Time Travel: Back in the Bay

Hello, I'm back in US of A. It's a little strange to be back after what seemed like a really long time but yet went so fast. I really enjoyed every moment of my trip. I'm very very glad I went to Korea. I didn't share this before but I was very hesitant about going. I thought I'd hate Korea and I knew I didn't want that kind of reaction, so I'm very happy to say it was MUCH better than I thought it would be. In fact I would love to live there for an extended period of time. That is yet to be determined so I won't dwell on that at the moment.

Erik and I took off at 5pm Tuesday August 17th from Seoul and landed at 1130 AM August 17th in San Francisco. And who said time traveling wasn't possible? We took public transportation back home with all our luggage (always fun) so we didn't get home until about 3pm. I felt like a poor college student again, with only $5 bucks in my pocket, snacking on corn nuts and wishing there was a faster/cheaper way to get home. I napped for only 45 mins on the 11 hour flight back.  I didn't start feeling weird (overly exhausted) until about 5pm PST when I was standing in Bank of America. I went back home and passed out for five hours. That's normal right? Unfortunately I'm not up at 1:15am but as soon as I'm down jotting down a few love notes to you all I'm forcing myself to go back to sleep.

Erik at Incheon Airport in S. Korea

I had a moment of culture shock today, as we got onto the Bart (subway system in the Bay), I turned to Erik and whispered, "wow, there are a lot of white people here". I know how racist that sounds but Korea really is NOT diverse. All you see are Koreans. Seoul is a HUGE city (12 million people), yet is not yet considered a tourist destination. About 99% of the Koreans we ran into knew only a couple words of English, and not nearly enough to be helpful or to understand us, so at times it got very confusing and/or frustrating. Erik and I were in a way forced to learn the language if we wanted to have any control over our destiny. I did not mind learning for obvious reasons, one being I should know my own heritage language, two I love knowing different languages, and third it is fun seeing the shock and joy of a Korean when Erik and I pull up and start ordering food in Korean. Like any country, the natives appreciate when visitors try to speak their language. Even if we butcher it they can see we're trying and they're more willing to help for that reason.

There were times though, especially in the beginning when I was too timid to speak Korean, that when I did Koreans were just stare at me. Then when they eventually understood me and repeated exactly what I said, it was frustrating. Really? Apparently there is such a thing as an American accent and when you're with a white guy that looks German or Russian (Russians visit Korea a lot), they don't expect to hear Korean so it takes them time to register what we're saying. At least this is what I've been told. There were also times when Erik tried to speak Korean to a taxi driver or order food at a restaurant and the person would then turn to me and speak ot me in Korean. That was always funny b/c then I would just tell him I'm American (in korean) and shrug my shoulders to show him I have no freaking clue what they're saying to me.  When I was alone I always got spoken to in Korean first. It was kind of fun knowing that at least I could blend in.

Seoul and Pusan were VERY easy to get around. Their subway systems are amazingly efficient and easy to understand. Maps in Korea was a different story. The country loves animating everything. There were cartoons where there shouldn't be, in bars and restaurants, even commercials for something like razors for men. It's quite bizarre. It felt like adults were really kids based on their marketing. Their maps had graphics for buildings on streets without names. You either have to walk around until you find what you want or ask a local Korean and that led to the language issue. Taxis, buses, subways were all readily available and easy to use.

Holy monkeys, the humidity was intense in Korea. There were days when I would walk outside and it would feel like I stepped into a laundry drying machine. My clothes would instantly absorb the humidity. You had to walk around with a fan and a cloth to wipe away the sweat. Really attractive, right? The last two days we were in Korea it felt like a normal sunny california day, barely any humidity. It felt good. When we got to SF today and it felt so cold. I have no idea the actual temperature but I'm sure it was in the high 70s. Where is our summer?!

It is good to be home. I'm curious what kind of things I'll notice tomorrow. How much culture shock will I have. Is 2.5 weeks long enough to even create that kind of change? I guess we'll find out soon.

