Declassified Travel Stories (part 1)

3/13/2018 (but really, 3/2015)

First of all, welcome back, friends!  I am fortunate enough to have the opportunity to spend the month of March, 2018 working with the fine folks at Peking University Health Science Center, Department of Pediatrics in Beijing, China.  Though this blog started as a first-time-back-to-Korea/adoptee-identity-figuring-out blog, it's gradually grown into a general travel blog/thing I do when I feel I haven't written anything for while/place to paste gifs.  Anyway, if I have the time, I figure that this experience might be a good opportunity to blog about some stories and interesting topics, and to my Taiwanese and Chinese friends, I apologize if I come across as ignorant or naive at any time.  As usual, I'm trying my best to dive head-first into the culture and history here and I've been reading and exploring as much as I can, so hopefully this month will bring some interesting, funny, and insightful (though of course always HIPAA compliant) stories ;)

But in the meantime:

If you travel enough, crazy things will happen to you, in my case, most of which eventually end up on this blog.  Well there have been a couple of gems of stories in the past couple of years, but while most of you may have heard them from me in person, I didn't write about them here because my parents may have been less than pleased to know about them because they involve some measure of danger?  Luckily, I have arbitrarily decided that the statute of limitations has expired on these two stories, so, for your enjoyment, please read on!


Give Me the Money, Give Me the Money!
So let's bring this whole thing back to Korea for a hot second.  East Asia is super safe--both anecdotally and statistically--as not only does Nationmaster, a fact checked statistical website, show us that South Korea had only the 122nd highest per capita murder rate at 25.32 per 100,000 in 2010 (the US is neatly at 99th at 42.01 and Honduras is 1st at 913.5), but also, scenes like this:


Photo credit:  utusan.com.my

are a regular sight in Seoul--this is probably a Wednesday at 7:00AM--and no one rummages through their bags, takes their suits, T-bags them, or fucks with them in any way.  Absolutely unthinkable in NYC, and some of my female Korean friends have said that they would not feel particularly unsafe walking home at night from the club alone, while intoxicated--pretty astounding stuff.  Now I want to compare this to northern Europe, which, you may point out, must be at least as safe if not even safer than east Asia by this metric--the Netherlands is actually 162nd for per capita murder at only 10.83 per 100,000 (2009) according to Nationmaster.  Yeah, yeah, well that's just one metric and I'll get back to you smug asses right after the story.

So anyways, after spending over five very formative and well-documented (see above:  my blog from the beggining) weeks in Korea back in 2015, I got used to this tangibly safer-feeling atmosphere.   Then after heading back home briefly for match day, I soon jetted back off to Europe to travel around with Brandan and spend the rest of my disappearing life savings on as much travel as I could pack into my final year of medical school.  Only it wasn't always with Brandan, sometimes it was with other friends in the area, sometimes it was with hostel best-friends-for-the-weekend, sometimes it was totally by myself, and traveling alone with your guard down is not a good way to go.

While in Tubingen, Germany with Brandan in March of 2015, I found out that later that month, the annual Dutch Tulip Festival would be taking place in Keukenhof, Netherlands.  Now if you know anything about anything, you know that that the only people crazier about tulips than the Dutch, are me.  I remember reading about the tulip festival in some weird plant book that weird me read when I was about 6 weird years-old and I wanted soooo badly to go.  Well I never had made it to Europe until this 2015 trip, my parents helped me make my own garden when I was growing up, and I all but forgot about my floriferous childhood dream; until that fateful day.  The ensuing conversation went like this:

Me:  "OMGOMGOMG the Dutch Tulip Festival is in TWO WEEKS--I'LL STILL BE HERE!  DOYOUWANTTOGOWITHMEPLEEAASSSEEE?!"

Brandan:  "I...  Um.  Not really, man.  I'm really sorry."  (For reference, for those of you that don't know Brandan, this is actually the meanest thing that Brandan has ever said to me.)

Me:  "Oh, okay, no problem; I understand.  You're probably just about out of money for side trips anyway, huh?"

Brandan:  "Yeah, that's true too... But also...  I just really don't want to go.  Sorry."  Then he probably cooked me dinner, gave me a treasured Walters family heirloom, and offered to pay off my medical school student loans or something like that.

In any case, I was out a travel partner, but I got it, I'm a weird plant person, and most other people in the world are not.  So, newly Brandanless, I struck out on my own European expedition with a quick stop in Paris with Karin, a good high school friend of mine (who was/still is living in Freiburg, Germany) where we then also met up with some of my Albion friends.  I then, in an amusing side story, found out very unexpectedly that my 10:00PM train from Paris to Amsterdam was not, in fact, a sleeper train, as that trip takes only about 3h20m, but actually, an unpleasant overnight layover at the Brussels, Belgium train station.  Not to be made a complete fool of, I was able to book a last-minute hostel close by and even plucked up the energy to explore the city since I had a few hours there.  Long side-story short, most things were closed, there's not too much to see in Brussels except an inexplicably very famous, unimpressive fountain of a cherub pissing, and WAIT A SECOND WHAT'S THAT?!

FuCk YeS, DeLiRiUm TaP hOuSe--I totally had forgotten it was in Brussels; Delirium Tremens was one of the first "craft" beers that I liked; and I was so ecstatic to have happened upon it after my geography fail, I decided to reward my self with a beer or five (they have so many more kinds there than you can get in the States).

