Thursday, May 05, 2005

I got a letter from my sponsored child yesterday. It was addressed to "Uncle Chris." haha. It doesn't really bother me because I've received plenty of letters in my lifetime addressed to Mr. Chris Son, or Mr. Seo Jin Son. But... I sent this kid a (labeled) picture once before. Maybe he thinks my brother is Uncle Chris.

I always thought my korean name was less ambiguous than Chris. Seo Jin... that definitely sounds like a girl's name...at least to me it did. But it wasn't until I went on a 2-week program in Korea right after my senior year in high school that I realized, maybe not. My roommate on the program told me she had a guy friend named Seo Jin. She even showed me his senior picture. Engraved in gold in the corner spelled Seo Jin.

In my high school Korean class, our teacher signed us up for a pen-pal program. We would write letters in Korean and they would write back in English. The very first letter I received from my pen-pal, she wrote matter of factly, "oh, you are a boy. I like boys." Well, honey, so do I, but I'm definitely not one. Talk about awkward, having to reply with "Actually, I'm a yujah." I don't think we wrote too many times after that.

So now I have to either write my kid and tell him, sorry, it's actually "Aunt Chris" or send him another (labeled) picture without any boys in it.

1 comment:

Sarah said...

Mr. Uncle Chris!!!

I'm BOREDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!