Kimchi Weekend #2 2008 (In order to fulfill my curiousity in how men go to the bathroom)

Okay, so the hose is nowhere near my crotch...but somewhere in my deranged, off-center thought process, I could envision while standing there for about 30-45 minutes holding that hose in my hand in a slightly downward position that this would be, in fact, the closest thing to being a man standing at a urinal. That is, if that said man were 300 lbs and had a bladder the size of the Lochness monster. Ahh, a girl can wonder, can't she?

The past weekend marked the 2nd "Kimchi Weekend" at Laura unni's house and proved to be just as fun, and even more rewarding than the first time I went. There is definitely something to be said about cooking collectively that brings a group of people together in an amazing and surreal way. It seems so subtle and sort of ridiculous - the idea of standing in a kitchen together, slaving over the stove, peeling and cutting vegetables, filling big tubs of cabbage up with water - but I have never felt more connected with four women in my entire life, almost as close as the first time that I ever learned how to cook any Korean dish in a Korean kitchen.

See all those bottle tops there? Awww yeah, you're not seeing things - that is all alcohol, baby. Let's just say the first night was our attempt at making mandu that ended in four or five drinks later, a girl pow-wow outside on the porch curled up together chattering until 6 AM and absolutely no mandu made at all.

Every time I go to Laura's house, I feel like I get closer to a part of myself that I had never exposed before. Sometimes a part of myself that I didn't even know existed. It's a comforting and blessed thing to be able to have a place to go with nothing holding you back from being completely yourself and to be surrounded by people who only encourage and facilitate your inner soul to grow and emerge as a stronger person.

As horribly stereotypical as this is going to sound, I felt like I was in a scene of the Joy Luck Club. Or Soul Food. Or The Ice Storm. Five women in a kitchen until 5 AM, talking of life, love, loss, pain, perseverance, courage, bravery and being scared shitless sometimes. It was like the scene of a movie where you know this is the pivotal point, this is where the epitome of the movie is coming from. This wholly collective togetherness that is encasing around these five individuals.

I was left with a lot of wonderful, somewhat scary, and yet poignant thoughts to ponder when leaving Laura's house. And I also took away with me some amazing new friendships.

If I take my heart's advice, you can be sure, I'm still unsteady...

This past weekend's events have become an entire blur with only bits and pieces electrifying through the nerves in my brain to communicate that yes, you did do things this weekend.

For starters on Friday, I was reunited, if only for one night, with my friend Y, who was on her way to Staten Island where she will reside indefinitely (hopefully, for her sake). It was a nice reunion, filled with a night of endless driving, (If anyone were to ever ask me how to get anywhere in the state of Virginia, please do not be offended when I laugh maniacally in your face. Short Code: Virginia's roads are definitely not for lovers, and more explicitly, not for me) girl-talk until the wee hours, several hours of partying and dancing to the sounds of Noel Sanger (who I coincidentally had an impromptu "heart-to-heart" talk with at the end of the night that was pretty cool) and then a very near-crazy 58-mile drive home for myself, alone.

I spent most of the beautiful weather on Saturday inside the confines of my room. Not because I was broke or because there were no plans (And here is where I input yet another apology to K.Hyon for missing out on hanging out in the rays of daylight!), but because my partied-out, old-fart ass was complacently passed out in the thrawls of slumber for several hours - hours only intermittently disturbed by my addiction to YouTube videos and watching reruns of Clean House on the Style Network (Don't deny the powers of Ms. Niecy...seriously).

I was abruptly pulled from this spell by numerous phone calls, one of which was Darren (aka Bathroom Boy) which went as follows:

Me: (sleepily) He...hello?

Bathroom Boy: Dude, what happened to you last night? What are you doing?

Me: (pulling a potato chip out of the bag lying in front of me on top of my comforter) Nothing, I was just lying around, catching up on sleep from last night. And what do you mean what happened to me last night? I was at Snatch. Where were you?

Bathroom Boy: I looked for you - everywhere.
(Note: I hardly believe that he looked EVERYWHERE. Because if he had, in fact, looked EVERYWHERE then he would have inevitably found ME.)

Last night was Christian's birthday, and I stopped by to say hi before heading to Buzz.

