how to plan a vacation!

So I was talking to a friend of mine (the one who convinced me that I need to blog again), and I was trying to convince them of taking a vacation. They just graduated from school and now have a job and are earning a paycheck! I asked where they were going to go on vacation with their newfound freedom and money! My friend replied that they didn't know how too and were scared a little of how to schedule a vacation. So this is for my friend in Chicago, who has only been to the Shedd Aquarium once!

Since I have traveled probably more than 99.9% of the population my age, I figured I would give my friend some help/advice!

Step 1: Figure out where you want to go! My friend has an interest in Vancouver for the Olympics in 2010, so we will use that!

Step 2: Figure out when (dates) you are going to go. Since it is for the Olympics, the dates are pretty much set. The Olympics are in February 12 - 28th, 2010. The gold round for female figure skating is Feb 25th and the Gold round for the best short track speed skating is Feb. 26th!

Step 3: Figure out your budget. This is obviously going to be pretty expensive...it is the Olympics. For this trip lets say $5000. I know it may seem like a lot, but it is the Olympics.

Step 4: Flights. Since it is pretty common location Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia all work well. I found a flight on Orbitz on Continental for $637 total for a 1 stop flight from St. Louis to Vancouver. I know some people are willing to make multiple stops for a cheaper flight, but remember you are paying money for your vacation and taking time off from work for this...do you really want to waste time flying further and wasting time in airports? Also don't forget to sometimes check individual airline websites because sometimes they have promotions(I highly doubt anyone is goign to for the Olympics). Also, if your traveling in the US, Southwest is often the cheapest but does not sell tickets on Orbitz.

Step 5: Hotels. This can change your cost a lot! To some people this is important, to others its just where you sleep and you plan to spend most of your time outside. Depending on what I am planning on doing, I will decide how nice of a hotel I want. Remember, sometimes staying a little further out will save you a lot! As we will see in this example. Because of the Olympics all of the hotels have inflated prices and are booked! Even the Holiday Inn Express has a nightly rate of over $500/night! If your willing to travel 40 miles the hotel rooms get reduced dramatically! back to normal $100+/night! 45 minutes away , 35 minutes away

Step 6: Figure out what your going to do. Since these tickets are already sold out, your going to have to find tickets through brokers (which means they will be more expensive). To do this simply google what your looking for! You'll be amazed at what you'll find! It is a little bit risky buying tickets online if you have never done it before. I would normally recommend buying direct, but in this case they are sold out. www.stubhub.com is a good place to find tickets as you will also find other brokers. Here is what I found: Short Track Speed Skating Gold Round and Women's Figure Skating Gold Round. As you can see the cheapest tickets for both of these events is going to cost about $800 total and can go all the way up to thousands of dollars!

So there it is...all in a few minutes!
Flight: $637
Hotel: $600 (assuming you stay at the 35 minute hotel for 3 nights, and factoring in taxes)
Tickets: $800
Food: $400 (assuming $100 a day, remember everything is going to cost more at the Olympics)
Total: $2437

You may think this is a lot, but it is truly a once in a lifetime experience! Personally I would spend more money to either stay longer or get better seats (to improve my experience). Since this is really a once in a lifetime event, you might want to splurge a little.

Update!

I know I have not posted in so long! I actually do feel bad. I have been so busy its unbelievable! So I figured my first post back would give an update:

I sold my house about a month ago. I moved into central St. Louis area. I did this because I started school about a month ago also. I am going to school at Washington University in St Louis for my MBA. I have classes on Tuesday and Thursday from 6:15 to 9:15 PM.

On top of all this, my traveling continues! it was supposed to stop by now, but it looks like I might be traveling to Corpus Christi several more times!

I know I talked to several other people who did their MBA while working, like I am doing now, and they said it would be tough but it was worth it....all I have to say is...I really hope its worth it! It's amazing how little time I have anymore!

My two classes I am taking right now are "Organizational Behavior" and "Introduction to Management and Strategy". I really like the strategy class, and I am now thinking this is maybe what I want to do in the future. The Organizational Behavior is more of a socialogy/psychology class....which Im not so hot about. Its a lot of touchy feely stuff...the other engineers that got their MBA warned me about these types of classes. I don't hate it as much as they said I would, I don't particularly enjoy it either, but I do find a few things interesting. I can't wait until next half-semester when I get to take statistics and analytical decision making! Now those are two classes that an engineer or math nerd can appreciate!! I can't wait!

Congratulations!

