Birth Search Part III

Thursday - 14 April 2011 - Day 52

For the time being, I believe this will be the final chapter of my birth search story. I had my most recent meeting at the Holt post-adoption center 1 day ago. This story did start out with surprise and success, with the ease of the process and the fairly quick locating of my birth-family, but now it seems we have reached a standstill.

As told in my second update, my birth-mother and oldest half-sister were located living together in the relatively same region in the outskirts of Masan where I was born. 2 telegrams were sent, signed for, and received. My birth-family and I have discovered and acknowledged the existence of each other, but there is no desire on their side to take this any further and meet in person for the time being.

Although this may seem like a sad way for this part of my Korea journey to end, I couldn't be happier. My positivity and possibly lack-of-care has carried me through. I feel complete and am happy that I know they are alive and well, albeit super-poor. They know I am alive and well and contact information was given to them, so the door is always open for a later reunion (which I don't yet know if I would even agree to). Who knows what the future holds, but I do believe everything that needs to be, will be.

------

As important and meaningful as this event should seem, there have been more important thoughts circling my head. These days I am consumed with thoughts and attempts to understand relinquishment rather than adoption and reunions.

I recently went to help out at Holt's Reception Center. It is a single floor of the same building that I work out of, and at the time, it was taking care of 11 orphans, all under 1 year old. It was a vey moving morning, possibly more moving that meeting my own birth parents. Certain things just fill my brain with experience and insight that I will never forget.

As I sat on the group, holding a 5 month old girl in my lap, rocking her to stay calm, not cry and fall asleep, I stared into her eyes are asked myself how anybody could abandon a baby. This wasn't even my child, and I didn't want to set her down for a second. It blew my mind. I had what I have come to refer as a moment of "Columbine shooting" realization.

After the Columbine shooting took place, I was in the movie theater watching Bowling for Columbine and jolly ole Michael Moore was showing real life clips of the young boys before the shooting. They were sitting at the lunch table talking about how much school sucked and how everybody hated them. Now I'm not here condoning shooting up schools, but at that moment I did feel sympathy for them. I thought to myself, "how much undeserved ridicule, teasing, and persecution would it take for me to reach the point of shooting up a school?" Really, please process that for a second. You think you're a good person now who would never even hurt another human being, now think about how much making-fun-of it would take to get you to lash out on your peers? How many people would have to call you ugly, or a loser, or a racial slur? Every single day of your academic life. It would take a lot, and those boys got it. They were laughed at everyday of their lives.

Anyways…back to the adoption center. I thought about that little girl, Yuna. How bad did life have to be for our birth-parents to relinquish us? Pretty bad. By realizing how precious a baby is, and how much I did not want to set her down for a moment, I came to understand how bad our birth families' lives and situations must have been. I have been told from my file that my birth-family suffered from extreme poverty. Most of the family members couldn't afford and didn't have time for anything past a elementary school education. So they were off to the factory floor and crop fields right away. But feeling in my heart how much I loved Yuna, and all the other babies, at that moment, I think I inversely experienced the extreme poverty my birth-family faced. The love for me was out balanced by the terrible living situations, and I now know it would take A LOT to relinquish a child. I hope people can understand this.

I am at peace with everything.

Relinquishment and adoption.

Thank you Korea.

Thank you Yuna.

Sneezes & Smelly Socks

Day 44 - Wednesday - 06 April 2011

I woke up this morning at 7:30am to the sound of my host brother puking his recently eaten ramen onto the living room floor. I've been sleeping in lately and skipping yoga because of a stiff bruised ankle. I thought now would be a good time to post about Korean etiquette and hygiene.

I'm not here to insult Korean people, their way is their way, and simply different than what I grew up with. They're not dirty people, and in many ways, cleaner than the average American. Keep in mind too, I live in a household with a young 12 year old boy, and I work at afterschool programs for lower-income, not well-off elementary school kids.