Me: Ohh...was that you? I saw some tall black dude with glasses on walking out the door but I figured you'd be at Buzz, so I knew it wouldn't be you.

Bathroom Boy: Well it was, and you missed out. Anyway, so I'll see you tonight.
(Note: That was not a question.)

Me: Wait - what do you mean? See me tonight? Who said I was going anywhere?

Bathroom Boy: No one did. But you're on the guestlist, and it's free before 11...so be there.

Me: Wow, that's very direct and bossy of you. What if I don't want to go?

Bathroom Boy: You don't have to want to go - but you must be there.

Me: Peer pressure, much?

Bathroom Boy: Peer pressure all the way. See you tonight. [Click.]

Five hours later, a trip to downtown Baltimore's Sutton Place to pick up three tag-a-longs and off on 295 I went. I wrangled up enough energy to drive myself to DC, yet again and parked the car.

Ten minutes later, after meeting J.Lo and Ciconte and Dane at the door - we were inside, and down to the main room.

Several hours of dancing, partying, laughing and [will insert another story at a later date here], I was ready to go home, and so were my tag-a-longs. However, my friends had a different plan in mind and within 20 minutes of coersive speech on their part - I found myself in the car, with R and the tag-a-longs driving back to Baltimore to do a drop-off and head my ass as well as R's back to Virginia for a further partying fiasco.

In the end, this weekend was altogether fun, and I am ultimately proud of myself for the way that I held myself this weekend, with all things considered.

This weekend is going to bring lots more pictures, I promise - as I take on the road again towards Pennsylvania to stay with L unni and the Korean sistas for our now monthly "Kimchi Weekend". I can't wait. It'll be really relaxing, and peaceful to just be around people who completely and utterly get you. Plus, throwing a few martinis and a shitload of delicious kimchi and mandu in the mix doesn't hurt either.

My Coming to America

When I was around 10 or 11 years old, I used to feel really uncomfortable and uneasy when it came to my friends and the conversation of birthdays. I'm not sure if your peers at that age were anything like mine, but it became some one's novelty idea to state not only their date of birth but the exact time stamp as well. You would be in the middle of 5th grade English class, and it'd be Mary Sue's birthday and when asked if it was, indeed, her birthday, Mary Sue would reply: "Yes! But my Mom says I wasn't born until 1:45 pm exactly!"

At that age, the fact that I couldn't give you the exact time of my birth unsettled me in some way. I don't know if I can dig that far back into my past to precisely explain to you why I felt the way that I did, and I'm not even sure that if you could talk to the 10-year old me that I would be able to explain it any better. I just did.

I felt embarrassed, and overwhelmed with just how embarrassed I felt over some minute detail that in the grand scheme of things, held little to no consequence if not to just be some sentimental value to throw into the pages of a baby book. But God, no matter how lame you might have tried to twist it to be, I would have wanted nothing more than to tell you what time I was born.

When I think back at the significance of my feelings as a kid, I guess I could self-analyze and tell you that this obsession and immense feeling of hurt/embarrassment that came with not knowing the time of day I was brought into this world would probably stem from the deeper-rooted problem of just not knowing anything. It could be, but I can't exactly be sure. Perhaps you could just chalk it up to pure peer pressure and peer anxiety of wanting to fit in. I guess maybe essentially that's all my adoption issues were - this identity confusion and overwhelming sense of wanting to find a place to belong. Who knows. (I sure as hell don't, even after all these years.)

Today, though, today is my redemption. Today would eventually become the counter-attack for my self-esteem during the early years when I would battle with my adoption demons over what made me feel more "whole". And as I grew older, and into my now early twenties, I have been able to remember this day with a tainted bittersweetness. The kind of bittersweetness you feel when speaking of a loved one: can't live with it, can't live without it.

Today is my "Gotcha' Day". The day that I arrived off the plane from South Korea into BWI at around 11:45 pm at night. The flight was long and I was actually part of a group of seven or eight children that were being flown into the airport from Korea with my parents being one of the adoptive couples. I hear stories, and I see pictures - a picture of my tiny, frail premature body being carried off the plane by one of my mother's closest friends - another picture of an anonymous Korean woman standing at the edge of the airflight gate, looking on with tears in her eyes. I had later learned that this woman was one of the young Korean women who volunteer to be "baby escorts" or pseudo-mothers for at least the long journey over to America. This was my "birth", so to speak. This was my coming into my life as an Asian-American. As the person that I am now.

