A Breather in Life

Interview by Cailey Beck and Jadyn Kim 

Where is your hometown?
I was born in Baldwin Park, but I don’t consider that my hometown because I don’t remember any of it. I would say that I have two hometowns: one being Yorba Linda, which is where I currently live, and the other being La Mirada, where my grandma lives. They’re both pretty residential areas.

Growing up, I visited my grandma’s house a lot. I slept over during the holidays, but more recently, during the pandemic, I’ve lived here for seven months because my dad works in healthcare. During the summer months, I discovered a lot of trails and bike paths that would lead me to restaurants, convenience stores, and markets — [places] like that.

One of my favorite biking trails around my grandma’s house directly leads to an outdoor plaza with an H Mart, Daiso, a Baekjeong (강호동 백정), and some other Korean restaurants. Another one that goes in the opposite direction directly leads to Trader Joe’s and CVS, which is personally my favorite because I like to get cheap snacks and candy there. Something I learned about myself during the pandemic is that I really enjoy visiting supermarkets and just staring at all the vegetables, fruits, and new snacks.

My second hometown, Yorba Linda, is where I grew up most of my life. It’s the only house I remember living in. Yorba Linda is a little bit different compared to La Mirada, because living in Yorba Linda doesn’t really give you close access to things. It takes a while to bike to places there, so most of the people in Yorba Linda just drive. But there’s one place I do bike: I bike to the reptile store pretty frequently because I have four reptiles, so I always have to get them food and stuff.

Since you don’t live in Koreatown, what was it that drew you to Koreatown and made you want to join Koreatown Storytelling Program to help preserve Koreatown’s history?
My grandfather, who passed away before I was born, worked in the garment district for the import and export part of the business, which is one reason I joined this program. When I visited my grandma’s house, I’d always see these little antiques, and my grandma told me that my grandfather had brought them there. There’s a statue in the living room — I think it’s a baby with a plant on its head. I always wondered why it was there, and when I was younger, I would stick my finger in it because I thought it was funny. My uncle told me that my grandfather brought it home from work, and they keep it as a memory of him.

Do you currently live or work in Koreatown?
I don’t live or work in Koreatown, but I enjoy visiting Koreatown often. On days without traffic, it can take 30 minutes to an hour to get to Koreatown, but with traffic, it can take quite some time. However, there hasn’t been much traffic recently because of COVID, so I’ve been able to visit K-Town during the pandemic.

I like to go to some of our family’s favorite places. There’s a 24-hour Korean restaurant called Hodori, which is great for late-night dinners. They have yummy tteok mandu guk (떡만둣국 — rice cake and dumpling soup) and tteokbokki (떡볶이 — spicy rice cakes). I love those two foods. That’s what we do in Koreatown.

On Christmas, we went to the BCD Tofu House on Wilshire Boulevard, and they had a drive-in movie event. You could purchase tickets, and they would give you bento boxes and sundubu jjigae (순두부찌개 — a spicy soft tofu stew). We sat in our car and watched movies, and I thought that was really fun.

What are your thoughts on Koreatown?
Koreatown’s a cool place. I like the city because there are so many places to go and things to do. Compared to where I live now, it’s such a different community, and you get a different vibe because where I live, there are just a bunch of neighborhoods. In Koreatown, there are apartments next to buildings and things like that, which I think is really cool. You’re able to walk to many places and everything is super accessible.

This is weird, but I have a really specific memory of Koreatown from when I was eight years old. Nothing special happened, but I remember being in the Galleria Mall in Los Angeles, in a stationery store called Young Art. I was trying to choose which stationery to get, because they were like, ‘Oh, you can get only one thing.’ I remember ending up choosing a pencil with a green apple on top, which lights up when you flick a switch. I found it really interesting that I remember that thinking back on my Koreatown experiences.

Since you grew up in a more suburban area, do you consider Koreatown dangerous?
It’s definitely something I took into consideration when comparing Koreatown to Yorba Linda. When you’re comparing the two, you have to consider the pros and the cons of both. You can walk around in the city. Everything’s super accessible, but at the same time, it can be dangerous at night. Whereas in more residential areas, it’s pretty safe at night, but the con is that there aren’t as many accessible places.

Where is your favorite place in Koreatown?
I answered this earlier, but my favorite place is Hodori and BCD Tofu House. I have a BCD Tofu House pretty close to me, but I have better memories of the one on Wilshire because of the whole movie night and how fun of an experience that was. Hodori is a favorite because whenever we come back from a trip, we always go there. We stop by Hodori because, during our trip, we probably weren’t able to eat Korean food, so it’s always like a welcome back home.

