An article from Canada about an adult adoptee from Korea and her search for birth family has me thinking this morning.

A young women, adopted at 22-months in 1976 writes about her experiences with the transracial aspects of adoption and her feelings about being Korean.

When her mom died of cancer when she was twenty, she "ached to know" her past and her birth parents.

What were they like? Did I look like them? Why did they give me up?

When a friend moved to Korea to teach English, she decided it was the perfect time to visit her birth country. Her family was "extremely supportive" of her "quest".

The story is full of revelations and insights, but the reason I'm inspired to write about it today is contained in this sentence: It seemed ironic that I would be experiencing culture shock in the country where I was born.

As I've mentioned, we're planning a trip to Cambodia, my children's birth country. It's being scheduled for August, and we're all getting excited as arrangements are made and visions of the holiday begin to form.

Sam is old enough now to understand that he and Cj were born in Cambodia, so a big part of the reason for the trip is to begin building within him both pride and familiarity. It's important to us that our kids grow up knowing Cambodia, not just its history -- great and tragic -- but the way it looks, smells and tastes.

We hope our kids are able to avoid eventually feeling out of place in their country of birth by building a relationship with it that grows as they do. No, they won't speak Khmer or work in rice fields or learn to ride six to a moto, but they will know what they will know and experience Cambodia as Cambodian-born adopted children living in Seychelles ... their reality.

The country is changing at lightening speed, and we know the changes between this trip and the last time we were in Phnom Penh in 2005 will be dramatic. The pace is quickening, so we plan to let no longer than three years pass between visits, trying for one every two. Each trip will take us to a new part of the country for a while, and each will have us spending a couple of days working at AOA, the orphanage that cared for Sam and Cj until we could bring them home.

My children are citizens of the world, but no matter how many passports they carry or which parts of the globe they choose to inhabit over the years, they were born in Cambodia. That's where their stories begin.

For a look at culture from a cultural anthropologist click here.

And for more, see the next post.