At the peak of my teen angst years, I looked at this day with disdain. In my eyes, I was brought here against my will, I had no say in the matter - and it especially hit me harder whenever my parents would say things like, "We didn't bring you here to screw up your life." or "We adopted you to save you. You wouldn't have survived at all in that orphanage."

Nowadays, it's just a day. A day to remember, of course, but just a day nonetheless. Without it, I probably wouldn't be here writing in this blog, in this chair, thinking about how my Spanish midterm is due by midnight tonight. With it, I have faced a lot of turmoil, identity confusion, frustration and hurt. But I wouldn't be me without all of those things.

So maybe, just maybe, I'll break out the vodka and orange juice tonight to celebrate. And more than likely, I might even throw on "Coming to America" to heighten the celebration festivities. =)

*Gasp* You're...Korean?!

Yep, it happened again, folks. Another case of mistaken ethnic identity.

Not that I have ever really cared unless someone said I was Vietnamese (since my cousins through marriage are Vietnamese and have been nothing but trouble for me) to which I would half-smile out of politeness and grit my teeth to reply "no" for them to second guess correctly: Korean.

I think that as most Korean-adoptees there is something distinctly different with how we view ourselves on the racial borderlines. I remember writing my college essay about how my racial identity was like the line that is found in the dollar bill only when you put it up to the light. You can't see it otherwise, and when you do see it, it divides the bill in a most unbalanced way. That was always me.

Perfectly unbalanced in every way. I straddled this line between American and Korean for a long time before becoming who I am now. I used to fight to use the word "Korean" whenever describing myself, as if from right off the bat when any one would ask "Where are you from?" I had to join the defensive lines and wear my Hanbok with a chopstick full of kimchi in order to be heard.

Now, I am content and without hesitation to say, "I am Korean."

And yet, somehow, this news always seems to come as some sort of shock for people. Despite my long and emotional fight with my identity internally, externally - people tended to see what they wanted to see and at first I found it kind of odd, and ironic, and sometimes funny.

But in the past few years it's become one of the most disturbing aspects of the "intro" conversation (you know, the one where you say "Hi, my name is....oh, nice to meet you! Yes, well I was raised in Towson with my parents and I have two dogs and two bunnies. I like take-out Chinese"...etc, etc.). Primarily because it has once again taken a twist on the ethnic boundaries that I had drawn for myself.

Last night, while having a conversation with (yes, none other than a Korean person) a friend, he stopped in mid-thought and paused, "Wait...are you Korean?"

Okay, forget that for the past 20 or so minutes I had fondly referred to close friends of mine as "oppa" or "unni" and forget that I had answered the phone by saying "yoboseyo" and asked "mo he?" and called him "babo" minutes before. All of that didn't seem to matter to him - my Korean linguistic skills could not match with his curiousity to see otherwise.

Me: "Uhh...yes, I'm Korean" ...What I wanted to say is "OF COURSE I AM!" but I figured that might be a bit pretentious.

Him: "Oh...really?" There is shock here, a bit of surprise which in turn, made me surprised myself that I was Korean.

Me: "You didn't think I was Korean?"

Him: "I wasn't so sure. I mean, I didn't know."

Me: "I see."

The conversation drifted onto another subject and for the next five or so minutes we were thralled in the verbal jousting on subjects such as his business, my work, how his parents were, etc. But my own curiousity to see what exactly prompted him to question so suddenly my ethnicity gave way.

Me: "Hey...um, what did you think I was all this time?"

Him: "Wha? You mean your ethnicity?"

Me: "Yeah, you know, what was your first guess?"

Him: "Like, what did I think you were when I first saw you?"

Me: "Sure."

Him: "I thought you were Chinese...but then I said 'no, she can't be Chinese.' So then I thought maybe Laotian...you look sorta Laotian."