Take that, my own stupidity and poor planning!

Okay back to the main story.  So I made it back to the hostel, slept for a couple hours, and got back on the train to arrive in Amsterdam in the morning.  Just like I planned--right, guys?  I checked into my hostel there, dumped most of my things into a locker, and promptly headed right back off to Keukenhoff with my camera.  You guys, it was so. great.

Dutch-style gardens like I'd never seen before (though which admittedly, is not my favorite style),

and obviously, the best example in the world of that style at the best possible time of the year.  I spent all day there.

I got back, very nature-happy, and fell into a deep plant-and-also-not-sleeping-at-all-induced coma.  The next day, my flight back to Germany wasn't until like 3:00PM or so, so I got up early, packed my things, and checked out of my hostel with the intent of trying to see as much of Amsterdam as I could possibly cram into one long morning.

Well as it turns out, that's not very much before about 10:00AM because nothing is fucking open in Europe on the weekends until people maybe feel like opening their shops.  So after literally going to about ten restaurants shown on my Ulmon offline map app (super highly recommend for traveling internationally where you won't have service!), all of which were closed, I very hangrily walked down this small side street near the Red Light District looking for someone to please serve me some delicious fucking Dutch breakfast.  No dice.  So I turned back towards the main canal street, backpack, duffle bag, shopping bag, and camera case in tow, when this particularly homeless looking fellow walking his bike starts down the side street towards me.

We draw towards one another and it becomes clear that he's going to ask me for money, of which I have very little at this point, so I try to avoid eye contact, but instead, my eye catches the glint of something shiny and metallic.  It took my brain a few beats to actually process what was happening as I saw the knife, stared at the knife, and academically mused that that was a bad thing for me, but didn't react until he growled in equal parts unidentifiable European accent and stale alcohol-scented slurring, "Give me the money, give me the money," making small symbolic, but still upsetting, stabbing gestures as he spoke the words.  I believe I then said, "Oh.  Fuck!"

This man was a quite disheveled-appearing European white male with a beard, dreadlocks, and a Rasta cap who looked about in his 60s, but I'd wager was in actuality decades younger--like the DJ from Zoolander:

 PC:  twitter.com

but after about 20 years of hard drugs.

He repeated himself more impatiently, "Give me the money, give me the money!"  Now I wish I could tell you that I either used my old black belt karate skills and put his tourist preying ass in the dirt or sat down with him and talked about the difficulties of homelessness and assistance programs that may be available to him and we could both get a fucking sandwich from an open cafe, but I didn't quite do either of those things.  I was heavily laden with all my stuff--probably why I was targeted--so I couldn't really fight or bolt and I didn't have the wherewithal to talk the situation out, but what I did have was a shopping bag with a Rembrandt tulip-themed decorative tray for my mom in it, and my very surprised brain chose in that moment to swing that hard at this man's face.  The blow connected, and I just turned and ran as fast as I could with all my things.  I didn't turn around to see if he was chasing me or if I had knocked him down, I just ran and ran until I was on the other side of the canal.  At that point, I didn't see him, but I kept going for blocks and blocks until I was pretty sure he couldn't have seen where I'd gone.  I then did, in fact, check myself for stab wounds because I've seen enough movies to know that sometimes you don't know that they gotcha until the camera pans down and sees that you done got stuck.  Well I was all right, if a little shaken, but it was still only like 10:00AM and after catching my breath, I decided that I wouldn't let this ruin my day and I'd still try to see a bit more of the city before my flight.

It turns out that I had fled myself right near this open air market that I wanted to check out for a gift for my sister, so I took my unpunctured self right over there and had a walk around.  Tourist trap for sure, but I was able to pick up this very Dutch-, but what I hoped was also Stephanie-approved fashionable-(clothes are always a risky go with her), looking sweater for a good price, so I stuffed it into one of my bags and started heading out when, sonofabitch, the same would-be thief was angrily walking his bicycle, knife in hand, towards me, leering much more menacingly and cursing in Italian this time.

Now I think that there were other people in the alley from before, but there were DEFINITELY tons of people in this market at 10:30 in the morning.  I almost couldn't believe it this time, but was reassured that other people would not allow me to get stabbed and robbed before their very eyes.  I walked over to one of the vendors and said, "That man has a knife and is trying to rob me, can you please call the police?"  This spooked the thief a bit and he turned around.  The vendor seemed disappointingly unconcerned, but said that the thief wouldn't bother me while I was standing next to him and that police regularly patrol the market and should be around soon.

A few minutes later, another man, this one only slightly less homeless appearing than the thief, walked up to the two of us and said something to the effect of, "Was that other guy bothering you?  I am an undercover police officer and if you come with me now, we will go find that bad man and arrest him together!"

My reaction:
https://giphy.com/gifs/3o7btYetccbRYL4WVW/html5

Now, I'm already kicking myself for being naive and letting myself slip into a Mad-Eye Moody-disappointing state of not constant vigilance alone with all of my valuables on me due to my time in Seoul, but I'm not that dumb.  I bluntly declined this man's offer and stayed right where I was, thinking that maybe this guy was even in the alley with the thief earlier, though I can't remember for sure; all the while, Mr. Stabby himself was circling around the market, giving me a very unnerving stink eye.