The first obvious thing I noticed, right away on my journeys through the streets and time on the subway, is that people don't say "excuse me" or "bless you" after sneezing, coughing, or farting; nor do they try to cover it up. Out of habit and tradition to my futbol times in America, I am accustomed to saying "salud" after hearing somebody sneeze. The Koreans look at me funny. Most of the time people just sneeze, cough or fart and pretend like it didn't happen. There's no reaction from the person who did it, the people around, and overall, it's just not as comical as it would be in America. For some reason, we love to laugh at regular bodily functions. One of the loudest and biggest laughfests I had in highschool was when the school librarian farted, and tried to cover it up with a cough. 3 tables of fellow students were trying to hold in our laughs.

Second, as I mentioned before, people don't try to cover up their coughs, sneezes, or farts. I have been coughed on, sneezed on, and sadly, farted on, by both people close to me and complete strangers out in public. Also, quite a few people have spit on me while they're talking. I try to back away from people who are having coughing or sneezing fits, and I don't get to upset. In the end there's a billion germs and bacteria in the air we breathe. But the thing that does annoy me, is that I've been yelled at for covering up my own sneezes and coughs. I tend to cough into my jacket, either right into the collar/where-the-hood-connects area or into the elbow-pit area. My host-mom yells at me all the time that I'm getting my sweatshirt or jacket dirty. She's right, but I think it's more about being courteous to others around me. Sacrificing my own sweatshirt as to not cough on everybody else seems like the right thing to me.

It's ironic to me, that there doesn't seem to be too much emphasis but on manners concerning spreading one's sneezes, coughs, and farts, yet I do see a crap-ton of people wearing the medical facemasks. I wonder if it is for germs, or just the non-human pollution and the yellowdust in the air.

Third, I tend to pay attention in public bathrooms if people wash their hands or not, especially in restaurants where I'm accustomed to the American signs that read, "Employees MUST wash their hands before returning to work." You don't see those signs here, and as far as Korean dudes go, the amount I see walk right past the sink, compared to the ones that do wash their hands, is significantly higher. Most of the time, I'm the only person in a public restroom washing my hands, and it is a burden, because very few places I've been have paper towels. So you have to use toilet paper, which rips up, or your own shirt. Meanwhile, while I'm washing my hands, there's typically 3-4 other dudes who just used the restroom, fixing their hair to make sure each piece is in place, then they walk right out.

Lastly, at most of the places I work at, you have to take your shoes off at the door. Sometimes there are complimentary slippers to use, and other times, you just walk around in your socks. There are smelly socks everywhere, including my own (which is worsened by my smelly ankle brace). It was hard to get used to, and I'm still struggling a little. Every time I teach, there is a wave of rancid foot smell rippling across the room, originating from the feet of these little kids. I don't think this is something unique to Korea; young kids have smelly feet in every country, especially after a day's worth of running around and playing. The only difference is that Koreans take off their shoes, exposing all the stench. It made me realize how life saving shoes are. They hold in the bad smells.

But in the end, even with these minor differences, I have nothing to complain about. Different place, different customs, and I'm happy to have the privilege of experiencing them.

Gender-bending

Day 34 - Sunday 27 March 2011

So apparently, Korea thinks I'm gay… Actually to be a little more specific, not necessarily gay (although those words have been used) but rather feminine. There have been enough random conversations where my feminineness has been brought up, that I think it is an appropriate time for gender-bending and homosexuality to get it's own post.

I really hate it that I always have to start every article with the same old damn disclaimers, but it really does seem necessary. People are always too ready to pounce on my thoughts. I don't think I'm God, and people should know everything I type are my own opinions and perspectives based on the interactions I have had in Korea. I realize, under some crazy low-probability coincidence, maybe the Koreans I hang out with are the only Koreans in the entire planet that think I'm gay. I'm not here to say what's right and what's wrong (although for the record, I am completely cool with anybody's varying sexual orientation), but rather just to spew out my mind and all the strange observations I've made during my journey.

It's interesting to hear the reasoning my Korean acquaintances (who are all married, full-grown adults) give concerning why they question my sexuality. And what's even more interesting is that a lot of what they say has some insight into Korean society and culture.

