Once again I’m preparing my trip to Europe. This time I’ll be visiting Switzerland, France and Germany. Of course one part will be to visit my parents in Switzerland. But there are other parts where I’ll be joining the planning committee of the upcoming IKAA Gathering 2007 in Paris.
It’s always nice to see familiar faces and especially those from overseas. Usually I always meet everybody here in Korea but this time it will be different. I haven’t been in Paris for such a long time. Actually since 1988 or 1989 when we did a trip with the business school. I still remember that night when we all passed out on the night train. Not from being tired, no, from all the alcohol we smuggled through customs and onto the train. At that time the customs controls between the French and the Swiss part at the Basel train stations were more thorough than these days. Well, I can’t really tell since I haven’t been back to Basel since 2003.
Time here in Korea is flying. Currently I read the book “Eindelijk leef ik echt” by Joey Yoon. She’s a Dutch adoptee who wrote about her life. It’s really interesting to read it. It mainly focuses on how she overcame her eating disorder but I haven’t finished it yet… so the end is still open. I still have to look up words on the internet. I usually use www.vandale.nl, a site which was suggested by E.L., one of my roommates. Learning a language is always a very long and slow process. Especially considering the fact that I’m now 40 years old *sigh*. I used to learn our English dictionary by heart when I was in middle school. But that was just for fun. They would also call me the “sleepwalking dictionary” because I would sleep more than actually be awake during school. Well, life as a narcoleptic can have its obstacles.
I also follow the discussions on mailing-lists. I’m also on lists with adoptive parents. It’s always interesting to see what they’re discussing. One thing I realized was that the European adoptive parents are very different from the US American ones. Even though I can write in German in one of the lists, I hardly ever do because most of the adoptive parents don’t care about what an adoptee has to say. They focus more on adopting processes, how to improve that, what to do etc. and most of them are either preparing an adoption or just have adopted. On a progressive list like I-A-T (International Adoption Talk) on Yahoo!Groups, basically everybody’s listening to the opinions of adoptees. Adoptees have a lot of experience which could be very useful for future adoptive parents. Once adoptive parents overcome their defense mechanisms, they might learn a lot which would directly benefit their children, too. At least that’s my hope.
Coming back to our small adoptee community here in Korea. We have our share of drama. I understand that there will always be drama in such a small community as ours, but I hope in the future that it won’t end in violence as it did happen sometimes in the past. And I’m not judging anyone because I know that sometimes it seems to be inevitable. One word leads to the next one, one action and all of the sudden it seems to be way beyond of what the original cause was. Of course alcohol plays an important role, too. Anyway, maybe I should suggest a Korean TV station just to follow our community with cameras… that would be the real adoptee reality show, wouldn’t that?
We are preparing a petition in order to get better support for G.O.A.’L from the Korean government. It’s ridiculous how in the past G.O.A.’L has been excluded from much support just because it is run by adult adoptees. Especially since G.O.A.’L is representing adoptees here in Korea it should have been supported by the government. I guess it’s still the old mentality that lead to the situation we have these days. In any case we hope that we can get all your signatures. Launch will be in April. 
If I have enough time in Europe I’ll update my BLOG. And watch out for the pictures in the photogallery. My last week’s favourite is the one with R.S. in Catchlight. I used my Canon Powershot G3 in manual mode (2s exposure with a leading flash).
