Day 6 con’t – Palace & Seoul Tower

 After court we were pretty hungry, so we stuffed ourselves at a lunch buffet with a variety of traditional and modern Korean foods.

King Sejong

Next, we visited the statue of King Sejong, who created hangul, the written Korean phonetic alphabet, among many other achievements. Koreans are very proud of him and his gift to their people because it gave them separation from using the written Chinese language and literacy to many commoners.

Palace grounds

Then, we toured the beautiful palace grounds which were rebuilt in the 90’s after destruction during Japanese occupation.

A bunch of monkeys

In the Korean zodiac, there are 12 animals representing each of 12 years on a repeating cycle. Since Ji Hae is 12 years younger than Andy and me, we were all three born in the year of the monkey. Ji Hae also told us that people who are born in the year of the monkey are smart, skillful, and flexible ;) Little Stephen was also born in the year of the monkey.

Could be a cute little mouse, I guess :) 

Annaliese was born in the year of the rat, but she preferred to call it the year of the mouse J

Connected to the palace grounds was the Korean Folk Museum, so we visited the two parts of the interactive children’s portion of the museum. One part was about Korean mythology and how the animals of the zodiac interact with the gods to explain various aspects of life and history.

That's Annaliese with the red bear face after eating the wrong thing!

One funny exhibit was portraying the myth of the bear who wanted to become human so the gods told him he was supposed to eat garlic and mugwort for several days. So you stood in front of a screen that mirrored an image of yourself with a bear head and you would try to open your mouth to eat the garlic and mugwort only, since any other foods make your bear face turn red! The other part of the children’s museum was about Asian foods, including rice, noodles, vegetables, and spices.

Purple sweet potato ice flake - yum!!

We don't have a lot of pictures of native Koreans posted here, but a peace sign for pics is pretty common, so she's just doing what they do ;)

 We were still so full from our buffet lunch, that we just snacked on various desserts as we walked along the way that evening. Excellent parenting, right?!? Purple sweet potato ice flake not only tasted great, but was beautiful as well! It is a sweet milk base that is shaved into flakes, topped with sweetened purple sweet potato.

"Poo" emoji-shaped hateok, sorry to be gross!

Next dessert on the trail was a traditional Korean street food called hateok, but in the shape of the “poo” emoji. Strange, I know, but it was yummy! Hard to go wrong with a pancake stuffed with Nutella, no matter what form it takes!

long honey strings

chocolate peanut filling - probably not the original filling ;)

Our third and final dessert of the night *yikes* was the imperial honey dessert previously made for royalty, but now a street food that was apparently made popular recently by being on tv. We got to watch it being made as it was also explained to us (in English). It started out as a solid hunk of fermented honey that was then dipped in cornstarch. He then poked a hole in it and stretched into a large loop that he doubled repeatedly until it ended up as strings as fine hair. The strings were broken into chunks and then a peanut/chocolate mixture was placed inside before being wrapped up in the whitish honey strings. It was interesting and pretty tasty!

Annaliese got a very special souvenir, the traditional Korean formal dress called a hanbok and wore it the rest of the night

Nearing North Seoul Tower

People attach locks to certain areas of Seoul tower and throw away the key as a statement of "forever"

This city of 11 million dwarfs all other cities I've previously visited

It was dark by the time we made it to Seoul Tower. Whether because it was a Friday night, or whether it is always that busy at night, I don't know, but it took us about an hour to wait through 3 lines, ride up to the ticket area, purchase the tickets, and then ride the gondola up to Seoul Tower. There was another option to go all the way up into the donut-shaped part, but we didn’t do that part.

It was pretty late by the time we were done with the Tower, but again there was a line to get down of course, so we ended up walking down 1.6 km steps (that's 1 mile for us Americans) before riding the bus back, eating a skewer of street grilled chicken, and crashing in bed close to midnight. Again, excellent parenting ;) Annaliese handled it like a champ!

