On the night of November 14, 1978, a six-year-old boy was brought to the United States. This young boy did not know what was happening to him. All he knew was that he was on a plane bound for somewhere. The plane landed at Kennedy International Airport where he was greeted by a family. They had been waiting to welcome him into their family. This young boy was me.

I was put up for adoption in Korea and my family had wanted to adopt me, which means that I have had the benefit of two families. I was old enough to remember things, but now, however, I have forgotten everything. Someday I will go back to Korea to find out what kind of culture I left behind.

I have grown up in a town where there really were few Asians, so I stuck out in the crowd. I made friends quickly and they treated me just like anyone else. You may ask if anyone made fun of what I looked like? Well, of course, I met that kind of person. They are inescapable. I just shrugged it off and told myself that it was their loss that they did not get to know me.

I am glad I was adopted for I have something that others don't: I was adopted, which I can say, for it is true. There are many kids who are adopted from all over the world today. We are the lucky ones for we adoptees get to start a new life. But we must try never to forget our past.

Today I am seventeen-year-old and I know something about my past: my brother was adopted a year earlier by a family in Sweden. We exchange letters once in a while. There is only one thing that I regret about being adopted: when I have fights with my parents and they realize they are losing the argument, they sometimes wonder about what I would be doing if I was back in Korea. I don't understand this because I thought the purpose of adopting someone was to give them a better chance of growing up in a family. Someday when I am older, I may want to adopt a child and raise him/her the way my parents have raised me, but I would do it better for I know what went well and what did not. n