i'm copying several of my friends who have looked back their 2008 and anticipated their 2009!
2008 for me was full of changes!
january:
right after i celebrated new years with my halmoni & family in kyoto, japan, i went to seoul, south corea to learn the language and reconnect with my distant families there. the hasuk (boarding house) i found online while i was in japan was crappy. the bathroom was so nasty and barely had hot water...taking shower became the least pleasant thing to do in my life.
february:
i found a million times better hasuk at cheaper rate in hong dae area. i had to take a bus to yonsei korean language institute, but it was worth it. i could take off flip-flop when i took a shower and the shower kept its tempature for more than 15 min! ajumma (madam at hasuk) was so nice and she spoke japanese! i had all kinds of hasuk mates (singaporean, japanese, zainichi, british, canadian, american, chinese from korea...etc).
my parents and youngest brother visited me for the weekend. it was the first time for my brother to visit south corea and first time for my dad to be in seoul. we did lots of touristy stuff and had lots of GREAT korean food like sam gyeop sal!
march:
i completed the first quarter at yonsei. i did not understand anything on the first day of class, but i was able to understand the most of what our level 2 teacher was saying at the end of quarter. i felt so good!
i took a trip to chulla namdo (south chulla province) by myself (although my korean was still very very limited). as i was looking back my first few months in seoul, i was dissapointed at myself merely being a language school student, and not being able to get involved in any kind of political activities there due to my poor korean. i visited the organization that works for the reunification of the korean peninsula, but there was hardly anything i could do simply because my korean was sooooooooo bad. plus, i had not been able to reconnect with my relatives in seoul because i think i was not fully reconciled with the fact that they rejected letting me stay with them...
april:
starting the 2nd quarter at yonsei. yuko, chie, dean and miho came to visit me in seoul! it was such a fun week. before dean and miho arrived, yuko, chie and i went to visit pyong taek, where residents were forced to move because the us military was extending the base. yuko, chie and i were able to meet the person who's been involved in the grass-roots resistance against the us-south corean governments' brutality to deprive them of their dignity and livelihood.
yuko and chie are from okinawa and they had to do deal with us military and the japanese government messing up their life through colonization and militarization. i was kind of acting as an interpreter and thought of my unique positionality as zainichi when dealing with south corea & okinawa.
dean, miho and i went to DMZ. since i have a south corean passport and south corean civilians are not allowed to visit DMZ, i had to obtain a special document from the korean consulate in japan to prove my status as an overseas korean. when we arrived, the korean soldier (probably the one who is on the compulsary military service = 20 or 21 years old) got on our bus and started to check our documents. seems like he gave me a strange look when he was looking through my documents, but fortunately, i could stay on the bus with everyone else.
it was so weird to be on the south side of the DMZ. as soon as i stood on the ground of panmoon jum, i said to myself, "someday i will stand the other side of the DMZ"
the whole tour was very nationalistic and anti-north. we were forced to listen to the history from the south and most hilariously, we were forced to thank us soldiers for protecting us in the DMZ. i was like, "you guys are on our land. why the hell do i have to thank you for occupying our land!?"
in april, i realized that i was starting to mix japanese, english and korean almost unconsciously. i was able to write longer sentences and better text messages by the end of april.
may:
my halmoni and maternal families came. they went to kohyang (north kyung sang province) and came up to seoul. i couldn't come down to kohyang since i had school & work, but was able to spend the weekend with my families. then, i met my distant korean family and our relationship kind of started from there.
although it was the second time to meet them, it feld totally different since now i speak korean, even so little, and they felt they could communicate with me without having to ask my parents or halmoni to translate everything.
i was so happy that i could spend time with my halmoni. all my aunties & uncles were into sightseeing and shopping, which bothered me a bit because they appeared to be just like japanese tourists rather than being 2nd generation zainichi koreans who were educated in chun ryeon school from kindergarten to high school senior.