Day 6 - Family Court

We attended Korean Family Court this morning and all went well in the end. There was an *almost* critical mistake on my part that caused the social worker's eyes to nearly bug out of her head and me to nearly vomit... After taking an hour's bus ride to the court as we lined up in order of our appointments, they asked for our passports. Hours later, after it all worked out, I can write, "You should have seen the look on her face!" At the time, however I was about to lose control of all my bodily functions. How could I have screwed something up like this, when this is pretty much the last box to check before we come back to take our little boy home? Andy tried to reassure me it would work out and I held Annaliese's hand as I prayed aloud for God to provide for us. After a solid two minutes of panic-stricken bewilderment of wondering what we were going to do while the social worker ran around speaking urgent words in Korean, we offered our NM drivers licenses. The court official told her that would work fine as any picture ID was ok. WHEW! My stress level didn't fully return to normal however until hours later however. Anyway, we met our female judge who was friendly and asked us a few straightforward questions and we were done! That was the whole morning and the key part of this trip. Then we did some sightseeing for the rest of the day, but I'll have to post about that tomorrow while we wait in the airport for our flight home.

That social worker is definitely going to have a story to tell her friends about this family that gave her a heart attack ;P Yikes! Thank you, Lord, for providing for us!

Day 5 - Agency

Dr. Kim, the director of ESWS, gave an interesting talk about Korea and the agency's foundation and current work to us and 8 other adoptive families. They have done and are doing really amazing work here and in other countries. We enjoyed a buffet lunch at the agency while chatting with the other adoptive families. After lunch we got to meet our little guy again. It was a very precious and emotional time.
 
We also had a blast trying on traditional Korean dress called hanbok, saw a couple different areas of Seoul, including Gangnam (the area the old K-pop song Gangnam Style references), and once again had incredibly delicious dinner, grapefruit soju, and tiramisu ice flake dessert.

Meeting Stephen

A few random thoughts strike me after meeting Stephen. One is that we are not just the family swooping into to save this little boy. God is placing him in our family for the benefit of all the members of our family. God has specific and rich purposes in his giving Stephen to our family, not all of which may even be known this side of heaven. God will grow me and change me as a mother as I  love and learn to parent this little boy who is new to our family. The coming months will be hard, yet a joy to serve one of the least of these in the kingdom. Please pray for us all that we will seek to serve with hearts that are joyful and overflowing with God's love.

Also, I wonder how little Stephen will grieve the many losses he will be facing as he gains his forever family. He will recognize the loss of some of them right away, from his foster family, foster home, other beloved friends, his first language spoken everyday, his favorite play areas, comfortable foods, the smell of his home, being surrounded by people who look more like him, and the list goes on. We have learned about how each child processes their grief differently. I don't know if he'll be more vocal or internalized, more energetic or lethargic, deal with food, sleep, relational issues, etc. I know that God will give us grace to walk along side him as issues surface throughout his lifetime. Our good and gracious Father is always able to meet our needs. He gives us himself. He, himself, is enough. Please pray that we'll be able to point Stephen beyond our own ability to help him, to our heavenly and perfect Father.

There will also be an adjustment for our other kids that is different than expecting a new biological baby. Some of Stephen's needs will be surprising for our kids since they've been brought up in our household since birth, they have not only been taught about our expectations, they have come to expect them in each other. That will be new for our other kids to realize that although he's nearly two, he doesn't know certain things about life in our family that they knew when they were that age. Please pray for us all particularly in the first severals months of adjustment to just living together.

God also has incredible purpose in giving us beautiful connections to Stephen's home country. Both Stephen's foster mother and father, as well as Auntie Ji Hae, will be very special members of our extended family. We pray will be able to keep this connections strong for his own benefit, as well as for them and the rest of our family as well.

Stephen is a bundle of energy to say the least and I expect to be exhausted for much of the coming months. Please pray for my health and rest as well.

Thank you all for your prayers! Our Father hears and answers!

Day 4 - Fun walking around

A highlight today was conversation at the mall coffee shop

We had a wonderful day walking around Seoul today. We took the subway, ate sashimi for lunch, spent the hot afternoon in the mall, then walked around the university area near ESWS. God blessed us with some wonderful conversations and a special time today. Really, what a blessing it is to be here. Thank the LORD for all of you and thank you to all our family, friends, and church body who have prayed for us and supported us which has allowed us to be here on our journey to adopt our little one. Thank the Lord for Ji Hae our friend, guide, and translator.

Oh Korean BBQ, I love you! We especially enjoyed the kimchi stew.

Annaliese bravely tried a raw pepper - she had some water pretty quickly after that!!

