We had only spent about 8 hours in Korea before deciding to spend a month there. We had a long layover on our way home from South East Asia nine years ago. I have a special connection because I was adopted from Korea thirty one years ago. I could feel myself getting anxious just thinking about returning. We decided to stay in an adoptee guesthouse through the same agency I was adopted from. When we arrived I was scared, nervous, and down right angry. The first few days were hard, very hard. Finally, I had come to a place where I actually belonged (sometimes us adoptees never feel part of anything). But these people could clock me from a mile away. I wasn’t dressed like them, my skin was much darker, and I spoke zero Korean. Regretfully, I never took the time to learn anything about my culture either. So now I had finally made it here with all my people, and I was still an outsider. It was a real mind fuck. But days passed and I couldn’t help but to be charmed by Seoul. It’s huge. You can have absolutely anything you want. And most of the good stuff comes out at night. And it’s cheap, you can see amazing world class temples for a buck and then slip into a first rate museum for five. Korean’s love to socialize and drink and dance in the street. I’ve never seen shopping as good as I saw in Seoul. I’ve never tasted food as bold as I ate there. I’ve never met people who were more willing to share their culture with you. These are some of the most resilient people on earth, too. The stuff they have overcome in just the last hundred years would boggle the mind. And we witnessed this while we were there, including a million person protest. At the end of our time there I had decided that yeah, I actually do connect a lot with my Korean heritage and it was nice.