Describe your background.
My mother is 100% Korean and born in South Korea and my father is Caucasian. I was born in the U.S. in the state of Georgia.
What issues going on in the world, and/or in the Korean American / Asian American community affect you the most?
The most pressing and current issue in the world is the ISIS crisis going on the Middle East. I was also very sad to read about the ferry incident and I feel so sorry for the families of the children. I spend most of my time trying not to focus on the negative news in the world (I want to be aware but not inundated) so I want to include something positive that affects me as well. I am really happy to see that Korean culture is getting more attention these days on the national level. We see shows on TV featuring food truck competitions with Korean competitors making some great Korean Fusion food as well as the hit song “Gangnam Style” and now movies and series featuring Korean actors like Sandra Oh and Steven Yeun are becoming popular and more mainstream. I am secretly hoping that kimchi might become a household condiment in the next few years!
What does your typical day consist of?
0545 – Wake up and wake up the kids for school Mon-Fri
0550 – Make coffee with my french press
0600 – 0730 – Help the kids get ready for school, pack lunches, get breakfast for the kids, talk about their day and interests while multitasking, comb and style my daughter’s hair and walk the kids to school and walk back home
0730 – Eat breakfast and feed the baby his breakfast
0815 – Write blog posts on my computer in the home office until my husband has to get ready for work at 11AM
1100 – Finish up with writing and join my husband and son for some quality time before hubby goes off to work
1215 – Lunch time for the me and the baby
1300 – Playtime on the floor with the baby who is 8 months old
1430 – Go and pick up the older kids from school
1500 – Talk about their day at school, get homework started and spend some time with all the kids
1600 – Start making dinner while the older kids do their chores and get ready for school tomorrow
1700 – Sit down to eat dinner with the kids
1745 – Send the older kids off to take their baths for the evening and get ready for bed
1830 – We watch a little TV in our pajamas and wind down for the day
1930 – The older kids go to bed (early since school starts early and they get up early)
1945 – 2200 The baby and I watch TV and play while waiting for daddy to get home from work
2200 – 2230 Hubby and I talk about our day and get ready to put the baby to bed (he gets naps all throughout the day whenever he is sleepy)
2230 – 0545 Sleep without interruption. We are fortunate that our baby sleeps with us in our bed and sleeps all night.
If someone made a movie of your life, what genre would it be? (e.g. Drama, comedy, action, sci-fi, horror, etc.)
A movie of my life would be a Korean drama as it has all the elements to make a great drama, such as personal struggle for main characters, a hero and/or heroine, a sad back story to tug at your heart, funny friends to lighten things up, family expectations that put pressure on me to decide if I should obey my elders or follow my heart and a happy ending with a really romantic love story that blossoms and develops in each episode!
If you had to describe yourself using three words, they would beā¦
Optimistic, hopeful and ambitious
If you could travel to any place in the world, where would it be and why?
I would travel to Seoul, Korea and do a tour of South Korea and we can’t forget Jejudo Island this time around! I lived in Anjongri for one summer in 2002 and it was the best vacation of my life. I really took the opportunity to take in as much as I could in that short 4 month time period but since I was not able to travel alone due to security issues I was not able to venture out and see the countryside or go to Jeju Island. Keep in mind that things were a bit unstable right after 9/11/01. I want to go back soon to see more of the history and tradition of Korea. As crazy as it sounds, being there made me feel more connected to my ancestors and I came back to the states with a greater appreciation for the culture and more interest in the traditions. I never quite understood why my mother had what I believed to be some insane habits or beliefs until I witnessed the entirely different culture first hand for myself. I now understand why and how these habits and beliefs formed so I don’t resent her for them now. I find myself missing the open markets, street vendors and smells of Korea every summer since I left. I left at the beginning of monsoon season in Korea and when it starts to rain suddenly and it feels very cool outside then it reminds me of Mother Korea and makes my heart long to be back. š
If you had to evacuate your house immediately, what is the one thing you would grab on the way out?
My children first and foremost and then my cell phone since it is my lifeline. I can access all of my information from it and I cannot function without my calendar, contacts list and alarm clock.
What is your greatest regret?
My greatest regret is that I was not able to live in Korea longer than the four months that I was there. I truly enjoyed everything from the food, shopping and the culture and the people that I met there. I lived in a small ville but it was so interesting just to sit in my third floor apartment and people watch with the windows open. The streets were busy and people were always bustling around. I was also completely amazed at how Koreans can drive! We lived on a one way street and no more than one car could fit down the alleyway BUT somehow big trucks and cars could pass each other down this narrow little street! I hope to dissolve this regret from my life when we take our family for a visit to Korea in the (hopefully) near future.