Well soon enough, a real police officer showed up, looking decidedly not homeless in her uniform and on her Eurocop police bike (bicycle, not motorcycle, it's Amsterdam after all).  I explained the situation to her and she very coolly then questioned the other man that walked up, who notably changes his I-am-an-undercover-cop story to an I-saw-that-other-guy-bothering-this-Chinese-boy-and-wanted-to-help one.  I then pointed over to the thief, who saw me with a real police officer and finally scurried off in the other direction.  The police officer then offered to escort me safely back to the police station and asked me if I would file a formal report so they could follow up on the case.  I felt a fleeting twinge of disappointment since my precious few hours in Amsterdam were being whittled away by this brazen thief's tenacity, but I quickly obliged.

We made our way about a mile to the police station and I met with the detective, who is a very kindly older Dutch man, and after he interviews me about what happened, he hands me a copy of the police report, a flyer on tourist safety, and wishes me well, saying partingly, "Ve've been geyting a loot moore robberiesh lately, loot loot moore.  Aynd de teeng eesh, dey seym to toarget Chinayse toarists een peyrticoolar becoash dey cahrry loots of caysh oon dem."

On my way out of the station, I have a few thoughts:
1.)  Why does everyone here think I'm Chinese?
2.)  That's really messed up that they target Asians.  Also, I have like maybe 50 Euro on me right now, so...
3.)  What time is it?  Mmm 1:00--I don't know when the next time I'll be in Amsterdam is, I could probably still go see a few things before...
4.)  No.  Actually, fuck this.  Fuck Amsterdam.  I'm going to go sit in the airport and play Pokemon until my flight.

Well, that's my almost mugged in Europe story, but like any good story, it actually has a neat little epilogue to it as well, but first, a little more learning.

So though the Netherlands is a very good country for not getting murdered, it does in fact turn out to be a very bad one for not getting robbed.  According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in 2014, where South Korea was 39th of 74 evaluated countries (532 reported thefts per 100,000 people) and the USA was 13th (1,834; last was Burundi at 8), the fucking Netherlands was 2nd(!) at 3,480 reported thefts per 100,000 people.  And pretty shockingly to me, Sweden was 1st at 3,972!  Now the public health and policy sides of me would love to unpack why the Scandinavian nations, which rate so highly in most other quality of life metrics, including overall crime, have among the highest theft rates, but I realize this already is a loooot longer than any of us bargained for, so we'll pass on that one for now; I am guessing most of those thefts are against tourists of all kinds though.  However, I did look a bit into the somewhat haunting words of the detective, and it seems to be robustly, though anecdotally, a thing that European thieves are targeting Chinese (and probably therefore all Asian) tourists because they believe that they tend to be wealthy and carry a lot of cash with them.  You can read more about that in the article I linked above, but in general, whenever I travel anywhere (except east Asia, the child-safe, soft plastic ball pit of the tourist world), I keep my valuables in my front pockets with my hands on them almost constantly, divide up my cash into three or more envelopes distributed among my bags/person, try to look as little like a tourist as possible, and have



But back to the epilogue.

So about a month later, I get the following email:

Mr. M.A.

My name is Adri Verkerk and I'm a police-officer who is investigating your report of robbery. At your report you said somebody came to you on the Waterlooplein who said he was a policeman but showed ni ID. You thought you'de seen him earlier with the robber. Could you give me a further prescription of that man?

And could you give me a prescription of the bike the robber used? For example was it a mensbike or a womensbike, color and had it bags?

For your information: we have arrested a man in a other case who looks almost the same as your robber.

I hope you can answer my questions a quick as possible. 

Met vriendelijke groet

Adri Verkerk

Brigadier coördinator

Bureau Districtsrecherche District 1

team HIC-A

Initial thoughts:
1.)  Cool.
2.)  Waterlooplein heh.
3.)  That's really impressive that they not only maybe caught the guy, but they actually followed up with me about it, too--well done, Amsterdam Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal!

I thought that would be the end of it--a nice bit of closure knowing that they'd hopefully caught this man and that he wouldn't be able to rob any more Chinese tourists, but wait, there's more!

So I was super pumped to tell this story to my friends, and I told it to my sister too, but almost the moment I finished the story for her, she said, "You can never tell mom and dad about this, or they'll freak out."  This I knew, and I resolved to probably never tell them.  Now I know I wrote that whole thing in the intro to this story, but at the time of this writing, they actually already knew about this incident.

How, you ask?  Well, this shit comes FULL.  CIRCLE.

Over a year later, Brandan and I are traveling together from Ann Arbor to Albion to meet with the new Albion College president as representatives of recent alumni, and I ask that we stop in Jackson briefly to say hi to my parents.  We do so and after a brief visit, we get ready to continue on to Albion, and the rest of the scene plays out like this:

Mom:  "Oh, before you go, we got this letter for you from the Amsterdam Police Department--do you have any idea what it could be?"

Me:  https://giphy.com/gifs/140lcuYKYpVWGA/html5

[Mom hands me the letter, which they opened.  They always open my mail -_-]

Me:  (looking so puzzled, but knowing exactly what it is probably--it was a court summary saying they had tried the man they apprehended and released him since there wasn't enough evidence) "Oh.  Weird!  I have no idea why this was sent to me.  So weird."

