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, which is 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 — things 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  — a popular Korean BBQ restaurant) 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 really 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 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 and help preserve Koreatown’s history?
My grandfather, who passed away before I was born, used to work in the Garment District for the import and export part of the business, which is one reason I joined this program. And when I came to my grandma’s house, I’d always see these little antiques, and my grandma told me that my grandfather was the one that brought them here. 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 this 24-hour Korean restaurant called Hodori, which is great for late night dinners, and they have really yummy tteok manduguk (떡만둣국  — rice cake and dumpling soup) and tteokbokki (떡볶이 — spicy rice cake). I just love those two foods. So 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 where you could purchase tickets and they gave you bento boxes and soondubu (순두부  — 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 really cool place. I really like the city because there’s 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’s just a bunch of neighborhoods. In Koreatown there’s apartments next to buildings and things like that, which I think is really cool. You’re able to walk to so many places and everything is just super accessible.

This is weird, but I have this one, really specific memory of me in Koreatown from when I was eight years old. Nothing really special happened, but I just remember this: I was 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. In the city you can walk around. 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 then the con is there aren’t as many accessible places.

Where’s 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 that’s always like our welcome back home.

How has living through the COVID-19 experience made you feel?
It has made me feel grateful because I haven’t really had many complications during this time. My family has all been safe, our city has been pretty safe, and we’ve been able to keep COVID guidelines this whole time. I’ve just been really grateful that none of my family caught COVID. I definitely 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, but 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 that you can’t see right now that you really wish you could?
Right now, no, because my grandma got the vaccine. At the beginning of quarantine, I was living with her for a little bit, 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 and it’s not like we were doing a lot of schoolwork, so you had a lot of time you didn’t know what to do with. And I think that was a challenge because I’m someone that likes to be busy and constantly be doing things. 

So when my school took a two-week break, we weren’t really doing much, and I felt weird because I was so free. And I was like, when I’m in school it’s super stressful and this is all I want, but now that I have it, maybe I actually don’t.

What has given you comfort and hope during this time?
I’ve picked up a lot of hobbies, which has 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 crochet dolls that are really cute. You basically just crochet things, stuff them, and put some eyes on them. I actually got my church small group leader into crocheting, too. Another hobby I picked up is gardening. We have a garden that I never really used because I was really busy, but I was able to plant new seeds. We already had like 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 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 you’d have to look at the whiteboard, write things down like homework assignments, and sometimes it would be on the other side of the classroom, but now everything for my classes is on Google Classroom. Quarantine has just 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 it 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 dog treat every day. 

My family did a fun activity every day instead, so some of the days we did ornament painting. One day, we went to this mochi shop that I’ve 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 single day.

It sounds like you really adapted well to quarantine and really 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 (a 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 still do keep in contact, but obviously, we can’t go out right now. 

Also, my church has been having in-person services, and I want to hang out with my church group, because I really 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.