Hmmm...Laotian. God, Mee-Bear would have loved to have snuck in on this conversation. (And then in floods memories of me standing there in front of his cousins, and uncle saying "jao mi ken koi?"....What a great first impression!)

The whole mistaking me for something else is acceptable. I have never been seen as Korean for as long as I can remember. I have always been seen as Vietnamese, Chinese, Filipino or Polynesian or Japanese. I guess what's really irking me is what came next in the conversation...and what has ultimately come up in every "intro" conversation I have had lately when talking to another Korean, Korean-American, Asian-American, or anyone for that matter.

Him: "I don't know. You think maybe you're mixed? You never know...what with being adopted and all."

Alright, yep, right there. Stop right there. Did you just say you think maybe I am mixed? Wait, no you didn't even say you thought I was mixed, you said maybe I think I am mixed. And then you try to sway and justify your conclusion on my racial ethnicity by stating that it's (oh my God, gonna use it...it's that word - that...word.... a...a.... a...) ADOPTION that probably left me mixed.

And what's worse is this epidemic has not just been within my recently found acquaintances but into my close friends as well.

"Well, Em, geesh, you do have a darker complexion than us."

"Remember when you were younger you had wavy hair? You still have a little wave naturally. That could be the answer."

I'll admit. When I was younger, and even in the more recent past I have been known to tease MYSELF about possibly being mixed, because in pictures I looked darker than my friends, and in summer while my Korean friends would turn a darker yellow, but still remain sort of light, I'd stand out with my Honduras friend like a sore thumb. But it was all in good fun, and I never blamed my adoption for it (save a few times, but even that was all just in good natured goofiness) but these people are serious!!

Don't get me wrong - there is NOTHING wrong with being hapa. Jeeesus, if anything hapas are the hottest creatures in the world. They are gorgeous babies (I know a few hapas that I could name right now that are, by far, the cutest damn babies I have ever seen) and they make even gorgeous people. But to say that my "unknown" hapa-ness is from my adoption, and to have everyone in my life trying to ethnically draw lines around me is sort of frustrating.

Sure, I don't know where I come from and my skin's a little darker, and my hair is a bit more wavier than the rest, but that doesn't make me 'hapa'. I might never know whether I am or not - but I just wish people would stop trying to answer the question for me - as if my entire happiness depends on it.

Because I was happy irregardless of who people thought I was, or wanted to think of me as - because through and through I knew I was that little yellow girl from Towson who grew to love that little line that unbalanced her perfectly between Korean and American.

Bulgogi Withdraw

Omgoodness...how long is it going to be till I have the sweet and succulent taste of bulgogi in my mouth? How long I say?!

It's like this: I am sitting in my bed, all snuggled up with the most erotic of readings (American History: A View on the New World from its Beginnings to 1588. Don't lie, it's a page-turner for you, too) and watching American Idol (because c'mon, gotta represent my love for PAUL KIM!!!) and my stomach starts growling.

Don't begin to mention that I had already gorged myself on food (and some left over cake I had managed to salvage, heh heh heh) or that I had been snacking on CHIPS (horrid, horrid, horrid) for the past, oh, let's just make up a short amount of time, say like 5 minutes? And now all of sudden, my stomach decides that its hungry. And not just for anything...for bulgogi.

Last time I ate bulgogi was in December...DECEMBER! Do you realize that means its been a whole 60 days or so since I have tasted bulgogi? And even though we had meat on J's birthday, for me, nothing comes close to the taste of the homeland.

Which reminds me...is this year going to be another year of traveling? I was talking to JV tonight and he was trying to convince me to go back to the Motherland. I am not sure if I am ready for all that yet. I keep going back and forth with this idea and notion that going back to Korea would be like creating a peace inside of myself. But at the same time, I feel like I would be unable to do it alone. I kind of also want to wait until school is finished, which will only be a few more years...but then I could argue the point that you never know how many years you have left.

It's a layered cake situation. That's what I call something that is super complicated because cake is one of those things that is bittersweet. It's a special occasion when you have some, but afterwards it leaves you with a slight guilt because of all the layered goodness that it has. And the more layers it has, the more you have to love and hate it for. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what adoption/birthfamily issues have become for me. A layered cake situation.

But damn, what I wouldn't give for some bulgogi right now...