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Ahn-nyoung (안녕: hi!)

This won’t be a long newsletter, as my family and I are currently gallivanting through Seoul! Just wanted to drop in and say “ahn-nyoung” (안녕: hi!) and provide a few highlights from our trip!

• We spent the first three days in Korea in Jeju-do, the famous island that is the setting for some of the most popular K-dramas (Hometown Cha-cha-cha, Our Blues, Welcome to Samdal-ri). We climbed up to the tippy-top of one of the smaller peaks of Hallasan Mountain (an inactive volcano), ate a lot of humongous mandarins, and went swimming in the hotel’s pool a lot!
• We then zipped on over to Seoul and the first order of business was going to my cousin’s wedding. I’d never been to a Korean wedding before–there were over 400 people in attendance! One of my youngest cousins, Seunghyun, got hitched and it was the first time in decades that we (we being all the Lee family cousins) were reunited!
• Afterwards, my father hosted a small dinner for just the family, right before which I shared the video I made for him for his 80th birthday party. I’d made some substantial additions and I added Korean subtitles. The Korean subtitles made a MASSIVE difference–my father started sobbing at the end. Sharing the video in Korea was quite special–my grandmother’s nieces and nephews were able to see photos of their aunt, grandmother (my great grandmother) and listen to how stories that started in Korea wound up building stories in America. Many of you already watched the first version, but if you want, you can watch the new and improved version below.

Video: Celebrating My Dad’s 80th Birthday!

To close, here are just a few photos from our adventures thus far. I’ll be back with a more fulsome missive of our trip next week. Until then, ahn-nygoung!
-Joanne

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Photos

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