How has living through the COVID-19 experience made you feel?
It has made me feel grateful because I haven’t had many complications during this time. My family has been safe, our city has been pretty safe, and we’ve been able to keep COVID guidelines this whole time. I’m grateful that none of my family members have caught COVID. I think it’s made me miss my friends a little bit, but it made my transition from middle to high school easier. None of my friends go to the high school I go to.

Before the pandemic, I was debating whether I should go to OCSA (Orange County School of the Arts) or my local high school. I ultimately ended up choosing OCSA, because I was less attached to my friends at that point [due to] the pandemic. Having that quarantine [period] where I didn’t get to see my friends and doing online school made that transition a lot easier. 

Is there someone in particular who you can’t see right now that you wish you could?
Right now, no, because my grandma got the vaccine. I was living with her for a little bit at the beginning of quarantine, but now that she has the vaccine, we’re able to visit her a lot. I’m actually at her house right now and we just went to the park to walk and bike and do slacklining.

What has been the most challenging part of the pandemic?
The most challenging part was losing my community. That’s something everyone has struggled with during quarantine: not being able to see people. You’re used to seeing a lot of people every single day, and then it goes down to only seeing your family, which I thought was pretty challenging.

At the beginning of quarantine, schools didn’t really know what to do. It’s not like we were doing a lot of schoolwork, so we had a lot of time we didn’t know what to do with. I think that was a challenge because I’m someone who likes to be busy and constantly be doing things. So when my school took a two-week break, we weren’t doing much, and I felt weird because I was so free. When I was in school, it was super stressful, and this is all I wanted. Now that I have it, maybe I actually don’t [want it].

What has given you comfort and hope during this time?
I’ve picked up a lot of hobbies, which have helped me stay busy. I haven’t been able to do a lot of them because school has been pretty busy. We end at 4:15 p.m. every day, so I just want to sleep after I do my homework.

I was crocheting and found this community that makes really cute crochet dolls. You basically crochet things, stuff them, and put some eyes on them. I actually got my church small group leader into crocheting as well. Another hobby I picked up is gardening. We have a garden that I never really used because I was busy, but I was able to plant new seeds. We already had a whole carrot farm and, obviously, green onions, but those have been there since the beginning. I planted snow peas, and they’re a vining plant, so they climb onto this rack. I also got four pets during the quarantine. I got one bearded dragon, a crested gecko, and two leopard geckos. My bearded dragon eats vegetables, which is the main reason why I started gardening.

Right now, I have a lot of bok choy plants because I did this thing called propagating, where you cut off the top and stick the bottom in water, and it starts growing again. I did that, so now I have a lot of bok choy plants. One of them is even flowering and has yellow flowers everywhere.

Do you think that the pandemic has changed you?
This experience let me get a breather in life. I was so stressed from school because I went to a middle school where we have multiple academic programs, and I was taking classes at the high school. Sometimes, when you’re at school, you feel like you don’t know what’s going on. But I actually feel more organized and productive online because everything’s in one place.

Before, you would go to each class and have to look at the whiteboard, write things down, like homework assignments, and sometimes it would be on the other side of the classroom. Everything for my classes is now on Google Classroom. Quarantine has made me more productive because I’m able to see my assignments being put in and graded. It’s all super fast. I’m literally seeing my assignments getting checked off as I turn them in. That’s a good way that [the pandemic] has changed me. Another change is that I’ve gotten a lot closer to my family. In December, we did an advent calendar for the first time. Usually advent calendars are like you get a chocolate every day, or if it’s a dog advent calendar, then the dog gets a treat every day. 

My family did a fun activity every day instead, so on some days, we did ornament painting. One day, we went to a mochi shop that I’d been wanting to go to for so long, and it was so good; that was my favorite day. We did a bunch of really fun activities like that. December was my favorite month in quarantine, not only because of the holidays, but because we had that family time every day.

It sounds like you adapted well to quarantine and landed on your feet. If the pandemic were to end tomorrow, what’s the first thing you would do?
I would go hang out with some of my middle school friends. At the beginning of COVID, we all hung out at the Irvine Spectrum [shopping mall] for a little bit, but that was just one time I saw them. I would like to hang out with them one more time before I go off to high school. I still text them and we do keep in contact, but obviously, we can’t go out right now.

Also, my church has been holding in-person services, and I want to hang out with my church group because I like the girls in my grade. It would be fun if we could go out without masks, do whatever we want, and not social distance. The main thing I would do is hang out with my friends.