To start with, there's the obvious (yet ironic) issue of my physical appearance. I tend to have long hair, Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai and Ahn Junghwan being my main inspirations. I also have slightly gauged metal loop earrings, and I keep my face always shaved and smooth like a baby's bottom. I have come to terms with my appearance, and both Americans and Koreans have mistaken me for a girl before, from behind or the side. If I really cared, I could go back to a standard Carson Daly crew cut, remove my earrings, and grow a burley beard, but I choose not to. In addition to my face/head, my clothing style has been pointed out to be a source of my femininity. I dress fairly plainly. Nice, solid pair of jeans, nothing too fancy or expensive, a t-shirt with some cheesy picture or joke, and a soccer team hoodie or track jacket. According to a lot of the adult Koreans I talk to, this makes me look feminine and like a middle schooler. They say I should dress more stylish. Now I'm not here to judge Korean fashion but it's funny and ironic to me that dressing more like these guys (see pictures above) would make me look more heterosexual.

To each his own. So if this is Korea's ideal heterosexual, no questions needed, male, then so be it. I guess if dressing like a hybrid of a dude from a Wrangler's/Marlboro commercial and professional soccer player makes me feminine, then I'm staying feminine for the standards here. I'm sorry Korea, but I can't do skinny jeans, multi-layered tops, shoes without thick soles, and male-specific makeup. Nor can I cross my legs while sitting down. I should also note, that even seeing a bunch a dudes walking around wearing clothing like I just described, or looking like the dudes from Big Bang (pictured above), I have never made fun of the sexuality of any Koreans here, but they've let me know how they feel about me.

So the second reason is a more important topic to me. They say I must be a girl at heart because I communicate well with people, especially women. They say they've never met a person who listens to them as much as I do, and openly shares my thoughts in return. It's all true, that is how I am, but so where all the dudes I went to college with. We always had deep heart-to-heart, what is life, cigarette smoking breaks in between our studies. This really made me think about the family unit here in Korea. I haven't met every single married couple in Korea, but from what I've witnessed, the family unit is dead here (as compared to my American experiences). The dad's are never home. They work 8am to past midnight, 6 days a week. When they are home, they rarely are involved with any of the family activities, and never have any discussions besides family logistics, like bills and who needs the car. I also here the stories of the families that send the mother and children abroad to study, while the husband remains in Korea to work.

My working situation through the program I came to Korea through, gives me a lot of free time, and with that time I obviously have the upper hand on these working dads. They are doing the noble thing, working, earning money and providing for their family. I have nothing bad to say about them, but it has put me in a strange situation that my availability to be around, talk, go grocery shopping with all these mom's is something they've never experienced. Because I'm not a reserved, workaholic male, they say I must be gay. I can't say it enough, this phenomenon is nuts to me. I have been told numerous times by Koreans here, that I would make one awesome husband, and all I did was talk to them. And once again, because the ability to have conversations with an adult male was something they hadn't experienced in a long time, I must have a girl's personality deep at heart. There's no way an attentive, caring adult male exists anymore (their words, not mine).

I'm definitely more appreciative of the 9am-5pm work/school schedule in America. Compared to Korea, my family has nothing to complain about. I wish I could build on this more, but it's late and I want to sleep. There was a whole other part I was going to write about regarding my athletic ability, exerting myself on the football and soccer field, and yet that didn't gain me any heterosexual points among my Korean peers. Oh the cultural differences…so much left to learn!

Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese & Koreans

Wednesday - 23 March 2011

Day 30

I was sitting in the Holt Post-Adoption Center's waiting room this afternoon waiting for my bosses to finish up some work before we headed to the Holt Homecoming Program Welcoming (for some)/Going Away (for others) Party. There was a decent sized array of adoption books and magazines pilled under the coffee table and I decided to browse through some of it. I came across a compilation of pieces written by the first big wave of Korean Adoptees to America. It was published in 1990 out of the Twin Cities. There was one poem in particular that caught my eye and gave me something to think about the rest of the day.

The poem was about the terribleness and agony brought about from people calling Korean adoptees Chinese, Japanese, or Taiwanese. This is a fairly common topic. I hear it all the time and I've even seen it written on shirts. It's also something not only adoptees face, but also Korean Americans.