Brandan:  (with a look of dawning comprehension) "OHHH!"

Me:  [fuck, Brandan, no] "What?"  ::attempts to make pointed eye contact with Brandan to indicate that I do not want to talk about Mr. Stabby today::

Brandan:  "IT'S FROM WHEN YOU WERE IN AMSTERDAM LAST YEAR!"

Mark:  [come on, help me out here, man] ::slowly, subtly steps on Brandan's foot. hard::

Brandan:  "ow.  YEAH, YOU KNOW, IN AMSTERDAM WHEN THAT GUY TRIED TO MUG YOU."

Mark:  [god damn it, Brandan, I swear to god...] ::elbows Brandan in the ribs admittedly less subtly::

Brandan:  (still not getting it at all and actually obviously very pleased with himself for figuring out why I got the letter)  "Dude!  YEAH YEAH THE GUY WITH THE KNIFE AND HE TRIED TO MUG YOU--THIS IS PROBABLY THE POLICE FOLLOWING UP ON IT!"

Mark:  ::WRESTLES BRANDAN TO THE GROUND AND STABS HIM REPEATEDLY IN THE LEFT CALF WITH A RUSTY FORK WHILE MY PARENTS LOOK ON IN HORROR.  YEAH, THAT'S FOR NOT GOING TO THE TULIP FESTIVAL WITH ME, MOTHERFUCKER!::

Now I wish I could tell you that I did that to punish him for spilling the beans so enthusiastically or that I sat down with him and discussed the difficulties of him getting back to Ann Arbor without a ride, but I didn't quite do either of those things since there were no forks in the room and Brandan is actually one of the best people in the world.  No, instead I was forced to come clean about it and for their part, my parents took it surprisingly well in stride and were more surprised by the relative danger that European cities posed compared to Asian ones and now I only get the extra worried hugs and advice when I travel to places other than Asia, like Vancouver, for recent example.

Anyway, I will write about another pretty ludicrous travel story in the next few days, hopefully, but this late night writing is more consequential on trips where I'm working full time, so goodnight, everyone; hope you enjoyed!

Mark

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

마크는 한국에 가요 부품2: 인턴이 앙갚음을 해요 Mark Goes to Korea Part 2: The Intern Strikes Back

Saturday, 5/28/2016

Recap:

Hello friends!  It's been a long time since my last (and I really thought it would be my last) post and a lot has happened since then:  Prince died, several of you got married, Ben picked Lauren, and the Avengers defeated Ultron and put a stop to his dastardly plan.  As for my life, I'm sure everyone reading this is pretty caught up on the basics, but I'll recap for context's sake and because it makes my life sound more interesting than it's actually been over the last eleven months of working all the time.

After returning from Korea for Match Day after my five weeks' stay, I then went to stay with Brandan in Tubingen, Germany where I would base my forays into Europe for the following few weeks.  

I went to Scotland with Brandan and Charisa,

Paris with Karin,

Barcelona and Andorra (it's a real place! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andorra) with Brandan, 

serendipitously stumbled across Delirium tap house in Brussels (a good story for another time), 

almost got shanked by the dirty Rasta DJ from Zoolander in Amsterdam during the Dutch Tulip festival (another good story for a different time, though the cat's out of the bag now thanks to one Brandan Walters), 

and shared Germany's best beer with two of America's best gentlemen in Munich at Andech's Abbey.  

I had never been to Europe before and always wanted to go, so thus passed my second big trip last year.  

Then to celebrate medical school graduation, a group from my class capped off the experience with a trip to Thailand and Hong Kong where we ate some of the best food I've ever tasted, dove the technicolor reefs of the Andaman Sea, and I was carded for admission to a 16 years and older videogame arcade.

And there, boys and girls and non-gender-binary individuals, are where my travels and my bank account ended.  Since then, I'm afraid that the only place I've traveled is through the dark, cold, and decidedly unscenic land of despair known as adulthood (read:  intern year of Med-Peds residency at U of M), where all the beds have MRSA, the food is only good on Saturdays (Kosmo bulgogi and Ginger Deli pho/bahn mi, amirite?), and the drinks are usually enjoyed alone, and sometimes in the shower when you're tired.  Okay, I'm being dramatic, but you get the picture:  Lots of work; Mark not good at adulting.

Anyway, after my seminal trip to South Korea last year, I had no concrete plans to come back, though I knew it would happen eventually.  We get a two-week vacation block during intern year though--mine in June--and as no other plans had crystallized by winter, I started toying with the idea of using it to go back to Korea.  I then received a well-timed email from InKAS (International Korean Adoptee Service)--one of those adoptee organizations from last time--with news that they were offering a summer trip to eight cities across Korea in, you guessed it, just about the exact window of my vacation in June; so I applied, was accepted, they paid for my plane ticket, and here I am.

Thus, this and any potential subsequent blog posts are really more bonus entries than anything, as I'm pretty much just here to visit friends and explore a bit more.  All major plot arcs from my original trip are either completed or suspended for now and this trip, much like any other poorly thought-out sequel, has less than half the budget of the original, will likely feature many of the same jokes, have inferior stories (seriously, how am I ever going to top naked jjimjilbang ER?  I'm not.), and many of the original characters will not be returning on this go-round :(.

