InKAS 여름 캠프 InKAS Summer Camp

So I am now back and the very jam-packed trip didn't really afford me the time to blog like my more extended one last year.  Nevertheless, there are a few things that I wanted to write about and I was able to jot down some notes, so as I find time, I'll "hind-write" (I seriously just made that up, can you believe it!?) a few entries.  Sorry.


Wednesday, 6/1/2016

Cast of Characters:

The structure of my trip this time is two-fold:  I arrived four days ago on May 29th and had those days to retrace a few memories and blaze new ones around Seoul on my own before the InKAS program starts, including seeing a few familiar faces.

Pretty much as soon as I landed and checked into my AirBNB in the Hongdae area--one of most popular neighborhoods for young people in Seoul--I met up with three of my friends from last year:

Adam:  An adoptee from the Chicago area whom I met interestingly enough, through InKAS at their Seollal (Korean New Year) dinner last year.  If this trip is Jurassic Park:  The Lost World, I guess he must be Jeff Goldblum, because he's pretty much the only person you'll recognize from last time.  He's actually been living in Seoul for over four years now and just got a job at the American embassy.
Hyeonju:  A Korean girl I sat next to on the plane to Taiwan last year, which formed the basis of our friendship.  She works in social media marketing at a Korean cosmetics company.
Minsun:  Hyeonju's friend that hung out with us last year; she is a phlebotomist at a hospital in Seoul.

We got things started properly with jokbal 족발, Korean braised pork and a cold noodle dish called makguksu 막국수.

This is Adam and Hyeonju.

And this is Minsun and my right shoulder and most of my neck and face.

The girls had then planned for a bike ride along the Han River, but unless you have a Korean ID, it's basically impossible to rent one of the public bikes.  So this is all of the Korean residents trying to figure out how to rent me a bike.

It worked out in the end though and the weather in Korea this time around was beautiful--not too different from Michigan, about 75-85, sunny, and a little humid--a great time to be back.

And to update you a bit on my Seoul-mates from last year:
Peter:  My dear 친구 ("chingu" = friend) is currently wrapping up his intern year in Internal Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, forcing a long-distance brolationship.
Grace:  The awesomest Aussie moved back to Brisbane to finish up Uni (that "college" in Australian) and she has since been accepted to several graduate programs in Korea and will be moving back this fall!
Lee-Jiao:  Our Chinese housemate from last year is also done with her Korean studies and moved back home, where she goes months at a time without signs of life on social media, but is likely amassing a small fortune by starting a black market Korean cosmetics business in China.
Megan:  Our Minnesotan house mom from last year is back in the Midwest, but also has nebulous plans to come back to Korea sometime.  As it turns out, she was only the harbinger of a coming invasion, as the Goos had no room for me this year because of abundance of Minnesotans.
Mike:  The frenetic Baltimorean of yester-집 (yester-house) also went back home since last year, but is also planning to come back to Korea this fall for more studies.

The Goo Crew 2015

InKAS deserves some introduction here, as they not only contracted with Korean Air to get our flights paid for, but also massively subsidized the rest of the trip, making this trip possible and affordable for all of us.  InKAS stands for International Korean Adoptee Service Inc and was founded in 1997 by chairwoman Jung.  It is a non-profit post-adoption organization partly funded by the South Korean government that seeks to reconnect Korean adoptees in 14 different countries with South Korea and help them develop an identity as ethnic Koreans, one of the more prominent of many similar organizations.  More specifically, they provide services for adoptees who are back in Seoul, offering very affordable short- and long-term accommodation at their house 우리집 "Our House," and helping them find education or work in Korea.  They also offer a number of special programs annually, including custom-made tours of Korea for adoptees and their families, scholarships for studying at Korean universities, birth searches for reuniting adoptees with their biological families, and several group trips or "camps" for large groups of foreign adoptees to experience Korea together.

You can check out their website here:  http://inkas.org/en/

This InKAS program then, is a summer camp of sorts which makes up the bulk of my trip and is a tour of Seoul and much of the rest of South Korea for a group of about 34 Korean adoptees.  The group hails from seven different Western countries in all, and I was initially concerned that it would be much truer to its "summer camp" title with me stuck on a bus with a gaggle of 18 year-olds straight out of high school for 10 days--amounting to something like this:

This is one of my students from Guatemala and there was almost nothing left of him after this.

However, the age range ended up being between 20 and 40, with the average being somewhere around my age.  Here's a quick rundown of the 34 of us:

Americans:  There are 15 of us including four from Michigan.

French:  There are seven French adoptees including our trip photographer Pierre who has been on the InKAS summer camp no fewer than eight times; true to their nationality, all of them smoke.

Dutch:  There are five Dutch adoptees on the trip, and they unsurprisingly ended up being by far the most proficient soccer players in the group.

Danes:  There are four Danes, including a Danish-Korean-adoptee version of Phoebe and one person with the last name Klug, which comes from the same root as "Kluk"--crazy!

Norwegian:  In addition to being our only Norwegian, Julie (Yoo-lee-eh) is also a second-generation adoptee and her adoptee mother attended InKAS summer camp two years ago!  She's also probably the person with whom I was closest on the trip.

Canadian:  We had one lone Canadian on the trip who manages a ballet company and defended Canada's honor during thunder-and-lightning ping-pong.

Australian:  Our very own Aussie is actually also an actress who has a supporting role in the show Wentworth on Netflix and her own Wikipedia and IMDB pages--check it out!

In addition to all these wonderful people, the staff on the trip was also great and included:

Ray:  the leader and tour guide of the trip; also the chairman's son who lived in the US for a while

Haeri:  the director and behind-the-scenes mastermind of the entire trip and karaoke dark horse

Not the whole group, but for some reason, no one has posted any of the 2138562852 group pictures we took.

Oh yeah, and then this happened!

You can see the indoctrination of Minsoo and Minhook is going all according to plan ;)

Until next time!

Mark