My Hyung-ah
   If there is one person in this world whom I can't live without, it would have to be my brother Ken. Throughout my life, we have shared many laughs, tears, highs, and lows. But not once has he ever given up on me and he always gave me the support I needed. Although it's awfully difficult to admit, he's nice, caring, funny, and has just about every appealing characteristic you can think of in a person.
   We look nothing alike. As far as appearance goes, he got the lucky genes while I got stuck with the leftovers. He's six feet, one inch tall! To make things worse, he's still growing. Besides being taller than I, he looks nothing like either of our parents. Sometimes we tease him by saying he was adopted. We may be different on the exterior, but on the interior we are identical. He's five years older than I am but we always got along fine. We have many common interests such as the sports we play and our taste in music; even our sense of humor is the same. We both like to impersonate other people or imitate people we see walking down the street. Sometimes it's like competing and we unknowingly try to see who can make the other laugh the hardest.
   The hardest thing for me now is to live with the fact that I can only see him during the summers. A couple of years ago he decided to take a break from school and become a missionary. He spent his first year in Japan and his second and current year in China. He teaches English and is about to enter med. school there. When I first found out that he would be leaving, my heart literally plummeted into the earth. To think that the person that whom I grew up with would be absent from my life for a year. It didn't settle too well with me because he was leaving me when I really needed him. But after the year went by I realized it must have been harder for him than anyone. He was making a big sacrifice that I just didn't see. He was giving up the comfort of having a family close by, in a familiar country, speaking the common language, all for going far off to a land he'd never been to. It shows how much he wants to help others and, of course, during the time period he's away he emails me and calls once in a while.
   Though he can't be by my side in person, I can always look back at all the times we've shared. The biggest lesson he taught me wasn't even spoken with words, it was just his presence. He went out of his way to really be there for me especially because both my parents worked and were too busy. He came to my band concerts even though I knew he really had better things to do. He drove a long way to take me to football practices and games. The one event that he missed that I wished he could've made it to would have been my high school graduation. It just wasn't the same without him. I know that he wanted to be there more than I wanted him too, but his missionary work was equally important to him.
   You can see why I can't live without my brother. I still look back and think of the times we played GI Joe's in the room or play basketball out in the park. Those are things I look forward to during the summers but other than that, I can only reminisce. I've learned a lot from him and probably will learn a lot more in the future, but one thing's for sure, he'll always be my hyung-ah.