That said, the trip is already off to a great start, I'll almost certainly be back again in the future, and I like the idea of maintaining this blog longitudinally, so welcome to Chapter 2!

Tattoo Story:

So after my very formative experience here last year, it was clear that Korea and a Korean identity were going to be a permanent part of my life moving forward, and somewhere along the line of my time here, I decided I wanted to do something as both a commemoration and a reminder of that deliberate and ongoing decision.

Ironically, I first got the idea from an InKAS member I met who had horrifyingly gotten her adoption case number tattooed on her forearm, in allusion to a concentration camp ID number tattooed on a Jewish prisoner during WW2.  Yeah, fucking yikes.

Now I had never been a tattoo person and was neither planning on or even curious about getting one before Korea, and as drastic and upsettingly negative as this person's tattoo was (you can read my post "An Adoption Story" from last year if you need more context for why some people legitimately feel this way), obviously the image of that tattoo stuck with me, but eventually, I thought more and more about co-opting it into a positive reminder.  I brought it up with Peter, Grace, and the rest of my housemates after ruminating on the idea for a while, and they were all very supportive.  There was only one problem:  tattoos are illegal and largely unavailable in Korea due to their association with the Korean mob, Japanese Yakuza, and other organized crime groups in East Asia.  So no tattoo in Korea for me. 

Nonetheless, this gave me some more time to think about exactly what I wanted and where I wanted it.  I ended up having to wait until after my Europe trip, but once I was back, I went to Name Brand Tattoo in Ann Arbor with Peter, who helped me pick a cool font and made sure I spelled my own name right, and Jenny, who mostly just wanted to see if I cried.  I decided on getting my Korean name "오진규" (Oh Jin Kyu) because it represents my Korean identity and serves as a reminder to continue learning more about Korean language and culture and I got it on my right bicep because I wanted it to be somewhere where I could easily see it, but also cover it up if I needed too.  (Now as it turns out, scrub sleeves are super short and fall adorably, drastically short of covering it up, but my residency program director thinks it's cool and it's permanently on my arm there forever, so tough shit, workplace professionalism.)  Here is some photodocumentation from Jenny's secret facebook album.

Let's be honest the shaving of arm hairs was 99% formality for tattoo artist Nick.

"Are you crying yet?" - supportive friend Jenny

And the finished product in all of its angry, semi-painful-but-not-crying, definitely not in fact hidden  by most short sleeves, not mispelled glory.

Now I didn't tell my family about this until it was already done, mostly just because I didn't think to, so I, in my infinite wisdom, chose to call them up the night before they were going to come up to Ann Arbor for the Auscultations a cappella Spring Concert and tell them, "Hey, by the way, I have pretty big news to tell you when you come up tomorrow--I've been thinking about it for a while and I'm not sure how you're going to react to it bye!"  At the time, that seemed like a completely reasonable way to preface this news, but as it turns out, that is incorrect.  So Stephanie called me back about fifteen minutes later slightly panicked and said, "Mark, what did you do!?  Mom and dad said you did something, but you won't tell them what it is--they are freaking out!"  I told them not to worry about it and that I would see them the next day at the concert.

Now I had anticipated their reactions and guessed that my mom would love it, my sister would look at it really closely for a few seconds, say "Ooooo," and then continue on living her life, and I thought my dad might be kind of mad about it, but I wasn't sure.  To commute their suffering, as soon as they showed up at the concert the next day, I told them right away that I got a tattoo and showed them and I was right about my mom and sister's reactions, but pretty off about my dad's.  Because, you see, shortly after this big reveal and a couple more spell checks later, my dad did this:

It's my and Stephanie's Korean names with a large script C (for Cheryl) around them, of my dad's own design.  It actually says "bravest cheese, yes we go," but don't tell him that--jkjk.

And then a few months after that, he did this:

to celebrate his Polish heritage and in remembrance of my grandfather Ralph Sr., who passed away last year.

And THEN, he did this:

 

Okay not really, but I'm keeping it in mind--the man is hard to shop for at Christmas time.  But let's go back for a second and talk about what my parents, in their stress-plosion of parental anxiety sparked off my by ambiguous and poorly thought-out comment, thought that I had actually done, and more importantly, what this might reveal about their innermost perceptions of their son.

Me:  "So what did you guys think I did yesterday before I told you?"

Mom:  "We didn't know--I mostly thought that you had a new girlfriend or that you won an award or something."

Dad:  "I don't know; I was worried you dropped out of med school or something."

Steph:  "Yup, he was freaking out."

Mom:  "I tried to tell your father that you--"

Steph:  "--Dad thought you were going to become a priest!"

End scene.

귀향 Homecoming

Tuesday, 3/17/2015

Very sorry for the really long delay--things have been hectic and I wanted to make sure I didn't half-ass this final post, but I've put a lot of thought into it and I hope you enjoy :)

Before the main post are a couple of ideas I wanted to do, but didn't fit in to previous posts.

