What a silly question, right? The worst part was I didn’t ask where is Oregon, I asked what is Oregon.
When I decided to stay in Oregon from South Korea as a short term basis, actually I had no idea. So I had to ask my husband about the state that I’ve never heard of. So sorry for my lack of knowledge of states in the USA. I knew where California is and Seattle is but there’s no room for Oregon in my brain. But the funny thing was I’ve heard about Portland. Yes, Portland in Oregon. I believe there are so many people in the world in the same situation that I had. Trust me. Because I got the same questions from my friends from S. Korea. After living in Oregon for 1 year, I had this feeling of responsibility to show how incredible Oregon is.
How’s like Everyday in Oregon? Oh, that’s actually my blog’s name.
I chose the first step to introduce how incredible Oregon is to the world as the easiest step. As I told you so, I’m the one from Seoul, South Korea and who has a lot of friends who don’t know about Oregon. I remember the first time that I tried to get some information for upcoming travels. But I couldn’t get enough information that is written in Korean which is my first language. And I thought that could make some entry barriers to people who want to travel Oregon. So I made a Korean blog named ‘Everyday Oregon by Doromi’ [Redacted] and keep working on. It’s been 2 years in this 5th of May and I posted more than 500 posts including travel, food, culture, daily life, garden process, and etc. Okay, now it sounds like all about what’s happening to me in Oregon. But that’s not what I expected.
When I first started the blog, I kinda expected that people are going to find my blog and get some information about Oregon AND fall in love with Oregon. But the problem was if there’s no one who’s searching for the information, they don’t know about my blog and Oregon anyway even though I wrote about every detail of my experiences. My targetting as only to Koreans was a too narrow point of view in this online world that we can see any streets in the world through Google Maps. By the time that I was tired of getting no responding from anyone in my blog, I need to find a way to get out of the stage of inactivity of my inspiration. And I realized that every time I go somewhere I firstly search on Google Maps and imagine the place. (But the good news is I didn’t give up my blog. And I would say I became an Oregon expert as Korean.) Yes, this is what I expected!
I started to contribute to Google Maps with photos that I already posted on my blog. Because the photos are selected as the best ones, not overlapped and have my watermark on it. (If you have any chance to find mines, you’ll notice the watermark. Then please say hi to me.) As you can assume, my contributions are mostly photos right now. What I love sharing most on Google Maps is I can feel that I’m the part of this community like an I’ve-been-here club. Also, it’s really enjoyable to see others’ view through their photos and reviews. Same place and different views, that’s what I expected. As I said before, when I need to go somewhere I always find this place at Google Maps first. And I imagine how it would be like. Sometimes it’s just like imaginations, sometimes it’s a total different thing. A few weeks ago, I was searching for places that I went and contributed. And I found out the first photos that you can see on Google Maps at some places were mine. I was always an information taker, but I found out myself as an information giver. And that’s also what I expected. It was a really weird feeling in a good way to imagine that people are planning to visit the places after watching my photos.
Yes,
I love my Everyday Oregon, living in Oregon, introducing as an Oregon expert and being an Oregon nerd.