With so much to write about ... so much news, so little time ... I'm popping over here from the Adoption News Blog to post about some Korean adoption-flavored stories.

Starting with this one on an unexpected reunion with birth family.

Nineteen-year-old Korean-born adoptee Robin Gellinger and her mom took a trip to South Korea to see her birthplace... more

At the Korean picnic that we went to earlier this month, we were given a DVD with a little video about Korea. When we got home, we put it in the DVD player and watched. We didn’t have a clue what was being said because the narration was all in Korean, but we watched.

Prior to putting in the movie, we had prepped my son. We told him we were going to watch a Korean movie. I’m not sure that he had any real concept of what we were watching, but he was excited. He sat down on the couch next to my husband and settled in for the show. As the scenes flashed by, he would say, “We’re watching Korea.”

Though we couldn’t understand what was being said about each location, we could... more

On my post, Transracial Adoption Video, someone asked a question in the comments. What is the right kind of exposure and when is it enough exposure? I’m back to my time honored answer of “I wish I knew the answer.” I’ve said in many of my past posts that I wish I knew where to find the manual, but the ultimate problem is always going to be that it depends on the adoptee.

I did not grow up in an area that had a Korean community. In fact, where I grew up there was no minority community at all. So, my parents had to import their information in the form of books (mostly because I loved... more

Over on the Anti-Racist Parent blog, there is a short video about transracial adoption and one of the main interviewees is a Korean adoptee. I found it very interesting because it’s talking a lot about racial identity. It gives the view point of an adoptee and the view point of the adoptive parents.

There is a lot stress on the fact that parents need to make sure they are exposing their children to the culture of their birth (no matter what that culture is). What I really agreed with is that it they mention that it goes beyond an occasional adoptee picnic or a couple... more

When I was studying to be a teacher, someone asked me if I would consider teaching in the middle school grades. I shudder at the very thought. I hated living through my pre-teens, so you couldn’t pay me enough to go teach in that sea of hormones. Adopted or not, this is the time of identity crisis for children. For me, the pre-teens were not full of ... more

Third Mom wrote a post called Absence of Grief where she was actually responding to yet another blogger, but I couldn’t make the link work. From Third Mom’s summary, it was about a mother who worried that she doesn’t see her daughter grieving.

So, I had to think about it for awhile. Did I grieve? Do I grieve? Should I grieve? All of them are valid questions and I have to say the answer is still no. Sometimes, I think that our society is a little too... more

On every message board I belong to, Disney’s “Meet the Robinsons” is the all the buzz. I haven’t seen it yet and probably won’t until it hits our dollar theater. My three year old doesn’t sit well through movies in general and this one doesn’t sound like one that would keep his attention. However, I have found everyone’s comments to be fascinating.

I do not like movies that make fun of adoption. I remember that there was a specific quote in the movie, Dodge Ball, that annoyed me and I’m hearing that the new movie, Blades of Glory, has one of the characters being “un-adopted” which I think is terrible. It worries me that these things are in movies and that I have no way of knowing... more

I was reading an older post on the ReadingWritingLiving blog. She posted about a comment that was recently made to her mother that stemmed from the fact that they don’t look alike. The person said, “We didn’t know Susan wasn’t your daughter!” My first thought was how tactless that person was and then my next thought echoed the title of her post – “Does it ever end?”

I am a parent so I am well aware of the fact that most of our... more

One of the things that I always try to do is to make sure that my Korean adoptee hat and my adoptive parent hat aren’t on at the same time. It seems inevitable that they will crossover since both hats are an integral part of who I am. So, when Jan on the Adoption Search blog asked me what I would do if my son wanted to search for his birth parents,... more

Part 1 Part 2

Now, I know I’ve touched on this before, but I really need to repeat myself in this case because I think it’s important. One of the keys to how I felt about my birth family is how my parents approached the subject.

1. It was never a secret. (I realize that it is difficult to keep the adoption a secret with Korean adoption,... more