한국 맥주  Korean Beer:
With all the shit I've given Korean beer so far--terrible, terrible, cheap, terrible Korean beer--perhaps you're wondering if that abuse is truly deserved.  I've come a long way from force feeding myself Keystone Light and PBR in pursuit of developing a taste for beer in college, and now feel that, thanks in great part to Franz, Colin, and Gruner, I now have enough expertise to answer this question.  In order to do this, I conducted a tasting of all of the major Korean beer brands, for science; here are my findings:

Kloud:  The first beer I had in Korea, Kloud gets things started off strong by making the bold, fairly defensive claim that it is, in fact, 100% real beer and then invites you to enjoy its foam.  It has a vague aroma of potato salad (no bullshit) and tastes of stale Sam Adams diluted by half with after-notes of piss diluted by half.

modernseoul.org  Believe it or not, I didn't take this picture and it is supposedly a professional shot.

Cass Fresh:  In spite of sounding like a rapper name some douche that went to your high school made up for himself, Cass Fresh is perhaps the most popular Korean beer.  My friend Adam prefers Cass to the other Korean beers, which is a little like picking your favorite Nicholas Cage movie.  Mine is The Rock.

Cass has a distinctively Miller Lite-y nose, particle board notes, and a carbonated water body.  Its taste was significantly improved with the addition of several measures of soju.

OB:  I swear to god this is the exact same beer as Cass.

exploringkorea.com

Hite:  This one was probably my favorite Korean beer, though unfortunately, I didn't discover it until my trip was almost over.  It actually smells like a decent, more god-fearing beer, which is a plus, and it tastes remarkably like what Hoegaarden would taste like if you watered it down and put a little bit of handsoap in it, which is pretty damn good considering the bar we've set here.  I later detected an aftertaste of my own tears which had inevitably, after subjecting myself to so many Korean beers, fallen into my glass.

+=   

               stockngo.com                         onlinecashandcarry.co.uk                   socalbev.com

Wednesday, 3/18/2015

인그리스 Engrish:

Not that I'm in any position to poke fun, given my novice Korean skills, but by far one of the most entertaining things about walking around the shopping areas in Korea and Taiwan, and a great source of fodder for snapchat, has been the spectacularly and inventively incorrect English translations on shop windows, subway ads, and printed clothing.  I've amassed quite a collection of pictures of these "Engrish" mistranslations during my time there, so here they are broken up into arbitrary categories of my creation for your viewing pleasure.

The Google Translate:  By far the most common type of Engrish, the Google Translate type was clearly and unabashedly arrived at through the use of Korean-to-English Google Translate or other similar online translating tool.

Taiwan's Shilin night market gets us started with an archetypal example.

Even Korean national parks are not immune to the seductive allure of Google Translate.

Nor is their public transportation system.

And finally, this doozie.

The So Close, yet So Far:  This heartbreaking type of Engrish overcame a difficult childhood, found its passion on the school track team, made it out of the gate, past all of its competitors, and sprinted down the final stretch with self-assured abandon, only to realize with horror that, in the aftermath of its exertion, it had lost all bowel control and shat itself in front of everyone at the finish line.  Everything is right; everything, except one small, deal-breaking error that, much like the popular Korean bar food 곱창 kopchang being inconveniently made out of cow rectum, renders it an utter (udder? heh) failure.

Someone should tell them...

-->

Good thing these aren't permanent.

Nailed it.

The Carpet Bomber:  Much like a short essay test that you didn't adequately prepare for, sometimes it feels like the best way to go is just to write as much as you possibly can and hope that it contains all of the necessary pieces, even if there is some extraneous information contained as well.  Well a lot of Engrish translations tried just that, going full Jackson Pollack and just flinging as many English words out there as they could, hoping for the best.

For $10, how can you say no?

I don't trust it...

I actually bought this shirt in Taipei, in no small part because their slogan was so catchy and relevant to my life; it kind of reminds me of a blackout drunk Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The Super Awesome Excite Okeydokey!:  A type of Engrish that seems to me to be somewhat unique to East Asian countries, the Super Awesome Excite Okeydokey! substitutes such frills as accurate grammar, syntax, and word choice for a word vomit hurricane of exclamatory, cocaine-addled, cotton candy-flavored, school spirit-y technicolor explosion of adjectives.

It's like if Lisa Frank tanked it in the folder and pencil case industry and found a temp job writing ads for toilet paper holders.

To be fair, their drinks were just as overly sweet and neon-colored as you'd expect.

The WTF:  Sometimes there is just no discernible rhyme or reason to how the translations were arrived at, what they were initially going for, or sometimes even if it's supposed to be English at all.

In addition to being a very strange and hopelessly niche-y concept from a business standpoint, I'm pretty sure this is false advertising as John Mayer is surely too busy being an unfortunately talented douche elsewhere in the world to be running a bar in Hongdae.

$19 though!

I actually really liked this one and found it very effective.

Yeah, I have no idea, dude.

Okay, no more silliness. 

Wednesday, 3/18/2015

귀향 Homecoming:

Though I started writing this post weeks ago, it's taken a while longer to finish it, first on the airplane somewhere over the starlit Pacific, and now sitting in my parents' study in Jackson at 3:00 AM (and finishing the final edits in Germany much later than intended).  That's certainly in part because I just ran out of time to blog while in Korea, but also significantly because this experience has given me so much to process that I couldn't hope to do it all in one sitting.

