Memories of Camp Mu Ji Gae 2008

Jeff, Bella and myself along with my parents who brought Ryan and Katie attended our Korean cultural camp's family day on Sunday afternoon. We saw friends of ours there at camp. Some of them are local and one from far away that we met last year while we were in Boston at the KAAN Conference. Some of them were familiar faces we have seen since our first camp experience in 2004 when Jeff and I went to check it out.

We met up with Katie's mentor, Kathleen, her mother and my friend Maggie, Mike and his daughter Gillian.

It was so good to meet you again Chris, author of A Euro-American on a Korean Tour at a Thai Restaurant in China, at Camp Mu Ji Gae. I'm glad that you finally got to meet my kids in person. As you can tell, they keep me on my toes!!

We watched the Korean drummers and the women from SIWA at Sookmyung Women's University (also in Korean at Info about SIWA in Korean and Info about SIWA in English) do their mask dance.

~~~~~~~~~~~SIDE NOTE~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

These women paid their own way to the US to help out our camp. And we are appreciative of them doing so!!!


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The drummers then had asked if any of the campers wanted to join them dancing around they could. So Ryan and I went up and danced along with some of the other campers. We also went in under the arms of the drummers, parents, grandparents and other campers similar to what we do with the Mu Ji Gae train. Then after dancing with Ryan, I took Bella up as well and danced with her. She enjoyed it as well. Katie was watching us from the rest of the crowd. She opted not to join in the dancing and Mu Ji Gae train and we respected her wishes.

Ryan mentioned afterwards that he was upset with us. When I asked him why he told me that he "wanted to bring our Korean drums next year". So next year, if he is still interested, we'll be bringing those drums with us to camp. But that will be his choice.

Monday night, my mom and I attended our camp's guest speaker (Chris Winston) and her discussion about how we build a relationship to the Korean community, why is it important, all about race (does it matter, our perspective on diversity versus our children's perspective, etc), and more. I'm so glad that I attended this event even though I heard some of this at the KAAN conference last year. I still learned some information from this event.

Adoption is a lifelong learning experience...you can't possibly know everything that there is to know to help your child at each stage of their development (infancy, toddler, elementary school, pre-teen, teenager, and adult adoptees) when you bring your child home. Hence my reason why I'm attending these events when I can. Jeff mentioned on Sunday that it would be like going to a KAAN session and in a way it was.

In attendence were Korean adult adoptees to talk about their experiences and without them sharing their personal experiences it wouldn't be the same. I am forever thankful to them for their willingness to talk to us, the adoptive parents, especially face to face to tell us what their experiences were when they were growing up and are now as an adult. Other people in attendence were adoptive parents like myself with young kids, adoptive parents with teenagers, and adoptive parents with adult adoptees. Also in attendence were representatives from a Korean language school in this area. I chatted with them after the talk and gained some valuable information just in case my kids are interested in learning when they turn 5 years old. I learned that they also have a parents' class as well.

Tuesday afternoon we went back for the kids' sessions. My parents came to help us out and to videotape and take pictures. Katie graduated into the older kids class (Curiosity for ages 3 to 5 year olds) so she joined her big brother for the class. Jeff took them into their class while I helped out a friend of ours, Angie, and watched Bella in the younger kids class for under 3 year olds called Rising Stars.

We started off with group pictures and went into the gym for music time, free play, story time, more free play and then snack time.

I sang London Bridges in Korean and taught the parents as well as the kids. In their goody bags they got some arts and crafts stuff to do made by Angie and Jennifer, flashcards that I made up for the campers and particularly their parents to learn some basic words/phrases and included a link to a website that has all of the words/phrases and their correct pronunciation for the parents to listen to, a Korean flag sticker, and more. After that we had freeplay and then gathered back together to do one of the 3 crafts in their goody bag. After that we listened to the book Bibimbop read by Jennifer and 2 other books. After some freeplay, the group had mandu, orange wedges, and popsicles for snack. Bella and I shared our Korean rice cookies that we picked up at the local Korean market with the other campers. I was complimented on the flashcards by several of the mothers and a few of the fathers as well and that they would definitely be using these to learn a bit of Korean themselves.

We had 2 big folding tables set up for resources for the parents to take and one big folding table for books for them to look at. It contained a packet of 5 pages of websites for parents to check out, catalogs from various adoption related businesses, a map of Korea for them to look at, and more. We had Korean children's music playing for all to hear.

In Curiosity, they had paper folding, a song and dance with the girls from Sookmyung Women's University SIWA group, snack and more.

After that camp was done for us for this year. The kids are already talking about next year's camp. We are looking forward to family day events and the kids individual classes for as long as they want to participate in it. I need to make a mental note to ask the kids if they want to bring Korean drums with them to next year's family day since Ryan wanted to play his drum along with the Korean drummers on Sunday.

Katie said the sweetest thing last night to me as I was tucking her into bed that I'll close this post with:

Thank you Mommy for bringing me to camp.

My response to her is the following: Thank you Katie for bringing me to camp.

Katie's simple sweet sentence is why we will expose my children to things Korean for as long as they show interest. Her simple sweet sentence is why we will bring our kids to their Korean cultural camp for as long as they show interest.

~Jen