Hello, everyone! My name is Julie Kang, sometimes known as Geisha School Dropout, and I am honored to say that I am the newest Kimchi Mama! I am 30 years old, currently live in Long Beach, CA after a 10-year stint in the Bay Area, and have 2 kids (Isaac, 5, and Emily, 2). I love food, animals, and Morrissey, and in a former life I used to also enjoy traveling, going to the spa, and dying my hair all sorts of unnatural colors. Sigh, those were the days.
So, what makes me Kimchi?
I was born in Seoul, and settled in the US when I was 6. I grew up in Cerritos, CA, where the student population of my high school was 70% Asian, so it's safe to say that my formative years were spent in a bit of a racial bubble. For example, it was probably not typical to have K-pop playing at the prom. It was amazing to grow up as a minority-as-majority, but the downside was that it was hard to break out of the Good Korean Girl mold because they were everywhere. My parents tried their damnedest to raise me right, to become a woman who played the piano charmingly; who was skinny and gorgeous and fashionable, yet demure and modest; a woman who hums Verdi whilst proofreading her husband's PhD thesis on nuclear physics while a kimchi casserole is bubbling away on the stove...while vacuuming (and praying to Jesus). Suffice it to say, I do not fit the archetype, but I still feel staunchly Korean-American. Mostly because for the life of me I can't find a hat that fits my gargantuan noggin, but I digress.
What makes me Mama?
I met my husband, Tim, when I was a senior at Stanford, and we will soon be celebrating our 7th anniversary later this month. He is half Japanese, half Missourian, and I jokingly describe him as my cheap knock-off version of Keanu Reeves. Our kids are what we call "quappas," 3/4 Asian, 1/4 Midwestern, 100% TROUBLE. Holy Moses, they are a handful. If you don't believe me, please read about my little Emily getting kicked out of daycare. And yes, I do see the irony of ironically naming oneself "Geisha School Dropout" and then having one's daughter promptly become a "Nursery School Dropout."
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to contributing to this awesome community.
--Julie
PS: I'm actually heading out to the motherland (Ummaland?) and Japan in a week. Any travel tips are very, very welcome, and I'm mostly concerned about surviving the plane rides with a loud, screechy 2-year-old. Thanks!
Saturday night, I watched the film Crossing, about a North Korean man who crosses the border into China in search of food and medicine for his pregnant wife. I bought the DVD at an event hosted at Stanford where the guest of honor was Shin Dong Hyuk, the only person to have escaped from Camp Number 14, a political concentration camp (Thanks Glennia for the heads up about the event!). He was born and raised there and saw his mother and brother executed in front of his eyes for attempting to escape.
Through Google Earth, he showed us where the camp was, and the barbed fencing that encloses the entire camp. He pointed out the prisoners' housing, the pig farm, the guards' housing, and the execution grounds. He pointed also to the school where children are taught to read and write, and basic math skills that are necessary for labor, nothing more.
Hi, folks! I'm Sarah-Ji, the new resident Kimchi Shutterbug Mama. I'm honored to be a part of the Kimchi Mama community! I have to say right off the bat that I'm mainly a photographer, not a writer, although I've been blogging for over 7 years. It takes me a long time to write posts that make sense, which is why I pretty much threw in the towel on my mommyblog and began photoblogging instead.
I was born in Seoul in the early 70's and immigrated to Chicago with my family when Carter was president. I was young enough to pick up English quickly (while losing Korean rapidly) and yet old enough to remember getting ttuk-bokki (spicy rice cakes) at the shi-jang (local market) or wandering the hills of Wonju where my grandfather ran a yoo-chi-won (kindergarten).
I'm married to Ted, whose homebrew blog has a much greater following than my own. He not only makes great beer, but is also a kick-ass drummer, works part-time at Trader Joe's and was a stay-at-home dad for the first 4 years of our daughter's life. He still does all the cooking and most of the cleaning, but then again, I'm the one who spends 11 hours a day away from home at my corporate day job.
And that brings me to one of the reasons I'm eligible to contribute to this blog: my daughter Cadence. She's 4 1/2, 75% feisty, 25% sweet, 100% kick-ass. She makes my life equal parts full of joy and exasperation, often within the same hour. It is because of her that my heart overflows with compassion for every parent I see with a child having a public meltdown. I keep telling myself that I want my kid to think for herself, to question authority and to never blindly accept the status quo, but sometimes I think I'm crazy for wanting this. Let's just say that life in our home is seldom quiet...
I delight in meandering the streets of Chicago with my camera. I love the indie music scene here, and after a 5 year hiatus, I'm starting to hit the live venues again. I cherish my non-evangelical, all-inclusive little church community. I dream about living in the Pacific Northwest, but our roots are firm here in Chicago. I want to grow my own food eventually, although I've never grown anything, but I could probably live on rice, kimchi and kim. I'm hoping to be a part of an urban family that will provide my daughter (and myself) with arms for hugging, shoulders to cry on, ears for listening, hands to high-five, and stories to pass down.
So that's me in a nutshell. I post photos daily on my photoblog and am a founding contributor for Shutter Sisters, and I look forward to being a part of the Kimchi Mamas community as well!
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