One of my blogger readers/friends just emailed me the other day in response to my previous email about not having enough things to talk about. He told me some awesome news!

He recently was able to go to court and get full release of his adoption information including his biological parents information! How awesome is that. If you would like to read the ruling you can see it in this PDF online: Court Document

Apparently his ruling has since set the precedence for all adoptees in Colorado for adoptions that were finalized between July 1951 - 1967! How awesome is that. It looks like adoptees are slowing "etching away" at the huge legal wall that keeps them from finding out information. While some people may think that its just a small window of time, you have to start somewhere. Maybe this will lay the groundwork for other states and other dates!

That is so awesome! and Congratulations to JH!!

Hiatus

I can't believe its been over a month since I last posted. Im not sure if anyone still reads (hard to "still read" when nothing new is posted).

One of my real life friends who watches my blog has been bugging me to post again. It might also be that she has moved away and misses the good ole' St. Louis? I have been procrastinating, because in truth, I just don't know what to post about. I feel that I have exhausted the Korean topic, and its really tough to blog about that when you live in the US...particularly in St. Louis, where there is almost no Korean culture.

Ive grown weary of the adoption topic. While I have learned a lot, and thought a lot about this topic, I feel that I have worn myself out on this topic.

My friend suggested that I just write about whats going on in my life, so I guess I'll start doing that. Although I can't imagine that being particular interesting...again, I think its because she misses St. Louis! LOL.

This weekend was crazy and a lot of fun. I wish I had my camera but I forgot to bring it with me. Saturday night my friends had an ice cream social to kick off the summer.

Then on Sunday night we celebrated the birthdays of 3 of our friends, with a grill out. Everyone brought their own meat and we grilled it. There were various steaks, brats, burgers (even the non-meat variety), and kabobs. It was delicious. My friends Nicci and Leo and I decided to splurge a little and bought filets. I put sea salt and pepper on them and then slowly grilled them for 40 minutes. Leo said he wanted it medium (pink but no blood), but he kept saying that didn't think it was possible because filets are so thick. I told him, not to concern himself with it, and I knew what I was doing. Well, after 40 minutes of grilling, they came out perfect! Pink in the middle, no blood, and the tenderest steak I have ever eaten! Yum! Unfortunately we ate them so quickly, there was no time to get a picture! Maybe next time.

Grad School!

Well, it looks like everything might work out! Last year, I decided to quit my job and company in Africa, to find a new job/company back in the US so I could go back to school to pursue a MBA degree.

I found out this week that I got accepted into Washington University in St. Louis!

Hopefully my work travel schedule will work out so that I can start!

Im excited and nervous about being a student again! I will be doing the evening program so I can continue working. I will probably be pretty busy with work and school work at the same time! But I'm looking forward to being back on a campus!

Being Grateful...

It feels good to be writing again. My life has been pretty crazy lately. Work has me traveling a lot which really restricts my writing process...lol

Anyways, I was perusing through the typical blogs and came across one talking about the expectation of being grateful for being adopted. Maybe I read it wrong, but it felt like there was some resentment towards that "expectation"?

It made me think about how I view the definition of "grateful" and what it meant to me.

To me: Gratefulness is a self attitude of thankfulness or appreciation for something, usually undeserving. Gratefulness usually is tied to a current condition, although you can be grateful something didn't happen to you.

You can't be grateful if you are enacting it just because someone tells you..however should we not be grateful for everything?

I am grateful that I am adopted. I don't know why this is such a hard thing for some adoptees to deal with or feel like they are pressured to be by society? You can't be pressured into gratefulness because it is a self attitude.

I know that being adopted is not ideal. I know that in a perfect world I would not have been adopted. But that does not, and should not, prevent me from being grateful for being adopted.

So what causes someone to be grateful? Why are some adoptees grateful for being adopted and some not? Well since it is a self attitude, I guess it has to do with some inner self reflection and thought? I know a lot of people hate the attitude of "move on", but it is so true, I don't know how to formulate a thought without that mentality. No amount of reflection, self loathing, or anything else will change the fact that I was adopted in the first place. So I guess I have to "move on" past the fact that I was adopted. Now you can "move on" with a bitterness towards what happened to you and that the best scenario didn't work out, indifferance, or gratefulness that something worse didn't happen. I guess my feeling is if you live your life always looking back and reflecting on how much better it could have been, I realize that you miss what is going on now, and actually make what is going on now worse because I am bringing that negative attitude to what is happening now.

