iPad commercials

The iPad commercial here in Korea is very similar to the U.S. version, but something’s  different about it—I just can’t put my finger on it…

Everybody needs a little time away

Drew and I needed a break from each other today.  We’ve been in each other’s pockets for a week and a half, and as much as we love each other, we were starting to get snippy.  I have also discovered that Drew does quite a bit of talking in his sleep.  Last night’s was “Stop shaking it.  Don’t be such a baby,” followed by vigorous twitching of limbs and a high kick which launched the sheets up in the air an impressive distance.  Anyway, Drew’s out this evening with his friend Yeji hitting up Hongseong.

I went down to Yongsan and met up with Alex for lunch.  It was great to see him.  Before I left, I asked him if there was anything he wanted me to bring from home, and he requested Kraft Dinner and Flaming Hot Cheetoes.  They survived the trip (though I think the air pressure change in the plane poked a hole in one of the Cheetoes bags—Drew’s shirts smelled a bit like Cheetoes until we got a chance to do laundry), and I passed them along to Alex.  I got to meet Alex’s friend, Joyce, who is a fellow TaLK recruit and enviably fluent in Korean.  We ate at a burger joint in the food court of the giant Yongsan shopping complex and then wandered around.  We made our way to Dongdaemun where I parted ways with them and walked the length of Cheonggyecheon back to Koroot.  A relaxing, solitary evening wandering around the city was just what I needed to recharge.

Tomorrow I’m meeting my good friend Joon for coffee, and then meeting Amul at Seoul Station at midnight(!).  Amul will get a few hours to sleep, and then we’re off to Gyeongju for the next few days.

Gyeongbokgung

Thursday afternoon was spent exploring one of the royal palaces in Seoul, Gyeongbokgung.  An added bonus was free admission to the Korean Folk Museum, where Drew got to see Paleolithic Korean stone arrows, Bronze Age armor, and Korean horn bows.

		Gyeongbokgung VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Around Seoul

		Around Seoul VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Meeting with Omma

Tuesday, Omma took the bus up from Ulsan to Seoul where we met her for dinner.  Gayoung and Im Sook Imo accompanied us as well.  We ended up eating at a Chinese restaurant at Seoul Station Plaza.  I told Omma and Imo that Drew loves jjajjangmyun, so we ordered that along with some yummy chicken dishes. It was good to see Omma again, I had forgotten how much I love her voice, so high and soft, and her laugh.  Over dinner, we talked about our dogs, and passed cell phone pictures around.  Omma has an apricot poodle named Ppalli (means fast in Korean), Imo has a black poodle named Kumchungi (Blackie).  Omma's heard all about Olivia, and Drew pulled out pictures of Lily as well.  I had a picture on my phone of Olivia snuggling with Amul, and Omma’s comment was that “Olivia seems like a person, not a dog.”  She definitely hit the nail on the head with that one.

After dinner, Gayoung suggested we go to Smoothie King—rather humorous, as that’s where Gayoung and I bonded as sisters in 2010.  However, Omma wanted beer!  So we ended up at Bennigan’s in Seoul.  It was a surreal experience sharing a drink with my baby brother, my long-lost sister, my birthmother, and my aunt.  But good.  I told them about Amul’s attempts at making kimchi:

Me (in Korean): Ah, Omma. Amul made kimchi!
Omma: Wow, really? Amul likes kimchi?  He made kimchi? Was it tasty?
Me: Noooo.

At this point the entire table breaks out in giggles.  Through Gayoung, I explain that Amul’s first attempt was too salty, his second attempt was too sweet, and his third batch had too much fish sauce.  Omma thought that was hilarious, and offered to give us the family recipe (yes please!).  She also wondered out loud if we could devise a way to take her homemade kimchi back to the U.S. with us.

Omma asks me what my plans for the rest of the evening and tomorrow are.  This relationship with my Korean family is teaching me to go with the flow, to let go of some control.  Omma asks me to come with her to Suwon, to spend the night at Imo Halmoni’s.  Though the impromptu sleepover is out of my comfort zone (not the experience itself, but the sudden change of plans), Omma, Gayoung, Drew, and I take the hour and a half bus ride to Suwon, to stay at Imo Halmoni’s apartment.  Imo Halmoni is visiting her elder sister, my Halmoni.  She has graciously allowed us the use of her apartment in Suwon for the night.  The bus ride is long after a very long day.  Omma and I fall asleep beside each other on the bus, our shoulders touching as we sway back and forth with the turns and jerks of the bus.  Finally, we arrive in Suwon around 11:30 and grab a taxi to take us to Imo Halmoni’s apartment complex.  Before we head in, we stop at a convenience mart, just ready to close down for the night.  Omma grabs Korean melons, mushrooms, cucumbers.  Drew and I grab toothbrushes.

