Family Reunion in Korea

Perhaps the hardest blog entry is the one I'm about to write.  When I first wrote about my adoption story, my emotions were in checked because I had a lot of time to deal with it.  While my mother's death is still difficult, I'm finally able to talk about it without bawling like a baby.  And I never wrote a reunion story with my mother because it was such a long time ago and my memory is pretty fuzzy.  I assure you, it was nothing like what you see on TV with streaming tears and audible crying.  It was...cool.  It was as if I had returned from several years at a boarding school rather than a separation of 7 years.  Well, on to the Korea part.

When my sister came to visit me in May of 2012, I had a sense of urgency for her to meet our maternal side of the family.  With our mother gone, I felt we still needed a connection to some kind of family.  But for my sister, they were practically strangers with just a bond of genetics.  I wanted to show my sister more then the traditional tourist sites.  So, we took a trip to the police station with my mentor teacher.  She explained our situation to the police, but we just didn't have enough information to give them.  We left disappointed, but my sister said she remembered seeing some old documents that our mother had kept. She promised to send the documents next time she was home.

After a long summer, my sister finally sent what she promised.  The document contained every resident my mother had ever lived in Korea.  Her immigration paperwork listed everyone, except my oldest aunt.  This document also included their Korean ID, similar to a social security number.  After Chuseok, my co-teacher at my other school came with me to the police station.  She knew some people who worked there, so it made the process easier.  At first they were hesitant because of privacy laws.  But I gave them my adoption paperwork, which got the process started.  A little over a week later, my aunt contacted my teacher and we set a date for our reunion.

Reunion with my mother was a very different experience than with my extended family.  When I saw my mother after just 7 years of separation, I was a mess.  I was still going through an emotional roller coaster with my adopted family and I was just an angry, scarred person.  It was really hard for my mother because I had become unrecognizable to her.  There was a coldness in our relationship and we just tried to make it through without any big incident.

Meeting my extended family after twenty some years apart was different.  I was back to myself as they remembered me.  I was happy because I had purged all the negativities of my life.  My relationship with my aunts, uncles, and cousins were also dramatically different than with my mother.  My younger cousins and I grew up like sisters and we almost became sisters legally.  And we fought a lot, as only true family members can.  My uncles and aunts were always caring.

Perhaps, it is a family trait to be a little emotionally unavailable.  Even with my first meeting with my aunt, we had no tears of joy.  She just simply squeezed of my hand and wrapped her arms around mine.  Meeting the rest of the family went just as with my aunt.  We had a little awkwardness in the beginning especially because I couldn't speak Korean well.  As we spent more time together, if was as if I had never left.

But here comes the hard part.  I had for most of my life believed to be half Korean because of the circumstances of my mother's marriage and divorce.  The truth tends to come out.  My mother had mentioned a long time ago that I may be 100% Korean, but my stepfather believed the opposite.  I trusted his memory because my mother sometimes chose to believe things she preferred rather brutal reality.  Either way, I had a suspicion that there may have been another main male leader in my mother's life.  When I asked my aunts about this, they were convinced that I was 100% Korean.  As they are telling me this story, all the secrets that have been buried for thirty some years were coming out.  It was easier to believe that my father left me and my mother for another woman.  But now I have to come to terms with the fact that it was my mother's fault from the start.  After my mother moved us back to Korea, my biological father offered to marry her.  But she had refused because he was already married and had two daughters.  Somewhere in this world, I have two older sisters, who may or may not know about my existence.

Whether my biological father is Korean or American actually makes no difference to me.  I stand for what I believe in and not that of others.  I pursue my goals and dreams because they are my own.  I love my family, but we are different. They are Korean and I am American.  We will always share a bond of blood and we will always be family.  I can appreciate the culture and the history, but I cannot be like them.  Perhaps this is a good thing.  And most importantly, they already understand.

Here comes the so what part.  I am curious about my possible sisters, of course.  But I also know that finding them will be next to impossible.  I also have have a younger brother, whom I like to meet.  He should be easier to find.  I feel that I should just enjoy the people in my life because they are all fabulous people and the thought of digging deeper is scary.  What if I don't like what I find?