I approached this trip quite differently than I have other vacations.  Where usually it's more about the deliberate--the destinations, the itinerary, the must-sees--my trip to Korea was much more about the accidental, the coincidental, the potential.  Because in truth, I did not have many expectations since so much was unknown.  Would I find something that I was looking for?  Would I discover that my biological mother and brother are living somewhere in the city?  Would I even like it in Korea?  All these and more were common themes of preoccupation as I undertook my trip and all were answerable only with time.

"...that I believe spending time in the country where I was born and where my birth culture evolved might hold some very real and very important lessons for me.  In that spirit, my expectation is that expectations are a foolish exercise in futility.  I have no idea what I'll learn in these next several weeks, or in what form those lessons will come, I only know that it is an undertaking worth doing and that I feel almost like I have to do it."

That's from my first blog post, and since then, I've done my best to throw myself headfirst into Korea:  to read, converse, and listen; to travel but also put down roots; to meet new people and look at myself differently; to eat and drink; to eat and drink some more; to try; to dare; to fill five weeks so fucking full that they stretch and burst in an explosion of a thousand colors, sounds, and smells.

The last five weeks were truly amazing and I will never forget them (except for the parts that I never remembered in the first place--don't worry, not that many, dad).  It wasn't an awesome trip in the way Hawaii is an awesome trip though; it runs much deeper, much more significantly than that, and the full complement of reasons why is difficult to articulate, but I can try.  As I've written here, I've been incredibly privileged to explore a beautiful country with a fascinating culture and a dynamic, storied history.  I've been lucky enough to get acquainted with a city, my birth city, that beats and pulses in neon and bass, pumping its trendy pop culture and cutting-edge technology across the world.  And most of all, I've been blessed to meet so many kind and interesting people, who more than anything else, have colored my experience here.  All of this together has woven an incredibly novel and formative experience out of love, adventure, and the unshakable, intangible, bone-deep feeling of the impossibly familiar which elevates the whole experience beyond the mere sum of its parts--that somehow I am connected subtly but irrevocably to a place that I could not remember, but now will never forget.

Now don't get me wrong, there are plenty of bad things about Korea too, and I have not missed them by looking only through rose-colored glasses (in fact, I'd be happy to tell you about them), but at the moment, I am feeling far too positively to do that here.

As only someone who's been in school forever, trying to stave off the real world as long as possible, can appreciate (I'm in 21st grade now), I have learned so much on this trip.  From reading up on history and chatting with Peter, who is an encyclopedia of all things Korean, to wandering around with only my ear buds and a chance to stumble upon something unexpected and thrilling, one of the major reasons this trip has been so engaging at such a deep level is because I have just constantly been learning new things--about Korea, about myself, about everyone.  For instance, I learned that I could get LASIK eye surgery for just $700 or double eyelid surgery for $50, that I can be trusted to not lose a scarf for five weeks, that Koreans love corn-flavored things, and I can't hold my alcohol like I used to (now I can again though--practice makes perfect).  I've also learned that until recently, I've never really taken a proper look at my racial identity or tried to understand it, and that it's not an end-all or a critical missing piece for me as it is for some, but it is still very important, bringing the person that I am into sharper focus and adding a very important dimension to how I see myself.

This blog itself has also been invaluable in helping me to sift through all of these experiences and feelings, as many thoughts have clicked into place in the small hours when night blends imperceptibly into morning, trying to find the right way to word something on here or perusing Mean Girls gifs to paste in.  And in that way, this blog has become about more than just Korea for me, and my time in Korea has become more than a search for connection with my birth culture.  It is capstone experience, a shouted challenge to myself, and an exclamation point to the many years of school that have crescendo-ed to this final semester and my recent residency match at U of M Internal Medicine and Pediatrics.

The realization of my adoptee identity, the acute awareness of the impending residency years, and the many nights spent dissecting and reworking it all have laid things out much more plainly that I've done in years.  These last five years have been busy, challenging, usually enjoyable, but never ideal for developing healthily as an individual, and with hindsight, I see that in the chaos, I may have lost sight of some of the better parts of myself and made several lapses into carelessness.  To name a few, I tend to overestimate my abilities and what I am entitled to, I take things too personally, and even though I'm approaching my 27th birthday (28th in Korea) I have an almost debilitating case of Peter Pan syndrome.  Yet, I have also gained many new insights, as these years have taught me things about compassion, social justice, relationships, and the commonalities of the human experience that I hope and believe will shape and inform my future as a doctor and a person for the rest of my life in immeasurably important ways (M3s that want to use that for your personal statements, I'm charging $20 royalties).  I suppose all of this must have been percolating for some time, but I believe that this Korean experience, perhaps unwittingly, has been the key, and in that sense, I left home five weeks ago to go to Korea for the first time, not knowing what I'd find, and came back with a lot more than a much cooler haircut and bottle of fancy Korean liquor from Mr. Goo (which I'm pretty sure cost him a not insignificant chunk of the rent I had just paid him).

This is not the end for me and Korea.  A new part of me discovered electrified, invigorated consciousness in the wooded hills and busy streets of Seoul and it saw me off with a smile and expectation of my return at Inchon airport.  I will be back, regularly I hope, though I think the ship has sailed on the opportunity to live there for more than a few weeks at a time.  I fully intend to improve my Korean language skills and continue to learn more about Korean culture, and if I have children, I want them to grow up with Korean culture as a part of their lives.  After 26 years, this part of me is truly awake.