I understand how annoying it can be to be mistaken for the different flavors of East Asian, but to put things bluntly, I think we can all stop crying about it. Insert World's Smallest Violin cliché. Of all the forms of discrimination and racism we face, I really don't think this is bad. Here's a couple talking points of my reasoning:

First of all, by being offended by being mistaken for Chinese, Japanese, or Taiwanese, it seems like we're implying those are lower ethnicities/nationalities than Korean. People call me Japanese all the time, but after being exposed to Japan's rich culture through Japanese-Hawaiians, I take it as a compliment. Nor would I mind being called Chinese or Taiwanese.

Second, lets face it, we look similar to a certain extent. There are similarities between the big 4 East Asian peoples, but we also do have our differences. To the untrained eye, and even sometimes the trained eye, it's hard to correctly identify all Asian people to their country of origin. Throughout my years in college, I was deeply exposed to a diverse international soccer (football, futebol, calcio) crowd. I mistook Austrians for Germans, Paraguayans for Uruguayans, Puerto Ricans for Mexicans, Brasilians for Portuguese, Tanzanians for Nigerians, etc etc etc and all the vice versa's. In all those meetings and getting to know one another, not one of them cared once. They didn't explode on me because I incorrectly identified their accent, or clothing style. It was a common mistake, they knew I was asking out of curiosity and interest in their hometown, culture, and what teams they supported. They corrected me, we chatted, and moved on with life.

If some uber-racist American is approaching you in a belligerent manner or making stereo-typical assumptions, and wants to hate you for being Japanese, Korean, Chinese, or Taiwanese…or simply hate you regardless of which of the 4 you are, then that’s a crappy situation. That's a bad dude, and he can rot in Hell. But for all the people simply acting out of curiosity and genuine interest in learning more to improve their ignorance about another culture, it's time not be so sensitive. Grow up adoptee community!

I can recall a perfect example of when being overly-sensitive to this sort of situation went bad. I was with a group of adoptees, leaving a grocery store and heading to a Taco Bell across the large parking lot. We were in a primarily white town, and probably 95% of the people shopping and wandering the streets were all white. A man leaving the store, who looked like a hippie version of George Lucas, was walking beside us and asked if we were Chinese. One of the adoptees (I should note, a 19 yr old male adult) exploded at this dude. "WHY DO YOU THINK WE'RE CHINESE…YOU'RE A RACIST…BLAH BLAH BLAH!!!" I told my acquaintance, who I'll just nickname Frank for now, to calm down but he was too upset with this guy. The irony is Frank was making the scene, not the stranger. I told Frank to take a walk and I calmly started apologizing to this guy. The guy was chill and we started talking. He was white, but his wife was Chinese-American, who he had bi-racial babies with, and because of his mixed family, he was very involved with the small Chinese Christian Community in the Eugene-Portland area. He had recently went on a mission trip to China and had the experience of his life. Obviously this connection to Chinese culture, and the fact that he rarely saw Asians in the area, prompted him to as if we were Chinese. Kudos to him. Good guy. This was such a Dave Chappelle "When keeping it real goes wrong" situation.

I'm not the Martin Luther King Jr. of adoptees, but I think I have a fair grasp on what is reasonable to get upset over. I really don't like people who are so sensitive to adoption/racial issues, that their attitude backfires and they are the ones trying to conjure up a racist situation out of a non-racist one.

So to that poem, I say, you're crying over spilt milk. Yes it is slightly annoying that people think we're Chinese, but I doubt you can tell me if a white American is German, English, Irish, Danish, Dutch, etc. People are going to continue to mistake us, but the good people out there just want to learn, so educate them.

My Host-Family's Ties to Adoption

Day 13 - Sunday 06 March 2011

Today I learned my host-family's connection with adoption. Considering the statistics, that over 100,000 children have been adopted in the last ~50 years from Korea, making up 10% of the Korean-American population, it was no surprise to me to find that the people I would meet here had some sort of ties to adoption. And of course there was also the fact that my host-family volunteers their household for Holt's post-adoption services. The real surprise was that they were willing to share and talk about their stories.

