When I was very young, my family moved from Korea to the United States. My mother brought her youngest brother and both parents with us, and we all lived together until I was six years old. My grandmother lived with us, off and on, until I was 14 years old. This isn’t uncommon in the Korean culture, but I knew at a young age that I was different from my American friends.

My uncle and I have always been super close though! Even though he didn’t have a lot of money, I still remember that he’d buy me a new Barbie doll every paycheck he received. As the only grandchild, maybe I was a little spoiled…

Anyway, my uncle and I are able to communicate well enough in person, but I am not super confident in writing Korean. Still, he is really busy with work so we try to communicate by text message and email. Pretty frequently too, with our broken words and pictures from our day. No matter how long my work day may be, I get excited to decipher his emails at the end of the day.