Tell us something that you are proud of AND what takes you out of your comfort zone. (I merged these into one question)
I am proud of my newly launched blog TheKoreanCouponer. It takes me way out of my comfort zone since the best writing comes from a place of complete transparency, vulnerability and high openness. I am an introvert and I love my privacy but I am also a freelance writer and life coach so it’s a bit of a double edged sword.
I have a deep desire to help people with my coaching but I also find it painful to open up and share my own experiences, especially the ones from my past and upbringing. This fear of vulnerability kept me from being serious about blogging until my husband truly encouraged me to follow my dream and passion. I have had some negative feedback but I learned so much about myself in the process and this is what I learned so far–their opinion of me really doesn’t change what I do or why and I realize that I don’t need the approval of anyone but myself.
I am a good person with a desire to help people and I find that hurting people tend to hurt anyone who crosses their path so I don’t take it as a personal attack. I also get really good feedback when people comment that they find the information useful and helpful since this was the end all goal when I started. I am very proud that I have accomplished what I set out to do.
Would you rather be rich or famous?
I would much rather prefer to be rich than famous. I like my privacy and I don’t know how well I would handle the media watching my every move and publicizing things like how I hold my chopsticks or commenting on what I ordered and ate a restaurant. I also don’t want my children exposed to that kind of negative media hounding so being famous is not something I wish for.
If I do happen to get famous then I would do everything within my power to keep my children safe and unexposed and I would be very quiet about my private life. I believe reality TV shows destroy relationships because everyone is a fly on the wall and there are more people willing to stir up trouble and drama than put out fires and keep the peace. Besides drama is what ups the ratings, right? That kind of strain becomes too much even for the most grounded and stable relationships.
What food do you absolutely HATE?
I try to be extremely open minded and try everything at least once BUT no matter how hard I try I simply cannot learn to like the taste of bologna. I know it’s an American staple and most people love it and there are so many ways to cook it but I hate the taste, smell and sight of it. I don’t care for foods laden with nitrates but I do love SPAM. I agree…this hate for bologna and love for SPAM is weird and I cannot give a logical explanation so I won’t bother trying to come up with a good excuse! I would go so far as to say that if the only food left on the planet was bologna and there was an endless supply of it and nothing else existed and I had to eat it to survive, then I would probably rather starve to death than to have to eat it everyday for the rest of my life. This is how strongly I detest bologna! It really bugs me the way we spell it too! I think it should be spelled baloney. But apparently no one asked me when they invented it, named it and decided on it’s spelling. Haha!
Tell us about a vivid dream you have had.
I always dream insanely vivid dreams when I am pregnant and the last vivid dream I had was a doozey! (By the way I also dreamt crazy dreams when I quit smoking 6 years ago using the nicotine patch…those dreams were interfering with my sleep!)
I dreamed that my husband and I were on a road trip and our two older kids were with a family member so they weren’t with us in the car. We were driving a small compact car which is different from the SUVs that we drive now and in my dream I was pregnant with our son as I was in reality at the time. I dreamed that we had taken a trip to the midwest region of the US and were driving through mountains, canyons and winding cliffs. (I honestly don’t know if the roads or landscape look like this in reality since I’ve never been to the Midwest region but this was what it looked like in my dream.)
My husband was driving and he took a turn just a little too fast and we drove right off the road and were falling down a canyon. And I have no idea how far down this canyon goes but we were falling for a long time (like an hour or two) and it was getting darker and darker as we fell and I was yelling at him because I was so upset that we would never see our kids again and our baby would never be born since we were soon going to die either of impact or starvation since no one will know we fell off the cliff. It was so very deep and we kept falling and I felt so angry at my husband for being so careless since our impending death could have been prevented. I kept crying and my heart was truly broken because I would never see my babies again and I never said good-bye and I was literally bawling my eyes out when I woke up.
My husband did his best to hold and comfort me but I still get teary thinking about this dream. I do realize it’s just my unconscious mind telling me my worst fears and I always have fears when pregnant because I want my baby to be born healthy. I have not had anymore vivid dreams since he’s been born and I am so grateful that I normally do not dream in my sleep! I tend to try and change the outcome of my dreams while I am awake so that I don’t have recurrent dreams or nightmares. If you replay the details of your dream in your mind while you are awake and then decide on a happy outcome and visualize that happy outcome then you have changed the ending of your dream and your mind extends that memory and it is no longer painful. The dream no longer has power to invoke those feelings unless you replay the undesired outcome over and over again.
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