The Great Car Debate: To Buy or Not to Buy

For most Americans, owning a car is a necessity.  And I was a part of that culture for many, many years.  That is until I came back from Korea.  There, I was able to make my way using the public transportation system, sometimes zigzagging all over the country or just going to the store.  Now that I'm back in the U.S., I am somewhat reluctant to fork over all my hard earned money.

Living in San Diego, where public transportation is minimal, I have been debating whether I should delve back into auto ownership.  Yes, there are definitely advantages of owning a car.  I can go wherever and whenever.  But I still need to justify the huge expense, since I am a new graduate student with student loans...a lot of student loans.  So after a month without a car in San Diego, I have decided to wait it out.

How have I and will I survive without a car?  Well, I have a shuttle that takes me back and forth to campus.  So, I don't need a car for school.  A definite advantage of having (semi) on-campus housing. I say semi because of the distance to campus...it's a bit far to be considered truly on-campus.  But I digressed.  Once fall quarter starts, I will be studying after which point I will be studying some more. And instead of fun, I will be studying.  I also found a way to do my groceries shopping online and have it delivered for free.  Yay! No grocery shopping for me!!!  The point is, there will be days that I will not be using my vehicle. To top it off, I will be paying insurance for a car that mostly sits in the parking lot.

So, what about all the times I need a car?  I have signed up for Zipcar, which is a car sharing program with a membership fee plus hourly or daily usage fee.  I did the math.  I can justify using Zipcar about 24-25 hours per month for the same price as I would pay for gas and insurance.  I don't pay for gas or insurance with Zipcar because it is all inclusive.  By using Zipcar, my money stays in my bank account.

I realize that this is not a long term solution, which is why I'm waiting it out.  But my decision for now: I will be Zipping (at least for Fall Quarter).

On a side note:  I haven't driven a car in 2 years and I will be making a trek from Denver to San Diego...ALONE. Yikes!!!

End of my second year in Korea

If the first year in Korea was a terrible year for blogging, the second year blog was nonexistent.  There were so many things happening, so many things to blog about, yet I just didn't.  But my second year was filled with things outside of the Native English teacher's Korean experience.  It was personal.  Perhaps, that's why it has taken me so long.  But here is it anyway.

The most significant event came almost 2 weeks after Chuseok, Korean Thanksgiving.  My co-teacher and I went to the police station to find my aunts, uncles, and cousins after my sister sent me some necessary documents.  Fortunately, it contained my uncles and aunt's Korean ID, which is similar to our social security number.  After an hour at the police station, I left excited, but somewhat doubtful that I would hear anything back quickly.  So it came as a surprise when I got a call from my co-teacher saying that they have not only relocated by family, but they were eager to meet me.  My co-teacher, who I adore, offered to come with me to meet my family.  My Korean was still pretty terrible and it wasn't good enough to explain everything that has happened in over two decades.  Even after not seeing them for years, it felt familiar and comfortable.  From that time in early October through my last day in Korea, I have spent as much time as possible with them.  I'm leaving out a lot of details about this, but I will save those details for another time.

The next most significant event: graduate school.  I will NEVER, EVER take the GRE again!!!  Since I've decided that I will not do a PHD and I got into grad school, I have no reason to ever take it.  I am the example that you can bomb your GRE and still get into a good program.  I started the application process with seven schools.  You know the saying, "shoot for the stars"?  I did.  When I got rejected from my "safety" school, I panicked and applied to three more schools.  I should have been patient and save some money.   Less than a week after I spent hundreds of unnecessary dollars, I was accepted into American University's SIS program.  It was in my top three choices, so naturally I was going to accept the offer.  Then the UCSD's offer came and now I had a decision to make.  As good as UCSD's program is, I hadn't thought too much about it and I focused on the DC schools.  But as always, I started to dig deeper and read everything about the two programs.  Then I made my famous PROS/CONS list.  And here I am in San Diego with two weeks left of my summer prep courses.

Here is my thought about my last year in Korea.  As my Korean improved dramatically and I spent a lot of time with my family, I didn't feel like I was a foreigner having some grand adventure.  A foreigner, yes!  Somehow my world was about my family and grad school.  It all felt so normal.  BUT none of it was normal.  Perhaps this perception of normalcy and my personal journey throughout the year is what I needed to start a new chapter as a graduate student.