Good night to you all.

Media on Amazing Race Event

During the conference I participated in an event they named "Amazing Race- Adoptees Loose in Seoul", only adoptees that had never visited Seoul before was allowed to participate. There were eight groups of four people. They split us up by birthday months and then arranged us until it worked out to have four on a team. The team I was on had a lady from Seattle, a lady from Minnesota, and a young Danish boy about 18 years old. Since I live in California that's typically where I said I was "from". It got too tiring to always say "I'm from Seattle but now I live in California", then you have to explain why and I usually was talking to someone that English was not their first language.  Because the Amazing Race event was brand new for IKAA there were local news crews and journalists that wanted to shadow groups while they ran around Seoul. One group had the news crews and my group had a journalist. The journalists article was on the IKAA conference and the events we participated in like the Amazing Race. If you're interested here is a link to her article:

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/Features/2010/08/06/13/0801000000AEN20100806000100315F.HTML

My team had very nice people in it, but that was about as much as I could say. We were very diverse but did not have the tools or experience to do well in our missions. None of us knew any Korean, the only words were knew at the time was "hello" and "thank you", so it certainly did not help when we were asking for directions. The rules during the game included we could not talk to the news crew for help, we could not use cell phones, and we had to stick together and return together at the hotel at 3pm. The goal was to complete as many missions as possible and accumulate as many points as possible.

We completed three missions. It seemed like everything that could have gone wrong did. The eldest lady in our group had a physical disability so she couldn't walk very effeciently and definitely could not run, so with her and having a journalist interviewing us the whole time it was very hard to communicate and be quick with our missions. Our first mission was to go to a specific subway stop, find an E-mart (grocery store in Korea) buy 'Kim", come back out to the volunteers who would witness two people eating it then they would give us our next mission.

We were on our 2nd mission when we practically all gave up. The weather made it so hard to function, the sun beat down on us, it felt like it was 100 degrees out. On top of that we all started to run out of steam, they didn't allow us time to eat lunch (and I hadn't had breakfast), so we all were dragging an hour into the race. Our goal was to find the oldest palace in the Chosan dynasty at the Palace Museum and take a picture with the palace guards at the entrance. We ended up spending 1.5 hours at the wrong museum even though we had asked two different types of people (one being a tourist information desk). Literally as we were walking/jogging up to the palace steps, the guards walked away to take a 15 minute break! You'll notice in the picture there are no guards. We had to wait until they came back for us to complete the mission. It was very trying on our patience. We wanted to get out of the sun and start our next mission b/c we were running out of time.

Our third mission, luckily was on our way back to the hotel. We took the subway to Anguk station, next to Insa-dong, known for its art and crafts. We had to walk along the street to find the volunteers who would then tell us our mission. Finding them in along popular shopping street wasn't as easy as you might think. Once we did, we were told to walk to a street vendor, buy this round flat, amber colored object, which we were told was a "Korean candy". We had to eat around the edges until the heart shape was free. The candy tasted like burnt marshmallows. It did not taste good.

After that we ran out of time. We had half an hour to walk back to the hotel, it took two of us that long and about 45 minutes for our other team mates, which is unfortunate b/c we weren't considered done until all of us arrived. I think all four of us were just glad to be done with the race. We had fun getting to know each other and learning how to get around Seoul.

So check!, amazing race experience is off my list. Thanks IKAA. 

IKAA Conference Summary

Holy Moly...I can't believe I had no time to even post a blog during the conference. 99 percent of the reason was b/c I was too busy at the conference and 1% b/c internet was extremely expensive at Lotte Hotel(pronounced "Lot-tay"). Ironic though b/c the hotel is a 5 star hotel with just about everything you can think of including an extremely nice shopping center in the basement that also connects to the subway. I could never afford the items that they sell there...Gucci, Drior, lots of nice jewelry stores...those kind of things. I dream about them though.