My host-mom grew up in fairly hard times (wikipedia Korean's post-war history), and her mother rented out one of the rooms in their house/apt. My host-mom was only a teenager at the time, when one particular guest rented their empty room. It was a young Korean woman in her late teens who had relations with an African-American military man. She had 2 babies, and abandoned them and went back to America, without a look back. I could care less what this guy's race was, but I note the color of his skin to point out the fact that back in the day (and perhaps today) half Koreans-half blacks had a very hard time growing up in Korean society. So the mother was too young and poor to take care of the children on her own. She soon abandoned them as well and my host-mom's mom (host-granny) took care of them for a while, until an adoption agency stepped in and found a family for them in America. Witnessing these sad events left my host-mom with a lot to digest and think about. She had mixed feelings about American soldiers, the adoption process, the young Korean birth mothers, etc. But regardless of how she felt, it left her connected and curious to learn more about adoption.

The second story, came from the mother of one of my students for my private tutoring. For fun, and in a relaxed fashion of exposing kids to English, every Friday afternoon I get to teach/hangout with host-bro and 4 of his school friends, while all the moms eat food, drink and talk. They are all family friends of one another. One of the moms told me that her parents also had a hard time while she was young. She was one of many children, and her mom actually took her to an orphanage to drop her off 5 times, but in the end couldn't go through with it. So she was never adopted, but knows the story about how she could have been. She talked about how she understood her family's situation and isn't for or against adoption. If it would have happened to her, then that would be that, and she would make the most of her life. The point that she wanted to stress to me was that adoption was definitely an option hidden in the back of every Korean parent's mind. It was hard times and everybody knew how and where they could relinquish a child. Anybody who plays ignorant to the fact that all this was going on behind the scenes, without being talked about publicly, is a liar.

I think adoption in the 60s-90s in Korea, must have been like the Jersey Shore television show in present day America. Everybody knows about it and heard the premise, but they aren't exactly happy that it's taking place, especially in their own country. The ever-present secret shame of a nation.

You won't hear too many Koreans (or anybody from any country for that matter) openly talking about adoption-related things that might bring shame or embarrassment to their family, but I'm glad these people were willing to share. Even though Korea and Koreans seem to not talk about this sensitive subject (perhaps like Germans and the Holocaust) everybody knows it happened and was a huge part of Korean life and society. I bet, in some 6-degrees-to-Kevin Bacon-way, everybody has a connection to adoption/relinquishment in this country. You can't relinquish that many babies and have no ties whatsoever.

Clothing Prices

Day 16

I met up with an old college friend today. Second Korean-native friend that I met in the US that I have had the opportunity to reconnect with here. At first it seems strange, to be meeting in their turf, yet once I'm with old friends, I completely forget about where I am, proving once again people are much more important than environment. I could have fun with friends out in the deserts of New Mexico.

We went shopping at all the big name stores, and I've come to realize that I'm incapable of buying anything here in Seoul. I have the money to, but just can't do it. Everything here is ridiculously overpriced, which is weird to me, because it's all made in some part of Asia. Before I came here, I expected everything to be significantly cheaper. I went to the Nike store, and I was at first very happy that they had a huge soccer selection. But upon looking at the price tags, my mood dropped. The N98 World Cup track jacket line (which were all worn at the 2010 WC) goes for about $50 - $70 per jacket in America. Here they're about 125,000 - 175,000 Korean won, which is roughly $112 - $167. Not worth it. I'll save all my money and just go on a shopping spree once I get back home. Strangely, the only item that seems relatively the same in price here and in the States, is soccer cleats. I've been drooling over the CTR360 II's for a couple months now.

There is however, very cheap rip-off brand clothing. We went to a couple of the more shady stores and you can find a lot of hilarious clothing. There was some Calvin Homme, Fitch (yep, just Fitch), and a crap-ton of Victoria's Secret Pink styled sweat pants and sweatshirts. But in the end, I went home empty handed. There conversations and reminiscing about old college days was more than enough for me.

