Daegu + Family Fun Part 3

I’ve made it to Daegu! All of the Kang clan either is here or is from here. I spent the day meeting various Kang aunts and cousins and cousins’ kids and babies and so on. It was quite hectic. I woke up at 6:45 to leave from Seoul and, since I got back from the 2PM concert (see my last post for more details) at around 12:30 and didn’t sleep until around 2:00am, I was so exhausted. We were supposed to leave at 7:30 but as it turns out BK and HyunJi overslept a little so we left at around 8:00am. We got kimbab before we left and hit the road.

nomnomnomnom kimbab for breakfast

Now, when taking family road-trips, I’m used to only stopping once. Like when my family drives from Pittsburgh to New Jersey to visit my mom’s sister’s family, we usually only stop once or twice during the whole 7 hour drive. The drive from Seoul to Daegu is about 3.5 hours, so I was expecting to just drive straight there without stopping. But about 40 minutes into the trip we stopped at a gas station to go to the bathroom and stuff. I’m not sure if they stopped because they needed to or because they thought I needed to… I was sleeping soundly in the back seat though. Maybe I was giving off some sign that I had to pee while taking my early morning nap. I like never have to go to the bathroom though (with the exception of the plane ride from Pittsburgh to San Francisco, as described in my very first post) and when flying from San Francisco to Seoul I didn’t go to the bathroom once (11 hours!), so 40 minutes was literally nothing. I didn’t complain though. We stopped again though after another hour to go to the bathroom again…It was a little weird but again I didn’t say anything. I think they were just trying to be considerate. Or they need to use the restroom a lot. Either way I’m in no position to judge.

BK and HyunJi are really cute together. They tease each other a lot and have little arguments here and there but I think that’s pretty normal. She’ll jokingly threaten to beat BK up and he’ll turn to me and say “please tell American family that she treats me like this” or “she is so violent, it’s crazy.” It’s pretty funny. Sometimes when I’m with them I feel like I’m an awkward third wheel but like everything I do is awkward so I got used to it pretty quickly. She does a lot of aegyo (애교), which is this super Korean way that girls try to act cute. I personally think it’s ridiculous and I can’t do it very well but it’s like….I actually can’t even describe it. It’s like a mix of baby talk and extreme flirting. HyunJi is all about the aegyo and talks with a babyish voice a lot. It suits her though. If I ever tried to talk like that and someone heard me I think I’d be deported.

Right now I’m at BK’s sister’s apartment. Her apartment is reeeaaally nice and I think it would have cost a medium-large fortune had it been in Seoul but because it’s in Daegu I think it might have been less outrageously expensive. I might be wrong though. Maybe they’re really rich and just I have no idea. Either way, I’m just glad to have a bed mat to sleep on. Everything here is Hello Kitty since they have 2 very young daughters, So-Young (who Bobby met while in Korea 2 years ago) and…the other one (I asked her what her name is but she’s a small infant and didn’t answer me). So-Young and I have hit it off and now she either calls me “English-unni” or “Jenny unni” (unni is what a girl calls an older girl whose like an older sister). Usually I repel children and children repel me so I’m not sure what happened today but it was pretty fun. We played with bubbles and a water gun that we got for like 40 cents at the market. HyunJi said I’ll make a great mom and I almost keeled over and died after she said it. No one’s ever said that to me before since I’m usually painfully awkward around small children. Whenever I think about the prospect of being a mother I always pity the poor future child that gets me as one of its parents. In these fictitious situations I also almost always see myself handing the child over to my mom all day every day until it’s time for it to go to college (sorry, Rubes).

One of my older relatives told So-Young at first to call me ahjumma (which sort of has the connotation of being a middle-aged woman) and it really freaked me out. I never felt so old in my entire life. I quickly said that I don’t like being called ahjumma and that made them all laugh… but like it’s true. What 19 year old girl wants to be called something that is usually a title for women who are 40+? Not me, no thank you.

Me and unnamed-baby-no-name (she has a name, I’m just stupid and can’t remember it)

My Hello-Kitty sleeping accommodations for the night. is cute, no?

I met BK’s parents, JinTae and his wife (also whose name I did not catch… I don’t think they actually told me her name so I don’t feel as bad about not knowing it). JinTae is the head of the Kang family, which is super legit. I guess he and BK are responsible for taking care of all the ancestral Kang stuff, which dates back to the Joseon dynasty (I might be wrong but like the Joseon dynasty was from 1392 to 1897 so it seems like a safe window of time). Apparently their house has looked exactly the same for the past 30 years. Spooky. I hung out there for a while and then I went on an aunt-visiting tour. Actually that’s an overstatement; I just met 2 aunts. But I met MyungJa gomo, who is the oldest of my dad’s generation of Kangs (I think). She has a really bad back and couldn’t walk without a walker. She seems lively though. She gave me a red envelope with money in it as “allowance for when I’m in China” in August so that was really sweet of her. After visiting her I went to see Myung-Ok gomo, who is the 3rd oldest. I’ve met one of her sons JeungKi multiple times and her other son JeungHo picked me up from the airport here. I didn’t realize she was their mom until maybe 15 minutes after I got there though and when she found that out she called me stupid (바보, pronounced bah-boh to be precise).

While visiting all these relative I also distributed various gifts to them that my mom had me buy before coming here. I felt like Santa Claus… except, like, female and Asian and young. And instead of bringing toys to children I was bringing wrinkle cream and vitamins to old Korean women. Close enough though.

After these aunt visits, I went back to BK’s parents house to hang out and eat dinner. This is when I befriended Soh-Young. She got over her initial shyness and started hugging my legs and calling me English-unni and stuff like that. Of course I speak virtually no Korean so it was a little bit hard to communicate with her, but our Korean speaking abilities were at the closest levels compared to anyone else I’ve met here so maybe that’s why I got along with her. We played with water gun and bubbles and walked around the neighborhood. I think I’m starting to get over my fear/dislike/allergy of children.

Anyway, that’s all that happened today. I’ll post again when I have wi-fi or if something interesting/dangerous/cool happens. I’m starting my classes at Seoul National University on Monday! Wooo! Now I’ll actually be in a large, modern city! Now I can do some real shopping. hehehehe. If you want me to bring you back anything (i.e. makeup or skincare stuff or hair products (men’s hair wax is quite nice here) or kpop stuff or anything else that is exclusively Korean) just let me know! I’m planning on buying another smaller suitcase because I already know that my stuff won’t fit in the baggage I brought with me.

That’s all for now! Happy weekend!

안녕!