Hi, Jim, would you like me to send pictures via email or through regular mail? I need to get some pictures from my parents at home first.
Anyway, I am not sure what kinds of things I should be sharing, and I am hoping that things will turn out great.
Well, I am the only child in my family. My parents and I are very close. We always talked about my adoption.
I was born on October 13, 1979, in Pusan. I stayed in Korea until May, and flew into KCI to meet my new family (by the way, I was a Holt baby). Apparently, I was the youngest child on the plane, and if you ask my parents about me, they'll say that I was the happiest baby off the plane (whatever that means).
I didn't really do a lot with adoption organizations. We lived outside of Tulsa for a couple of years--I only went to kindergarten there. That is when my parents starting taking me to events that were held by Dillon International. Then we moved back to Missouri.
It's sad because when you talk to adoptees, probably 8 out of 10 will tell you that they were raised in a small town and were the only Asian kids in the school. I am no exception. I was the ONLY one until 9th grade, and then we had a whopping 3 Asian people.
Anyway, in middle school and junior high, I had a few run-ins with racism, but my parents were really good about talking to me about it. Of course it bothered me, but life goes on.
In high school, I rarely encountered any form of racism concerning me. I was the junior and senior class president, and involved in a lot of stuff. I really didn't notice people who were ignorant enough to actually say something to me. For the most part, high school was okay. You know, sometimes I think it is a lot easier for Asian women to fit in than Asian men. At least that's what a couple of my really good Asian guy friends think, and I can see where they're coming from.
Anyway, going back, I started volunteering for Dillon in the summer of my 8th grade year as a camp counselor. Every summer they put on this week camp for adoptees at a church in Tulsa. We had about 100 campers each year. It was a lot of fun, and I think it helped me deal with my adoption issues, if there were any.
I never really thought I'd go to Korea. I asked for it in the beginning of my senior year, and to my surprise my parents splurged for it. I went with Dillon International on the Birthland Tour. A few days before I left for Korea, my mom gave me a precious moments figurine (I collected those at the time), and it was the one that said, "God Bless the Day We Found You"...you do know that the Sam Butcher family has adopted children, didn't you? Anyway, with it, she gave me a letter that had been written in the mid 80s and stated that my birth parents were married at the time of my adoption, and I had two older sisters. At the time of my relinquishment, my family was very poor.
Wow. I had no idea that was the case. My mother always told me that my birth family loved me enough to give me up and that they were too poor to keep me, but honestly, I thought she was just making it up to make me feel better. However, she never told me about the letter until a few days before my trip. I thought that was kind of weird because it was is not like my mother to keep anything from me. I guess she could never get the courage to tell me.
Anyway, so when I went to Korea, I stayed at the Eastern Welfare Society. On one of our free days in the beginning of the tour, I went to the Holt office in Seoul. When the social worker first showed me my file, I was in awe. My (American) mother had sent pictures of me to add to my file. It was weird because I always thought that Korea was this faraway place that no one could actually visit or something. Anyway, at first, the social worker told me that she could not tell me my birth parents' names because I was too young. I immediately started crying because I had worked myself up before we got there. However, she mistook me for 17 instead of 18, and when we got that misunderstanding corrected, I felt better. Then she told me my birth parents' names. I asked her if there would be a chance that I would be able to find them, and she told me to go to the US and do a search then. Of course, I started crying again because I never thought I'd go back to Korea. I told her that this was my only chance. She was young, and I think she felt sorry for me. Anyway, I left that office feeling a little sad as if I had left a part of me in there.
But after that, I was okay. Afterall, that was not the reason for me coming to Korea. I just wanted to see the country I came from. I had been completely content without knowing at all. I was happy with my life in America. I think that just being in Korea makes you want to search even if you had never wanted to before. Seeing my file added a little closure to my short-lived search.
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