The conference went by in a blurr. A good blurr as it turns out. I'll try to sum it up.
first day (Monday) in Korea, was brief, I arrived around 5pm with a bay area friend/adoptee, met up with another adoptee at Incheon Airport, so three of us took a bus to Lotte. We arrived around 8pm. Immediately I was greeted by another bay area friend who was supposed to be my roommate for the week, turned out that he didn't have room for me so I had to crash with one of his friends for one night. The whole living situation turned into a disaster. The 2nd night I stayed with another bay area friend and the 3rd night I was supposed to stay with another random person that someone else knew. Eventually I just ended up staying with one person but the whole time I was living out of my suitcase b/c it was never a for sure thing until about the 4th day I was in Korea. Very annoying situation.

Bus to Seoul after a 13 hour flight (Hilary and Robin)

My first night I went out with a "small" group of IKAA conference peeps (about 20 of us and then grew to about 30). I was told staying out would help me adjust to the huge time difference (16 hours from PST). It solidify my fatigue from my trip. I passed out very easily that night. I was out until about 4am. I hadn't slept on the 12 hour plane ride so it was a given I wasn't going to wake through the night. I woke up early to get some breakfast. Every day at the conference they served breakfast between 8-930am. I made it to most of them minus a few b/c of some really late nights.

1st night out in Seoul (Las Vegas, the bar), with Lianne and Robin

First conference day (Tuesday) I registered, got my schwag, listened to a symposium, ate lunch at a cheap mandu restaurant (Myeong in Mandu) with three other adoptees (one from SF, one from Jacksonville FL, and one from CT), returned back to the symposium, moved my things to another hotel room, went welcome reception, then out to the first social gathering in Seoul. The symposium was interesting at times but really not my type of thing. The topics were obscure, really more for a psychology major or a social major. The speakers presented their data that reminded me of my elementary presentations. I tried to be as understanding as possible but it was hard between the accents and the PowerPoint presentations, and being extremely tired. The first social gathering was about 3x as big as the night before. They couldn't fit everyone that wanted to hang out, which turned out to be a common problem b/c all of the local restaurants and bars could only hold about 80-100 people. The IKAA gathering had about 500 adoptees from 20 different countries.

2nd day (Wednesday) we had to dress nice, attend opening ceremonies, get group photos (takes a lot of time with 500 attendees), had lunch at Lotte, had age break out session (my group was 1982-1984 with roughly a dozen people), played games at "Membership Training" (a Korean term for icebreakers when attending a new university or company), did some work in the hotel room, went to another Hors d'oeuvres gathering, then out to another social gathering (which I made sure to return at a decent hour). Membership training was interesting b/c the games were very childish for what was supposed to be for adults. It was fun to experience games that Koreans played, obviously some were great for a more social setting. Every day at the conference I met new people from all different countries. It was really interesting to see a Korean face but hear a totally different accent. Everyone at the conference was nice and fun to talk to. The Swedish and danish group were the largest after the US, about 80 each in their groups. Only 5 people including myself were from SF bay area that I knew.

Former Korean First Lady at IKAA Opening Ceremony

3rd day (Thursday) was workshops and an evening performance and dinner at Kwanmunsa Temple. I also was a "lucky" as some would say, participant of the "Amazing Race" activity. I was grouped with 3 other adoptees who had never been to Korea before, none of which I knew prior to the game. We ran around Seoul attempting to complete missions. We managed to complete 3 in a span of 3 hours. I had never taken the subway in Seoul yet which was the only mode of transportation we were allowed to take. We could not use our cell phones or talk to anyone from IKAA conference, we had to ask local natives for help. Unfortunately no one in my group knew any Korean (hanguk), which as you can imagine was the biggest inconvenience b/c Korea, even Seoul, only speak korean. Even military did not know english. We asked two different people where a national park was, one of which as an information center, and both were incorrect, needless to say we didn't find this out until we were there, so we wasted over an hour at the wrong location. It was very frustrating. It was was about 90 degrees and 80% humidity. We were ready to die. I was running on fumes by the time the race ended. I hadn't slept more than 2 hours and I didn't have breakfast or lunch so I felt like I was going to pass out. It was rough day.

