IKAA is a collaborative umbrella for Korean adoptee organisations around the world. Every three years since 2004, gatherings have been held in Seoul to bring everyone together under one roof. This year, that one roof was the Lotte Hotel in Seoul, a nice venue with a lot of chandeliers.

The organisations that form IKAA are all run by Korean adoptees, rather than adoptive parents or adoption-related agencies. Amongst the adoptee community, there's a broad spectrum of views on transcultural adoption, with some vehemently opposed to it, and others who think it's the best solution to an unfortunate social problem. Korea has some strong cultural elements that put pressure on single mothers to relinquish their babies, while various social taboos here discourage domestic adoption. Although I wouldn't say that I regret being adopted, I do wish that the issues involved were more openly discussed in Korea. And I think acknowledgment is well overdue for those who are doing something about it.

The last time I saw a bunch of adoptees in a hotel lobby was three years ago, at the 2007 gathering. It brought back distant memories of my bemusement while walking amongst a group of Korean-looking people speaking fluent Norwegian, Dutch and Swedish, and feeling like a foreigner amongst them.

The whole gathering was put together with the sweat of hard-working volunteers from across the world. At SRTM, we had to send about sixty emails back and forth, just to organise a wine party for one night. 

My estimate for the number of emails needed to organise the 2010 IKAA Gathering? Between 6,000 and 8,000.

We occupied a few floors of the Lotte Hotel for various meet-and-greets, as well as symposiums and workshops. I was on a panel for advice about working in Korea, which seemed to go fairly well. The summary of what I had to say was along the lines of 'proceed with caution.'

This country is a nice place to live for a variety of reasons, but like any place with a lot of Koreans, it can occasionally drive you nuts.

At the first meet-and-greet, I saw a few familiar faces from some of my earlier adventures in the motherland. 

Most of those adventures involved fruit-flavoured soju cocktails.

The food at IKAA gatherings is always amongst the best that a cash-starved Korean adoptee graduate student can hope to consume. If I wasn't an adoptee, I'd pretend to be one just so that I could eat the food.

On the podium is Tim Holm, the president of IKAA and a man who can make the logistical mess of such a gathering on a grand scale coagulate pleasantly. The feat could be likened to billions of tangled computer power cords all combining to form the perfect image of a daffodil.

The opening ceremony went off without a hitch. You can spot adoptees in the audience who are first-timers to Korea, because they watch the samul-nori performances with wide eyes, open mouths and excessive use of digital cameras. 

And you can spot the old-timers because they're the ones scanning the audience looking for the first-timers.

I've optimised by buffet strategy over many years of buffeting. On a side note, I think the letter 't' is pronounced in the word 'buffeting'. What do you think? Anyhow, my buffet strategy involves the following guidelines:

1) Avoid rice, bread and anything that looks like it has flour. Break this rule if every other option looks terrible.

2) Use lettuce sparsely, as it is very demanding on plate real-estate. Lettuce leaves can be placed on top of other items, to make it look like you made healthy choices.

3) Arrange items with sauce or gravy on your plate so that they are separated from each other, with no possibility of cross-saucing. Explain to your table friends about your accomplishment.

Here's an ice sculpture that was made for the occasion.

And in the picture above is Liselotte's impossibly cute little daughter, who enjoyed melting what she could of the sculpture, using the heat of tiny palms. I was tempted to explain to her about the thermodynamics at play when she puts a palm on ice, but I had a feeling that it would have been futile. Especially seeing as she can only understand Danish.

Part 2 coming soon!