Up in Imo Halmoni’s apartment, we sit on the floor in the living room, lean our backs against the wall, and flip through channels on TV.  Though we’re all exhausted, it seems sleep is a far way off.  It’s so much like my first stay here, wondering what happens next, with the TV chirping in the background.  Omma putters around, poking her nose in the fridge, the pantry, cabinets, the laundry drying room.   “Rice, rice, I can’t find the rice,” she mutters.  Finally after twenty minutes of searching, she finds what she’s looking for in the kimchi fridge.  Oh, if only all our searches were so easy.  If only all the answers lay in the shiny chest filled with fermented cabbage.

Omma slices melon for us to snack on, and forages for pajama bottoms for all of us—Drew ends up with the pink windsuit pants.  She brings out the the thick bedding (yo) to make nests on the floor.  And it’s like childhood family vacations again, with the three of us tucked in a row on the floor like peas in a pod.  Drew talks and mumbles in his sleep.  The other night, I caught him saying, “It was crazy. You had to pay to use the toilet.”  Not once on our trip have we had to pay to use the toilet.  Omma occasionally snorts and snuffles.  Gayoung, like me, buries herself under the covers, pulling the quilts up over her head, to trap the heat in, to bar entry to incubi, to reenact a return to the womb.

I wake to find Gayoung’s spot beside me empty and cold.  Simple investigation reveals she has moved from the nest on the floor in the living room to the bedroom with Omma.  They lay side-by-side on the double bed, the bed Omma and I shared our first night together.  My sentimentality gets the better of me, and I imagine Gayoung waking from a troubling dream, needing the closeness and comfort of our mother.  Later, I find out Gayoung couldn’t sleep because of Omma’s snoring.  She moved to the bed in order to keep Omma quiet.

Once awake, Drew, Gayoung, and I lounge in the living room, watching the morning news on TV like it’s Saturday morning cartoons.  Omma takes over the kitchen, rinsing, chopping, frying.    In 2010 when I visited, one of Omma’s regrets was that she didn’t have the opportunity to cook for me.  It’s so interesting how love is expressed through food.  Omma prepares a lavish breakfast for us—her speciality, kimchi chiggae.  This is a special meal—Gayoung has mentioned in the past that one of her favorite dishes is Omma’s kimchi chiggae.  However, now that she and her sister are grown and out of the house, Omma rarely cooks anymore.  So Gayoung savors this meal as well.  The short table fills with banchan—bean sprouts, fried tofu, kimchi, kim, sautéed mushrooms, purple rice.  We eat and eat, and it tastes like love.  Omma is delighted with Drew’s healthy appetite, and urges him to go back for seconds, thirds.

And then we are clearing the table, cleaning up, erasing our presence in this borrowed home in a whirlwind of dishwashing and rearranging.  Within minutes, we are dressed and headed out the door, and down the street where Omma hails a taxi to take Drew and me to the metro station.  Gayoung and Omma are headed in the opposite direction to the bus stop.  Omma ushers us into the cab, presses her hand to her lips and waves as the taxi pulls away.  I forget that with Omma, goodbyes are executed abruptly to avoid drawing out the sorrow of departure any longer than necessary.

Later in the day, I text Omma to let her know we made it safely back to Seoul, that we are now securely ensconced in the adoptee guesthouse.  She replies that she is on the bus back to Ulsan.  Her text ends with “I love you very, very much.”

KSS

Our appointment with Drew’s case worker at Korean Social Service was yesterday. While they don’t have a current lead on the whereabouts of Drew’s family, but we did get a bunch more information.  Firstly, we realized that we’ve been spelling/pronouncing his name incorrectly. We discovered it’s Yōng Woo, with a long O sound, rather than Young Woo (용우 instead of 영우).

