Friday, July 31, 2009

beginnings of a recap

So blogger world,

I've been meaning to update on the past travels, but have yet to do such! I'll start from the end and start moving backward. Here we go!


Just a bit north of Seattle, Washington


I had a wonderful time hiking up the hills to visit the Big Four Ice Caves.

It was so amazing, both the drive up the mountain as well as the hike to the Caves. We had gone at, not the most opportune time, as only one cave was really starting to form.

What an amazing reward after sweating the entire hike up to the caves! I sat in front of the freezing billowing winds coming from inside the ice domes for a solid 30 minutes.

On our way down, my talented photog cousin John asked me to stand on a bench and jump as high as I could. I am no model nor expert jumper, but the scenery in the background of this photo is amazing! The views with every turn of the trail was unbelievable. Washington is truly an amazing place to live.


My family!!! I look a bit haggard, but I don't think I was very appropriately dressed for this hike.

Thank GOODNESS no photos of later this day have emerged as I, slipped while crossing a river and fell downstream, for quite a while.
Typical move of mine, to have a wonderful day and then go and make a total ass of myself!

We also parked ourselves next to the stream for a while. Each of us with our feet hanging in the ice cold glacier water waiting for the watermelon chilling downstream to cool. It was definitely one of the most crisp watermelons I have eaten in my life.

Although very impromptu and unorganized, this was one of the best family vacations I have been on in a while. Each individual of my family has such an amazing story to tell!


---update---

So I spent a lot of my time in Seattle helping my grandmother tend to her AMAZING garden. Not only does she have prize winning flowers, but amazing views of the mountains and the bay.

In my time I spent with her, many stories emerged.
It's funny how folkloric the stories of my grandparents sounds! and yet... there's also the appeal of modern love and it's twists. I'm talking SCANDAL!!!

I won't go into the details of WHY my grandfather's family had too flee North Korea (much before the political turmoil which IS N. Korea), but I will say I had no idea that that corner of my family was from N.Korea! I had lived my whole life thinking we were from the south, as my father had grown up in a southwestern Island and my mom from just outside the city of Seoul.

My grandfather (dad's dad) is apparently from a town so north in Korea that it's practically considered Russia? For the townsfolk there, it was seen as pretty normal for Korean people to have Caucasian tendencies because of the close proximity to that border.

I guess this explains my brown hair with blonde strands as well as my sister's freaky green eyes....

LOVE THIS PHOTO:
사실... 우리 가족의 진정한 모습이다 ㅋㅋ




2 comments:

stephanie said...

omg it all makes sense now!! crazyyyy. silly white-looking minna. guess you weren't the daughter of the milkman.

minna said...

hahahaha

that's what i felt like too! It was the most random story time ever... I can't believe no one in my family told me! hahaha...

I need to stop spreading those rumors about my grandmother having secret affairs during the Korean War, now.....

 
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