This weekend.

This past weekend after 4th of July my cousin David took a mini road trip from Kansas through New Mexico, the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Hoover Dam and Las Vegas, and then finally, LA/Orange County to visit us. I had no idea he was planning on coming to visit us but it was really great seeing him. David is my mom's older sister's son, who's 5 months older than me, so we've always been closer in age out of all our cousins on our mother's side. He drove up from Vegas on Saturday morning and we all went to the Palm Springs outlets to shop, gambled a little at the Morongo Casino, then went out to dinner. Sunday, he came to church with us to see our grandmother, then we went to the crab place in Redondo Beach pier. Monday morning I woke up early to take David to Huntington Beach. We got there at about noon and spend the entire day there. He originally told me he wasn't planning on driving all the way to LA but he really wanted to see the beaches which is why he decided to make it out here. It was a great time...except he just got really, really burnt. And I mean, REALLY burnt. He looked like the lobster on the Red Lobster restaurant chain icons. It was so bad! He was already terribly burnt from hiking at the Grand Canyon, but the beach  made it even worse! I guess SoCal suns ain't nothin to mess with. I got horribly burnt 2 weeks ago when I went to West Beach with Eric and Elliot! 

It was really great seeing David because I don't get to see cousins very often. I think the last time I saw him was when he visited for the summer of 2011 right before I left for Santa Cruz for the first time. He had been doing summer research studies at Loyola Marymount University so I was able to hang out with him then, and I saw him and his sister Jennifer for 1 night 3 years ago during their spring break, and before that I hadn't seen him since 2005 when we were both 15. I missed him a lot, and I didn't realize how much closer I got with him until 3 years ago. I remember I didn't really care for him and his sister 8 years ago when they were here for the summer but that was back when we were in high school and I was just angry and tired and super moody from swim all the time. I remember I always played with Jennifer when we were younger because we were both girls but I started getting closer to David as soon as we hit our 20s. I guess it just made sense for me because he and I were the exact same age. When we went to the beach on Monday we talked the entire time. A lot. We just caught up on anything and everything, shared college stories (he told me some insane shit that went on when he was studying at Dartmouth for his undergrad) and I told him just as equally crazy stories from Santa Cruz. We bonded, and I think that was the most I really ever talked to him my whole life. We discussed our families, our parents, our crazy grandmother, asked each other whether we'd seen our mothers' side relatives at all in Korea, and he filled me in a lot about our relatives whom I haven't seen since I was about 2 years old. Our conversations would go a lot like "Hey, have you heard last from ______" or "Whatever happened to ______?" David knew a lot more about our family than I did because my mother never tells me anything! We also talked a lot about guys/girls/past relationships/crushes/love life bullshit, the works. We ranted and raved about our siblings (mostly discussed my brother's ridiculous antics and spoiled ways of living), gave each other advice, etc. We just talked for 7 hours nonstop while we were at the beach.

We then talked about life goals and why we're choosing the academic/career paths than we are choosing. He told me about his anxieties about starting med school in New York this fall, and I told him how nervous and worried I was about studying for the GREs and applying to grad school this winter. That was another issue we bonded over...just the idea of being fresh out of college (well more for me, not him, as he graduated in 2011) and being in our early 20s, trying to figure out what path in life to take. I remember my whole life I always felt so stupid around my cousins David and Jenn as they're absolute complete geniuses (I think Jenn did Geometry/Algebra 2 as a 7th grader) and they both went on the Ivy League schools for their undergrad, studying pre-med. David double majored in Classics and Pre-Med, while Jenn did Global Politics and Pre-Med. I felt so awful and inadequate as I had registered with some drugged out hippie school studying English. I guess that's where the Asian side of us comes out...we're all just so used to having our parents compare their children with each other. David and I are usually very good about not doing that, but I still feel stupid next to him and his sister anyway. But as smart as David is, he's super down to earth and isn't snobby in the slightest, which is hilarious because my brother can't even do half of what David does and yet thinks he's the greatest thing in the world since sliced bread. We both talked about that too. 

This weekend was all about hanging out with just family, and I had a great time. It was awesome because I never hang out with my family to begin with. I'm never home, and I'm always constantly with friends. I wanted to change that this year, and I want to make more of an effort to get to know my cousins and bond with them since I never had the chance to. It sucks not being able to see my extended family for years on end. It made me sad about the fact that I didn't realize how cool my cousin was and how much in common we had with each other, and knowing how much I missed out when I was younger. I refused to get along with my cousins when I was in high school (during my angsty teen years) and I was such a complete bitch to them. I really regret it. I don't understand it at all. I don't know why I'd do such a thing. I don't know why it took me so long to realize how awesome my cousin actually was, and it made me reconsider how many more family members I've missed out on where we could've been building great relationships and memories together. Living so far away from family makes you realize that your cousins are strangers or that you have nothing in common with them. My brother has that framework of mind and I did too for awhile but I'd like to change that. One day in the future when our parents are gone we're going to have to work together and stay close, as my parents remind me every day. They'll be our families now, no matter what. I'm glad this weekend reinforced my desires to become close with every single one of my extended family members and to just be so grateful to even have something called a family.