The visit to the temple was good, the performance was great, but long, and dinner was 100% vegetarian which was confusing for a lot of people b/c they served what looked like beef and chicken, turned out to be soy and tasted awful. However the novelty of the experience was great. The buddist monks were very kind and the temple was beautiful to see.

Monks dancing at the Temple in Seoul

Day 4 (friday) - I skipped the first half of the conference activities b/c I went to visit my Korean adoption agency. I met my foster mother and saw my records. I wasn't allowed to copy of the information, only what they had sent to my parents, which was really disappointing b/c I purposely went their to get the records. Unfortunately I was not able to bring a translator with me so I wasn't able to check to see if their story matched up. I do want to return with someone that can read and translate Korean/english. After I hurried back to get lunch at the hotel with the conference group. I didn't see anyone I knew b/c of the events that were scheduled. After a bay area friend and I visited Damdangmun, an open air market, but just for an hour b/c we had to get back for a performance, the amazing race presentation, and dinner.

My foster mother, Mrs. Yang ("Yong")

Day 5 (Saturday)- I had a very late night (trying to do work from 4am-6am in the hotel lobby), but had to wake up early to get clothes for that night. IKAA had schedule a lot of events that required formal clothes. This bothered a lot of people b/c no one knew they were supposed to pack nice clothes, so people missed out on events due to the lack of information. I rushed back for a asian make up session, but managed to miss half of it (which turned out to be a good thing), then did more work for Nevro in my hotel room. Dinner was Gala sponsored event by Samsung, accompanied by a performance (Korean music and dance), then a social outing that started around 1030pm. Erik arrived that night during the Gala, so I met him after. We went out with the group but did not stay out late b/c he was so tired.

Day 6 (sunday)- closing ceremonies in the morning, packed up and checked out of Lotte. Erik and I had to move all our things over to Backpackers Inside (a hostel about 25 mins from Lotte). We got to the hostel and saw our extremely tiny room. I wanted to laugh but was too tired to manage it. The beds looked like something that should have been in a children's tale, they were so short I don't think Erik fit. The room was so small that they could only fit one small table and the two beds. There was no one to put our suitcases. We crammed everything in there then went to grab lunch. That night was the Closing concert for IKAA. It was a black and white party that we had to dress formal for. Erik didn't end up going due to their strict badge only policy, and the only way he could get one was if he paid for the entire conference registration fee ($320). So erik hung out with people from the hostel. He had a great time though, ate a live octopus (yes ALIVE) and went to some local bars. He told me the octopus struggle before he bit it's head off, its tentacles stretched out across his face before he ate it! EWW! I wish I could have witnessed it. I probably would have screamed though.

It's late so I'm off to bed!

Gunsan Shi- Day 2

Hello..finally. I will have to write backwards about my trip but I will start with today. This will have to be brief b/c it's already 10pm and I have lots to do before I leave tomorrow.

It was a whirlwind the moment we woke to travel to Gunsan from Seoul. Erik and I took an early morning bus from Seoul that lasted about 2.5 hours but we stopped at a major bus rest spot despite the short distance. It was an opportunity to lose passengers in my mind. When we parked there were about 15 other buses and tons of other cars.

On my way to Gunsan via Bus

The place was packed and filled with vendors and eateries. We rushed ot the bathroom anyway to stretch out our legs, and for me to get of the air conditioning. Although it's hot and humid the bus felt like it was 30 degrees. I didn't even have a sweater with me (our bags were down below). When we arrived Gunsan we hopped into a cab and attempted in our broken korean to get to Alice Hotel, which as we learned shortly there after that it was about 20K won distance from the bus station. Taxis in Korea are VERY inexpensive compared to the US, so 20K is a ridiculous amount. We went on what felt like a mission on Amazing Race that lasted all day. We returned to the hotel soaking wet, cold, tired and starving. Erik was a trooper though, talking to natives and helping me out on my search.