It's funny how when you go looking for one thing, you often end up finding something else.  Going into this trip, I knew one of the main things I was going to try to do was find my biological family if they were still in Seoul.  How could I not?  It wasn't a compulsion propelled by a need to know or even the same esoteric allure that Korean culture in general seems to have on me, but if I was back for the first time ever, it was something I was damn well going to look into.

I didn't find them, though.  I know, it would have been a great story to blog about, a poetically just finale even, but it didn't work out that way.  My biological mother left a fake name with the agency at the time I was put up for adoption--a common practice to avoid social stigma and/or the potential complications reunion in the future; that was her choice.  However, Korean Social Service did find a woman who utilized their services with the same birthday as my biological mother, and they contacted her to let her know I was looking.  She might now know that I was in Korea asking after her and can contact KSS if she decides she would like to be in contact; that too is her choice; however, they have not heard back yet.  That's okay though and if it happens, it happens.  I am at peace with the matter.

What I was able to do was to visit the Korean Social Services campus, and it was there that I found some other things that I wasn't necessarily looking for.

Peter and I arrived at Korean Social Service on Friday, 3/6.

Since its founding in 1964, for over half a century KSS must have watched the city erupt and blossom out of the rubble left by the Korean War, tucked away almost over the horizon at the northernmost edge of the city.

As I entered the grounds, there were no flashbacks, no beckoning sense of familiarity tugging just behind my stomach, just the surety that this place had known the significance of many life changing decisions.  And it had, as KSS has placed over 20,000 children in need of adoption over the years.

We were then met by 김춘히 Kim Choon-Hee, the kind social worker who not only handled my post-adoption correspondence over the past few months, but also started work at KSS in 1976, and so was on staff during my and Stephanie's adoptions.

She gave us a tour of the premises and to my surprise, informed me that I spent ten of my earliest days in this building after I was discharged from the hospital and before I was set up with an interim foster family.

Though a year and half apart, Stephanie and I must have slept in these bassinets a long time ago.

Ms. Kim then showed me my file, which is kept forever in the vaults of KSS, though I was allowed to look through it at my leisure there.  I had most of the paperwork ahead of time:  my discharge summary from the hospital; the initial relinquishment document which described my biological mother as a pretty, young, fair-complected woman; and my original intake form which described me as "a good-looking baby boy with well-shaped features and sparkling eyes (clearly not the most accurate bookkeeping, but oh well)."  It also contained some things I hadn't seen before:  the correspondences from the Michigan social worker conducting the ongoing evaluation of the new adoption once I had arrived in Jackson with my parents.  These consisted of written reports and pictures of my family and me, and looking through them gave me a strange sensation of third-personhood--peering into a part of the past that I have no conscious memory of, but which is steeped in the feeling of the familiarity of home.

(-_-)

"A good-looking baby boy with well-shaped features and sparkling eyes..."  Don't look at me though--quick, look at that tv!  Wow what an old tv!  Crazy right?! Ms. Kim told me she expected me to be fat when I came to meet her because, well because of pictures like this.  Go blue though.

As I flipped through these snapshots of my first year of life, I was not thinking about the situation from which I originated, but the one I was so fortunate to have found.  I unexpectedly became a bit emotional, overwhelmed by nostalgia, gratitude, and the full force of what the decision to adopt two Korean children has meant to me, my sister, my parents, and the rest of my family.

I may never know if there is someone else out there in that city of 10 million beating hearts who shares my nose, my laugh, my curiosity, or my inexplicable love of Liam Neeson movies.  The mystery of my biological origins may forever start and end in a manila envelope in a file cabinet at KSS, but I think I'm okay with that.  Because to me, more important than race or family pedigree could ever be is how I choose to define myself, and I choose to define myself first and foremost by the people that have given meaning to my life.  Those who have raised me, supported me to be and do whatever I dreamed up, shared a childhood with me, and snuck into my room to eat my snacks while I was sleeping.  Those who've taught me and mentored me, guided and challenged me.  Those who've laughed with me, drank with me, sang with me; those with whom I've fallen out and reconciled with, who've listened to me, who've trusted me.  Those whom I've dated, those who've hosted parties with me, played unhealthy amounts of video games with me, and stayed over talking so late it became tomorrow.  That is what, more than anything else in the world has, or ever will, define me, because I say it is.

Home is a concept caught somewhere between the literal and the figurative, the discrete and the infinite--places which bud and blossom with meaning and attachment over time only because of the people and experiences that have lived within them.  A childhood home, a college campus, a favorite vacation spot--we all have them--places like these become so imbued with soul-filling memories and deep personal significance that they become home, surely and irrevocably.

This trip has undoubtedly been a homecoming of sorts, and Seoul, a new home-away-from-home has been deeply significant, wildly fun, and inexpressibly formative, but now it's time for a proper homecoming.  I return with a significantly emptier bank account and a lot less hair, but an immeasurably fuller heart and head full of clarity.  I return now knowing happily that I will be living in Ann Arbor for another four years as I enter the next stage of this never-ending doctor business.  I return home, and if home means being around the people who remind me most of who I really am, who share with me joy, growth, purpose, and love, then be it Ann Arbor, Seoul, Jackson, or wherever, I hope to be home for a very long time.

Mark