An old-fashioned sweet treat made from melted sugar and baking powder, called "dolgona"

Delicious cream desserts at Cafe Oumt

15-layer crepe dessert

Day 3 - First Meeting

Outside our agency, Eastern Social Welfare Services

We got to meet another family who was meeting their future son this morning as well while we waited downstairs about 45 minutes before our appointment. Then the couple went to do paperwork with their social worker. About 9:30 am, Annaliese, Andy, and I, all sucked in our breath as we realized that little Stephen was there with his foster mom and dad. It was a more sudden meeting than we had expected, but it was nice to be taken off guard so that nerves hadn't had time to set in. He just ran around in circles and at first, made some loud noises. Then we got out the little ball we brought for him. It was a hit! He loved running around, throwing, kicking, and sharing the ball. After a bit, we got out some bubbles to help entertain as well. Then the social worker took us all up to a small room and we shared some snack with him, talked with the foster parents, and had some rousing peek-a-boo under the tablecloth games! It was wonderful. The kid is full of energy!

Andy playing ball with Stephen

We rode the bus and walked around the market eating here and there. It was HOT and HUMID! especially in the market near the fryers! We also got to see the free Seoul History Museum, came back and napped for 4 hours accidentally, and then went out to dinner at 8 pm :)

Enjoying the market

Fish cake

Inside a small lunch place in the market to help Annaliese cool off

Beautiful new fan

Walked around the Seoul History Museum

Day -2 After a long day, we're here!

Whew! About 24 hours after we woke up at our house to leave for the airport, we arrived at the ESWS (Eastern Social Welfare Services) guest house where we are staying this week.

Bibimap - airline style

Flying Asiana was enjoyable because they were really efficient, boarding hundreds of people on to our plane faster than many much smaller planes that we often have flown. We read, napped, listened to audio books, and ate some airline food. During the middle of the 10.5 hour flight, they had the passengers close the windows so we could nap, which was helpful. Somehow, between the long flight, lack of sleep (it was around 1 am to our bodies), and postnasal drip I've been dealing with, I got airsick. Ugh. We arrived in Seoul at 6:30 pm Monday evening. We went through a painless foreign passport immigration check, picked up our two checked suitcases, then realized we left Annaliese's beloved fedora on the plane and waited for 20-30 minutes for someone to retrieve it. She had been in tears over losing it, but was overjoyed to get it back, so it was worth the wait ;)

We changed some money, rented a WiFi egg (like a personal hotspot) which will allow us to use WiFi everywhere we go for up to three devices for just W8,800 (about $8/day). Perfect! Then we purchased rechargeable cards for the subway at a kiosk, but had to buy a child's card (cheaper fares) at a convenience store, where we also could add money to all our cards. Finally, it was dark when we left the airport and got on the hour-long subway ride. We had opted for the subway (about $10/person) rather than $100+ for a cab ride. We were all worn out after just brief naps over the past 22 hours or so, but sitting up in the clean, bright subway helped us stay awake to get better rest once in bed. I made the mistake of trying to go with Google walking directions instead of pulling out the written directions from the subway station to the agency. So we walked around for 25 minutes, instead of 5-10 :( I was so beat, I just wanted to take a cab for those last 10 minutes. Annaliese was a brave, tired, sweet little trooper and I was so proud of her traveling like a champ. I think she did better than me at the end in fact! ;)

Our room at ESWS was clean, comfortable, and once we got the coolers and fans going, cool enough. We collapsed in bed around 10 pm local time. It was strange to travel across the globe, such that it had been day/light for us for about 20 hours. Although we had hoped to sleep in this morning, all three of us were completely awake and unable to sleep any more by 5:30 am. I felt much better after the good rest and a shower.

Andy and Annaliese are now on a walk to explore nearby places to eat which will hopefully be opening soon. We are so excited to meet our little Stephen this morning, as well as see Ji Hae. How can words describe what is going to happen here soon? We are going to meet someone whom our hearts already love, 100%. Yet, we don't actually know what he's like. Weird to think, but it doesn't matter what he's like - sweet, shy, crazy, whatever. No matter what he's like, whatever joys, sorrows, precious moments, and heartaches are to come, we know that God is giving us this new family member to love unconditionally. At the heart of the unknown, it is not so different from biological children. We love the babies that grow in our bellies before we know them. Granted, there are peculiar parts to walking the adoption road, but not so different in the sense that this is the child that you will always love because they are a part of your family no matter what.