With Mr. David Kim, Director of Il Magwon Orphanage

Today was exactly opposite in weather, hot and sunny but still extremely humid. We did more Amazing Race searching this morning, then our new taxi friend Mr. Kang (pronounced Kong) took us to Kingdom Foods, a restaurant out in the middle of rice fields. It was very good food and was fun to be with a native korean. After "runch" we walked around old town Gunsan and up to Mt. Wolmyeong, and later after a cold blended drink at BRobins, around Mije Reservoir. The reservoir was beautiful and much larger than we expected. I saw soccer volleyball for the first time and also old men working out on mechanical machines.

Erik with Mr. Kang our Taxi driver in Gunsan

We grabbed dinner at a family style restaurant before returning back to Oz for the night. This was where I saw my first traditional toilet, a porcelin oblong bowl in the ground. There was no seat. I had heard of this kind of toilet but had not seen one yet in Korea. Korea has become very westernized.

Tomorrow we're going to take another bus further south to Pusan, where I hope to relax and meet up with some conference friends.

Good night!

The Birth of the Blog

Hello Friends and Family,

I decided that I'll start a blog page for those who are curious about my first trip to Korea. You can read about my adventures here. I've never been one to condone blogging but I guess there is a reason these things were created.

Just so you know I'll be 16 hours ahead of PST, which means I'll know the future. I'll try not to blog about these things so that you have a candid reaction and I do not screw up your natural path in life :-)

It is indeed the eve before my long plane ride to Asia...and no I am not packed yet. I tend to procrastinate on things like packing, although I am proud to say I started gathering everything together about 3 days ago. This type of behavior is unusual, but I try not to go too crazy so that I do not freak out my roommate. :-)

To answer some of the questions I have received when hearing about my trip:

No, I'm not going to North Korea, only visiting the South, as I doubt anyone is allowed in or out of N. Korea.

I will be gone from August 1st-17th. It takes an entire day to get to Korea, so i'll land there about 6pm on the 2nd. My flight is a little over 12 hours long. I plan on watching lots of movies, eat lots of junk food, read, work, and sleep. If my reservations hold up, I am fortunate to have an aisle seat.

The main reason I am flying all the way to Korea in the peak of the summer is b/c there is an adoption conference that is put on by IKAA and this only occurs roughly every three years in Seoul. If you are now confused as to why I'd go to such a conference it is indeed b/c I'm adopted. And yes that is why my brother and I do not look alike.

The conference lasts for one week. I'm not entirely sure what I'll be doing during the conference but I do know they have a film festival, soccer tournament, seminars, a symposium, and other activities planned. I will try to participate in most everything, as that is what I'm known to do when I travel.

Yes, I am nervous about visiting "the motherland", as it is known when you're visiting your birth country. I do not know what to expect b/c I've never been anywhere in Asia before but I expect it's much like the South Bay (of SF) but multiplied by a few million. The idea of being around millions of other people that sort of look like me freaks me out, seeing a group of Asian tourists with 20-30 people freaks me out enough, so I can only imagine I'll be ready to jump out of my skin. Luckily I heard that Korean people are the "Irish of the Orient", they are social fun people who love to drink, so I'm sure I'll survive. :-)

Yes, Erik will be meeting me in Korea after the conference ends, so he will be flying out a week after I do. Other than explore Seoul we plan to visit Kunsan City (the town I was found in) and visit Pusan as well (2nd largest city in Korea with roughly 4.5 million people). Erik will have a really hard time finding me if we separate in crowd. :-) Hopefully I'll be a couple inches taller than all of them.

So I hope this brief post gives you some insight as to what I'll be up to in the next 2-3 weeks. Hope to hear from you all soon. I will miss all of your smiling faces. Wish me luck and pray that I do not get taken hostage by the mean next door neighbors.

Peace,

e