229: Sneak Peek: Love Language on The Girl Doc Survival Guide

Love Language Audiobook Sample Featuring Narrator Da Eun Yoon

Christine shares an audio sample from the audiobook Love Language, narrated by Da Eun Yoon, and encourages listeners to check out Yoon’s earlier podcast episode and pre-order the audiobook via Amazon and other retailers. The excerpt follows a family arriving in South Korea, meeting relatives at the airport, and driving through heavy traffic as the narrator’s mother reflects on how the city has changed over fifteen years and how her memories of home connected to loneliness in America. The narrator expresses excitement to meet family and hints the trip will influence a future decision to move. They stay in a cousin’s small apartment, play video games despite language barriers, and spend days sightseeing palaces, temples, mountains, and a palace in Gwangju with traditional architectural details and customs like leaving shoes outside.

00:00 Welcome and Audiobook Intro

00:30 Arriving in South Korea

01:02 A Changed City

02:01 Family Apartment Bonding

03:12 Sightseeing Across Korea

03:26 Palace Details and Farewell

Transcript

Christine Ko: [00:00:00] Hi, everyone! Welcome back to The Girl Doc Survival Guide. Very excited to share an audio sample of Love Language, narrated by Da Eun Yoon, who was a guest on this podcast a couple weeks ago. Please listen in to her episode if you haven't yet to learn more about her, and please consider pre-ordering Love Language. It's available on Amazon and other audiobook retailers, and I'll put a link to that in the show notes.

Da Eun Yoon: When we first get to the airport, my relatives have big energy on seeing us. An uncle with a mustache and a cousin with long hair and braids like mine call out to my mother, and together we walk to their van after collecting our suitcases.

Driving away from the airport, the [00:01:00] roads crowded with traffic. "Too many cars," my uncle says, "for too few roads, as South Korea is so modern, just like America." My mother is surprised to see how the city has changed over fifteen years, a long time, more than my lifetime. She does not recognize this new city, telling me that she had held onto memories of family, of college friends, of her homeland because of her loneliness in America.

And this new city, strangely, also makes her feel lonely I tell my mother that together the loneliness might go [00:02:00] away. I tell her I am excited to meet family, to visit this country, her country, my father's country, not knowing the visit is one step toward a decision to move My cousin's apartment seems small to me compared to my two-story house.

But small is okay to me. Cozy My two cousins share a bedroom with a bunk bed, and we play video games in their room, car races, battles, puzzles. The instructions in Korean, but my cousin has been learning English at school, and she does her best at translating. To me, there is no trouble, [00:03:00] and we all play together, two cousins, my sister, and me, even though we don't speak the same language.

A day, a week, a month full of sightseeing to Korean palaces and Buddhist temples and famous mountains Gwangju. A palace. The roof with curved colored tiles, the doors sliding, fancy rooms with wood flooring, others with floors of Korean mulberry paper, hanji. The buildings elevated a few feet off the ground.

Shoes left outside, even though no one has lived in the palace for centuries.

Christine Ko: Thank you for listening.