Birth Search II

Day 16 - 12:25pm

With all the birth search happenings that have been taking place in my life recently, I have started to once again think in the method of the great John Raible, think about why we think the way we think. I have remained pretty calm and careless about this whole birth search ordeal and am still in that state as I type this. Yet, through emails, readings of my blog, and conversations in person, many of my family and friends have talked about how it must be a huge emotional event of my life. I couldn't feel any more oppositely. I acknowledge that finding one's birth parents in itself is a huge occasion, but that doesn't mean my emotions must reflect this, especially in sadness and negativity. So here's a look into the mind and heart of Chris Gray.

Disclaimer: There are my opinions and my thought processes. For some reason people just love to argue with me. Stop reading so deeply and drawing wrong conclusions from my words. I don't think anything I say or do or feel is the right way to live. It's my way. I'm smart and mature enough to have seen and understand the full spectrum of how people feel, treat, and deal with adoption, especially adoptees themselves. So if you find yourself feeling nowhere remotely close to the way I do, cheers to you. It's A-Okay.

I have never had loyalty, respect, or care for my birth family. This doesn't mean I actively hated them, but rather they were out of sight, out of mind. I just didn't think about them ever or factor them into my life. For anybody who can't comprehend that idea, believing that birth parents are way to important to forget about, I have this analogy. How many people think about the factor workers who made their car? How many people think about the tree that was cut down to make their house and paper. And of course, how many people think about the cow that died so they could enjoy the burger sitting on the table in front of them? Our society has dismissed and forgot about the makers and origins of almost everything else that we use in our lives. It wasn't to hard for me to not care about the womb I came from. Everybody tells me, "But Chris, they gave you life…" And that just doesn't mean anything to me. I appreciate that I'm alive, but nothing more. I'm not bitter. I'm at peace. It is what it is.

I have measured my life in the relationships and experiences that I have shared with people. So of course, the people who have been with me for the last 24 years mean a lot more than the ones who were with me for 1 day (+9 months if you want to get technical). If in some bizarre Holocaust movie situation, Nazis were holding guns to both my birth family and adoptive family, telling me I must choose which one will live and which one will die; I would choose my adoptive family in a heartbeat (to live of course). Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy, no remorse. Obviously, I hope nobody dies, so that's probably too extreme of an example, but I just want to express how strong my loyalty and connection with my adoptive family is. Maybe it could be the cliché scene where I'm holding each family in one arm at the edge of the cliff. I have to let go of one so I can use both arms for the other. Otherwise, we all die.

I feel that too often in movies and the rest of the media, there always seems to be this unnecessary loyalty to the birth family. Take the Zorro reboot with Antonio Banderas for example. Catherine Zeta Jones is kidnapped as a child and raised by the enemy. 20+ years later she returns to the Californian territories and in a split second, develops complete loyalty to her birth father. I don’t think 20+ years of being raised by a completely different person could be so easily erased. The media loves to romanticize birth family reunions. It's not like that in reality. Of all movies, I'd have to say I was very happy with the adoption/family message presented in Meet Joe Dirt. David Spade spent his whole life thinking about his birth family and finally decides to go on a pilgrimage to find them. But at the end he realizes his true family were the friends that were with him during his journey to find his birth family. They were the ones that were with him and cared about him the whole time.

Before I even came to Korea, I never had any intention of starting a birth search. I didn't care that much, but I wasn't opposed. Statemate, standstill, just like most of my other feelings. But when Holt decided to offer me their services, I wasn't going to refuse. I go with the flow. A young happy-go-lucky man, seeing where the world takes him. I factored my birth family out of my life long ago, so anything that may come, is only a bonus. "Ooo! Piece of candy!" "Ooo! Piece of candy!"

So now for the new news. The Korean Police Department contacted me via Holt and my birth mother is alive. They've located her and Holt will be sending her a letter if I want them to. I agreed and we'll see what comes of it. But I still have yet to have any emotional response to any of this. It just isn't that big of a priority of my life.

In conclusion, I just want to share the less caring, happy, positive, make the most with what you have, view of adoption. I've seen so many adoptees painfully stress and worry over the futility in trying a birth search, that they miss out on developing relationships with the people you have in your life. I recommend, not missing out on life, cause you're too busy searching for some fantasy life that could have been in Korea. Life is what it is…and what we make of it. Insert more cliché statements here.