hands and said, “Aw thank you. I love you!”

            He replied “I love you as a friend.” I wasn’t expecting anything more than that anyways. He wrote, “Oppa?” That means big brother for a girl to say. Both Jackie and I were confused for a moment. “I Oppa?” Oh, he was asking us to call him Oppa.

            We both said, “We are your noonas.” I am older than him by 9 months. The only member of EXO K, that’s the Korean version of EXO, which is older than me, is Suho. He is the only member that I can call Oppa.

            For the rest of the chat Chaos was being so mean to him. At one point she tried to say B.A.P was better than EEXO in Hangul, but when you translated it in English it read that EXO is better than B.A.P. We chuckled at her mistake and she kept trying to redeem herself. Yet she kept failing a lot.

            After that we talked about roll like a buffalo, the mama contest, SHINee, Super Junior, twitter and rehearsals.

            We asked him how did he find us and he said that he googled EXO and found us. We tagged our chat with EXO and one of the first links is the Tumblr EXO tag. He had to go back to rehearsal and he said that he hoped to see us again. When he signed off Emy completely freaked out. I can’t believe she is like this over a troll. Jackie also freaked out but not as bad as last night. Jace came in afterwards and couldn’t believe she missed him again. Well of course she missed him, she is probably him this just made me think more and more that Chanyeol is she.

            We talked about how Chaos was so mean to him. And every time a guest was in the room she would ask if that was Chanyeol. Wow if she is Chanyeol she is over doing it with trying not to really be him. It started to be late and I gave Chanyeol until 3:30 before heading to bed. I gave Jackie and Chaos my number and told them to text me if he comes back tomorrow. I decided to leave my laptop downstairs because I wanted to be as light as possible. The dogs started barking and I couldn’t believe I woke up my mom; she is going to be pissed in the morning. When I got in my room I looked at my phone so I could add Chaos and Jackie.

            I got a text message from both of them saying, “He came back. He came in just as you left” . I downloaded the tinychat app on my phone and got on the chat. Both Jace and Chanyeol are in here. Wait it is impossible for 1 person to be 2 people and for the conversation to go as fast as it was. Jace was not Chanyeol. But that doesn’t mean that this is the real Chanyeol. It can still be a troll from South Korea. I couldn’t follow the conversation because I didn’t have Google Translator to help me. I really wished I knew Korean at this point.

            Chaos was on a second account as Ham and was trying to be nice. Chanyeol wasn’t buying it and Jace ended up telling him that Ham was Chaos. Chaos got embarrassed and left. Next thing I know some guy comes in the chat and his name is pedo. Anytime you see the word pedo it isn’t good. All I kept thinking was “Ew I hope he doesn’t scare Chanyeol away or get on camera.” Although I couldn’t see if someone was on I could sense he was on. Everyone stopped talking and I just guessed everyone left.

            I then got a text message from Jackie saying, “That jerk got our room shut down. I am so pissed.” My jaw dropped and I couldn’t believe it. What the hell! I am also getting pissed.

            I wrote back to her, “What did he do? I couldn’t see if someone was on camera.” My next thought was “What happened to Chanyeol? I hope he didn’t think we knew the guy. Will we see Chanyeol again? Oh no our Chanyeol is gone.”

            I had gotten a response from Jackie. “He was molesting a young boy. I can’t believe that happened. He ruined our night and he is scum.” Oh my god! Who would do that? I can’t believe something like that happened. It is disgusting. I am still thinking of Chanyeol and this was his first experienced with Americans. He must think we are disgusting.

            I wrote to Jackie, “Only in America at 4 a.m. Stupid America.” I decided to go to bed and forget about how we lost our Chanyeol. Chaos is going to be pissed and tae is going to be devastated.

            The following day the main thing we talked about was losing our room and Chanyeol. Then we changed the topic to Tao’s birthday and people were talking about the fan accounts. Someone came in saying that we had to read one of the fan accounts in particular. We clicked the link and the title was “Chanyeol is the president of Hunhan.”

            I was thinking, “What the hell?” I read the account and it said Chanyeol was chanting “Hunhan” and Suho was laughing in the corner. Wait, didn’t Jackie teach our Chanyeol about shipping and Hunhan And wasn’t Suho helping him out when we told him about Hunhan. Everyone who was a part of the chat was thinking the same thing. Holy we could have been talking to the REAL Chanyeol. I started to freak out. Luckily I wasn’t on camera or else everyone would be laughing at me. Chanyeol from even before the chat was climbing up my bias list and after that weekend he became my number one overall in my ultimate bias list. To this day I don’t know if that was our Chanyeol or if it was the real Chanyeol. But I don’t regret making him my number one bias. And I am grateful for my Chanyeol. I was able to connect with these girls and now we have a great memory of one amazing weekend. Thank you my Chanyeol for these great memories and laughs.”

              I closed my book looking out the window with Emmy as we were about to land in our new home country of South Korea. The beginning of a new chapter in our lives had begun. And who knows what will happen while we are here. It was good to remember that moment a year ago when I met Emmy for the first time and what really drove me to really learn Korean and eventually led Emmy and me to moving to Korea. Emmy got a job doing interviews for a KPOP entertainment company and I worked as an assistant at the same company. Today was a new day and I couldn’t wait for what was in store.