So in light of this here is a quick list of what I am grateful for:

1. I am grateful that my birth mother gave birth to me (the alternative is so much worse!)

2. I am grateful that I was found in the bakery by the police (sure its not ideal, but better than roaming the streets at 3 years of age!)

3. I am grateful for Grace Home Orphanage in Daejeon, and my Orphanage mother and sister who I have met.

4. I am grateful for my parents, providing a home and family to me. It seems that some adoptees view that adoptive children make a family to APs, but they overlook that APs provide a family in return. Its a two way street.

5. I am grateful to adoption agencies. Even though there is a lot of difficulty with them, and they may be inefficient or corrupt at times. Without them I would have never been adopted.

6. I am grateful to visit my motherland, Korea. Even when it is difficult seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting things that I remember from when I was a child. Or even the pain I feel when I have to explain to the people that I can't speak Korean, and the look on their face. I am still grateful.

7. I am grateful to the Korean family that "adopted" me back when I visited Korea. I still am in touch with them and very much consider them family!

8. I am grateful for finding blogs. I started blogging 3/4 of a year ago and got me into writing about adoptions. It has really opened up a lot of emotions and feelings that I never explored before. But it is for the better. I am grateful that I "survived" the endeavor, and came out the same person as before.

What's in a Name?

I recently read a blog about a Korean adoptee changing their name back to their Korean name. I wondered why in the world would someone change their name back? For me, after 23 years since my name was changed to English (I can somewhat remember that court proceeding) I can't imagine changing it back and using my previous name "Yang Woon Hee".

However, in the last couple of months I have been faced with a new question that I have never been asked before (in my 23 previous years of growing up in the US). When I think about it, I don't know why I have never been asked this question before in my life. The question is very rude, and hard to deal with sometimes. Because about the only way to politely respond it is to tell some stranger that you are adopted (Which I don't always want to divulge).

The question is usually phrased in the following ways:
"I don't picture you as a Spalding"
or
"You don't seem to match your last name"

My most recent occurance was last night when I was checking into my hotel in Houston (I travel a lot for my work). The girl was very friendly and was making small talk as I was checking in, when she said "I didn't picture you with your last name". I just replied "I was adopted." As I replied you could see her face drain of color as she just realized what she had said. She apologize profusely over and over. I actually felt bad for her, because I knew that she didn't mean it in any mean way, but was just trying to be friendly.

I had this discussion with my Korean tutor last week about last names. In Korea, people can use their last names and trace the family lines for hundreds and hundreds of years. She asked me how Americans got their last names. I explained that for most Americans, you can tell what ancestory they came from. How you can tell if someone had German heritage or French heritage based on their last names. This is why I didn't take offense when the Hotel clerk as me this question. Even though it was hard for me to "swallow" and to respond, I don't fault her. I would thoroughly agree that my looks do not match my last name.

In the last couple of weeks, I have really thought about this issue because I have never faced it before. When I thought about it, I was quite amazed that this was not an issue that I had to face before(or maybe it was something that I don't recall having to face, but I know I have been asked these types of questions within the last 10 years!). After being asked this question several times in the last couple of weeks, the question of having a Korean last name has really come back in my mind.

Ironically, at Sunday School class at church the discussion of names came up. Talking about how most Asians pick an English first name because it is too difficult for Americans to pronounce their first names properly. My church is predominantly Asian, and on this particular day, the only caucasion was the teacher and the rest of us were all Korean! So we went around telling each other our Korean names. The only difference was everyone else had Korean last names: Kang, Chun, Lee, and Hwang. Our teacher's last name was Calhoun and my last name of Spalding were both of Scottish decent.

Is it important that your looks match your last name? I think it makes a little bit more of a difference for a male than a female because traditionally the males carry on the family names (even in Korean culture). So its not too unusually to see an Asian woman who has a non-Asian name because people just assume she married a non-Asian. However, most men never change their family name. So if you have an non-Asian last name it is very unusual and most people don't understand how a male can have a non-Asian last name.

I doubt I would ever go to court and change my name on my own. I know growing up and even now I don't have any particular strong ties to my family name. I've always openly and sub-consciously been open to the idea of changing my last name. I know I was always fascinated with how it was always the woman who changed their last name to match their husbands. I have always thought that I would be open to taking my wife's name if I ever got married, if that was what she would rather have. I think its important for a married couple ot have the same family name, and I personally wouldn't care if its mine or my wife's. In particular, if I were to marry an Asian girl I could understand wanting to keep an Asian last name, to avoid confusions with having a non-Asian last name.