Our Family Universe: The Trip To Korea

I would like to dedicate the creation of this blogsite, Our Family Universe, to my mother's sister, Gil-Ja Kang Kim. From my childhood visits to Korea, I will always remember her kind eyes and familiar smile that resembled mother's, her tight embrace hugs, and that she made the best Korean comfort-food.

Korea Trip 9/29/08 to 10/10/08

It's been at least a couple of decades since my mom has been to Korea. For her 60th birthday, I wanted to take a Mother-Daughters' Trip to Seoul. We packed our bags and packed my sister, Sandra's kids, Issac and Olivia (not in the luggage, of course) and flew 12 hours from SFO to Inchon. Thank the universe for the invention of on-flight TV and video game consoles and for Singapore's hospitality of offering unlimited vodka drinks. (haha) Once we arrived to Inchon, we were greeted by my cousin, InSung, who is Hyomee Emo's younger kid. We stayed with my Emo's family in their condo in Seoul for the first four days and then into a hotel-condo for the remaining days. Throughout our trip, we reunited (or met for the 1st time, in my case): my Hyomee Emo and Emoboo, my jahguhn Samchoon and Sugmo, my kuhn Samchoon and sugmo, the various cousins who are shown in photos. The only cousin that I saw not represented in the photos is Kyounghee Unhee due to running out of camera-charge. :-(

Most memorable parts of my experiences in Seoul:

**Talking, sharing meals and sharing soju spirits with my cousins

**Watching my mother eat her favorite childhood desserts: mochi and BB Big popsicles. I must say that before this trip, I had never met a strawberry, blueberry, or pumpkin mochi. I can't say that anymore.

**Attending Buddhist Temple with Hyomee Emo and bowing to Buddha. Issac bowed to Buddha more times than I and he bowed to the biggest Buddha situated in urban Seoul. That up-stager!

**Watching Korean variety shows on TV with my cuz, InSung, and discussing the finer points of English semantics. InSung speaks English and will soon be a certified English translater.

**Meeting my young, five year old niece, Junghyun who is a gifted artist. She illustrated for us her skills by drawing a scenary of young girl in a grassy field. Issac left Korea with a Junghyun original drawing signed and dated by his cousin. To see more pictures of this cutie, I'll include her website below. I also learned that Junghyun's favorite artist is Degas and VanGogh.

**Going to Jinjilbang and getting a layer of my skin removed and then deep-muscle-massaged to a pulp by these incredibly vigorous woman in her work-bikini-uniform. Actually, this was quite an experience and I left bruised but feeling very relaxed. This is one of my mom's favorite thing to do and so I had to share this one experience with her. The two of us sat in a sauna then dipped into two pools back and forth...one almost scalding hot and the other as cold as the Bering Sea. All the Korean women in the bathhouse were doing it head-submerged without flinching. I could only dip as deep as my waist. The purpose is to improve circulation and strengthen the immune system.

**Noh-rae-bang with my two oh-bahs, Kwanghyun and Changhyun. These two hams displayed their love for singing Korean ballads while standing up on stage in our tiny room. Sandra was so moved by Changhyun's singing that she also started chiming in, dueting with him even though she didn't know the songs, so she claimed...The Oh-bahs certainly didn't buy that hoo-hah. (I remember a certain Sandra and her boyfriend, Alex, years ago, forcing me to listen to their Korean ballads in anther tiny nohraebang---torture maybe?) My humble contributions were a little ABBA and Cyndi. Surprising note of interest: Kwanghyun-ohbah likes to sing "A Whole New World". I have a brother who also likes to sing this little Aladdin ditti. Two men, on opposites sides of the planet, both the same age and have the same love for Aladdin. Whoa!

Now that I'm back to the U.S., I am trying to rally Kwan, Steve, Steph, and Sandra (I'm sure Alex's on board) to plan a collective trip to Korea. It will awesome.