Happy Thanksgiving!

(source)

The Korean wishes happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates it. This year, I am thankful for all of you who patiently waited through the long, quiet stretches of this blog, only to reward it with the record-breaking million pageview post toward the end of the year. Many changes in my life prevented me from posting more frequently; soon, I will have the chance to explain what happened to me this year in more detail.

In this time and age, it is ever more important to remember the spirit of Thanksgiving, the holiday for immigrants. The Pilgrim's dinner with the Native Americans symbolize our ideals as a nation of immigrants: newcomers and the natives, on the same table, sharing a meal.

Beauty of history lies in that the patterns in its fabric repeat endlessly. On the Thanksgiving Day of 1997--some 380 years after the Pilgrims--the Korean Family arrived at the port of Los Angeles International Airport, full of anticipation for the Land of Opportunity. The Korean Family was greeted by natives, the distant family friends who have lived in the U.S. for decades as Korean Americans. And like a beautiful fugue, the pattern repeated once again; the natives helped the immigrants to get settled in, and begin their lives in the new world.

Thus, Thanksgiving Day is doubly special for the Korean Family. We never miss celebrating it. We are thankful for all the great things in our lives, but most of all, we are thankful to be in America, as imperfect as it may seem from time to time. Like the Pilgrims who were grateful for their new lives and new opportunities, the Korean Family is grateful, each and every year, for our own new lives and opportunities.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.