WHAT IS YOUR IMMIGRATION STORY?

I am first generation. My parents immigrated to the States essentially looking for a better future. My mom used to work at the Korean embassy in New York City.  She actually immigrated first and then I think maybe a year or two after that my dad shortly followed and I think a lot of it does have to do with wanting to start a new life better future for us. A big part of it too was my mom hates the cold. My mom coming from Korea just absolutely could not stand the cold. She is a warm summer girl. So then moving to New York, she realized, ""No, New York gets really cold too, girl."" A few years after that, they had my sister in the East Coast, and then shortly after that, they moved to California where it was a lot warmer. It definitely was a mixture of wanting to have a better life for us as her children and then also just hated being cold.

WHAT DOES YOUR CURRENT JOURNEY LOOK LIKE?

My dad, when we were younger, did the immigration process and then he actually was successful in getting his US residency. So, he is currently a US resident, but it's kind of funny now because he moved back to Korea and he's applying for work visas and he's on a visa in Korea, which is kind of ironic. But my mom, she owns two restaurants. She actually just sold one, but she is managing and running two restaurants from the ground up. So it's been really fun to see someone who was a stay-at-home mom find her new calling and new job and a new career for her, especially, being now pushing 60 years old, just having new adventures and just wanting to start something new. So it was really cool because I think as a typical immigrant family, you have to move to a completely new country, not knowing the language, starting new ventures, but as an immigrant mother, it's really inspiring to see that the journey still persists and that immigrant mindset is still instilled in her where she's still trying new things, new adventures, new businesses while still having that mentality of I needing to support her children throughout whatever she does.

My government given first name is Blue. And then my Korean name is Pabat, which means beach or ocean. And then my sister's Korean name is Rukar, which means wave. I'm the beach and she's, my wave. My dad's half siblings were born in the States, so they were very assimilated in western culture and knew English very well. So, when my dad eventually made the move to the East Coast, he was asking one of my aunties, "So I have my first born coming. I don't really know a lot of English names. What are we thinking?" And I think the first few names that they threw around were the typical late 90s, early 2000s Asian girl names, like Ashley. So, my aunt told him, "You're so creative. How about Blue because you love the beach." And then that's essentially how it kind of snowballed into it because my dad was such a creative person, he just didn't want a typical English name. So when he heard the name Blue, he was like, "That's the one."

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