june:
i started to wonder what i was doing and felt lost while living in seoul, going to the language school, and teaching japanese. although my whole purpose of living in south corea was to reconnect with my distant relatives and to understand my halmoni (who passed away in 2000) better through learning the language and culture she grew up with, i felt like i wasn't successful in either goal.... until i visited her hometown with my family.
it was totally an amazing experience. just to be with my family was unbelievable. my older brother flew from tokyo, my parents and younger brothers from osaka and i flew from seoul. we all met in pusan international airport. my dad's counsins came to see us from the country side, where my grandparents were born and brought up (2.5 hours from pusan). we had a wonderful night as if we were trying to make up the time we had been separated. i see pictures from that night and everyone of us looks so happy. it didn't matter that my brothers barely spoke the language. we all found something that we didn't even know that we had and were deprived of. i was very honored to be able to serve as an interpreter for my brothers. my parents seemed vey proud of me. i was just hoping that none of us will never forget the night forever because this is clearly something that very few of zainichis could do and even care to do.
july:
i moved daegu for the summer internship. i worked as a research assistant at the economic research institute in daegu bank. the reason i took this opportunity was to live in the kyung san province where both sides of my grandparents came from. since seoul barely offered anything what i was looking for in terms of family connection, i had a majoe expectation in a summer in daegu. as soon as i arrived, i hear familiar accents. i was so delighted to hear the language my grandparents used to speak.
i picked up some dialects there which made me so happy because i knew i could say something that would surprise my halmoni! even though all my cousins went to chun ryeon schools and are fluent in corean, their corean is a "revolutionary language" influenced by the north which manifested the division of the peninsula and the tension between the north and the south.
i also took a trip to pusan to visit one of my dad's counsins. they took us around pusan and treated me like their own child. they were so patient with me and showed me lots of love. this was the first time i had an interaction with relatives in corea without my parents or halmoni. i was starting to build a personal relationship with them.
august:
went back to seoul for 10 days to meet everyone i wanted to thank to made my stay in corea so wonderful. it was so hard to say good bye to friends & families although it had not been too long since we had met. i didn't have any expectations in making such good friends in corea. my best friend was a corean from china. he was also the 3rd generation and we would discuss lots of different things in our broken corean over beer and soju. others also taught me so much about life. i left corea on august 7th. 7 months and 2 days of my life in corea.... was totally an accumulation of uncontable unforgettable moments.
september:
for a month with my parents, i tried to be the best daughter. i tried to get rid of some of the stuff that my parents need help with. i organized old pictures and albums of me and my brothers. i helped my mom with computer. my parents, older brother and i took a short trip to ohara (the north of kyoto) and visited the temple together. i thanked every day that i was able to spend time with my parents because i knew i was not gonna come home for a while.
my youngest brother went to DPRK with other zainichi students. i came back to the us a day after he came back to japan.
relocating to sd was hard. i didn't have anything. no internet...no bed... no light... no nothing. school was going to start in a week. 2 of my good friends came to help me move-in. i could never thank them enough for their help! seriously...drive 100 miles just to help me? i'm surrounded by so many good friends.
october - december:
school school school. no life outside of school
realized i could do nothing without a car in so cal. i found a zainichi car dealer, so i contacted him and bought a car from him. hopefully he will share his story as a zainichi in the us someday!
i had never felt so inferior in my life. i couldn't believe how behind i was and i thought i was admitted by a mistake or something. i felt like i was failing because i felt i should be doing much better that i was doing, looking at others with kids and so many other responsibilities.
i was intimidated by class readings and discussions as well. i was just hoping that this quarter would end soon. i knew exactly what my problems were. i was lacking theories and the ability to critically engage in readings. so, i decided to focus on learning how to read in the very first quarter. professors and other students were very supportive and encouraging. friends at different schools were also giving me lots of support and love. if it were not for them, i could never complete my first quarter at ucsd.
i went back to the bay area on 12/17 and spent my last days in 2008 with people i love, respect and care about. they make me feel at home, thousands miles away from my hometown. my goal in 2009 is to create a space that i feel at home in san diego. i'm detemined to stop comparing everything with the bay area and to make efforts to start liking san diego.