Apparently, when KSS inquired in 2009 following our request, they found that in 2005, Drew’s family cancelled their residency registry in Namwon City.  Which means that sometime between when Drew was born and 2005, they moved from Hongseong to Namwon.  When KSS inquired again last month, his mother’s registration showed an address back in Hongseong.  KSS contacted this address/phone number in Hongseong, but it turns out that the contact information was actually that of the owner/landlord of the house, not Drew’s family.  In September 2011, Drew’s mother visited this address, wanting to move to Hongseong for her children’s education.  She said that she would return to sign a leasing contract, but never came back, even though she registered the address as her current residency.

KSS has advised us to check back with them annually to see if his mother’s contact information has been updated with the police.  The police couldn’t find his father’s information, and the social worker implied that he may not still be living.  A discouraging search dead end for now, but we were able to get his case worker to tell us more information about Drew’s birth and family.

Drew was born at 3:53 am on January 7, 1992 at the Hongseong hospital.  He was 2 weeks late!  His medical records show that it was possibly a difficult birth; Drew had difficulty breathing because he had ingested/inhaled a bunch of amniotic fluid.  So following his birth, Drew was kept in an incubator for a few days to treat the water in his lungs.

Sometime between January 7 and January 14, Drew was handed over from the hospital to KSS’s sister agency, Hongseong Social Welfare Center.  HSWC used to be an orphanage, but by the time Drew was born in 1992, it had become just a social service agency.  On January 14, KSS took custody of Drew and he was transported from Hongseong to Seoul.

While in Seoul, Drew was cared for by a foster mother.  We had actually gotten to meet his foster mother back in 2001 when we visited.  As I recall, she had fostered something like 42 children over the years and Drew was the first to return. We asked whether it was common for multiple babies to be placed in a single foster home, and the social worker said that usually one child is placed in a single home, unless there are more babies than participating foster homes.  Then, occasionally, there would be 2 children in the home, but most likely, Drew was the only baby in the foster home at that time.  We found out that his foster mother had lived at the same address in Junghwa-dong in 1992 when she cared for Drew and in 2001 when we met her at KSS.  They don’t have current contact information for her, however.

We were able to get the social worker to tell us that his birthparents were Catholic (which is interesting, since my Omma is Catholic as well).  His father was possibly blood type AB, and his mother type O.  In 1992, they had 3 sons, aged 12, 10, and 7.  This is probably in Korean age, so in U.S. reckoning, they would have been 11, 9, and 6.  Which means that the 9 year old and the 6 year old would be the same age and Erica and me. 

And we got names!  Drew’s eldest brother is named Yong-eun (용은), his middle brother is named Yong-min (용민), and the third brother is named Yong-ho (용호).  This was the biggest information find for Drew, and I think it helped offset the disappointment of not getting current contact information.

So advice for adoptees doing birth searches or record reviews with their agencies: Keep pushing, keep asking questions.  In the first 2 minutes of our meeting, the case worker told us that they couldn’t contact his family, and was ready to leave it at that.  We kept asking questions, however, and were able to get more information, piece by piece.

We asked if there were additional papers in his file that we could get copies of.
No other English papers.

Were there other papers in Korean?
Yes, but we couldn’t get copies because they had confidential registration numbers.

Could she read the Korean files to us, without the registration information?
Oh. Um. Yes, she supposed that would be okay.

Our two-minute meeting stretched an hour, and we were able to gather the scraps here and there to puzzle together a more complete picture.  Write everything down! Even if it seems insignificant, that piece could connect to another piece and open up a whole new area of information.

I asked Drew how he was feeling after our meeting, and he seemed okay.  He was in high enough spirits to almost win me a plush banana in an arcade claw machine. Drew met up with his friend, Yeji in the evening.  I hadn’t realized that this was the first time they had actually met in person!  They’ve been having Korean lessons over Skype for over a year, and Yeji’s an art student at the other art school in Michigan near Detroit.  For some reason, I was under the impression that she had been an exchange student at Drew’s high school.  Actually, they connected through Drew’s adoptee friend, Desiree, who he went to high school with, and also attends CCS in Detroit.  Drew was out with Yeji until past 10:30, and he said he had a lot of fun. They went back to Insadong, and Yeji took him to Myeongdong.

Tonight, my Omma comes to Seoul.  We’ll meet her and Gayoung at Seoul Station this evening.  I think Im Sook Imo and Imo Halmoni are coming as well.  It will be good to see them again, and I’m looking forward to having Drew meet the amazing women of my family.