Our time in Korea: Week Two in Review

We have stayed busy with touring around Seoul.  This past Sunday following our busy week of meetings and court we took it easy and rested.  In the afternoon we got outside and walked over to the  World Cup Park which is a large park full of trails and areas you can look over the Hangang River and the World Cup soccer stadium.  You could also look over and see the Hangang Park that is located on the river banks.  We could see people out running, walking, biking, and skateboarding.  This definitely seems like a popular place to get outdoors in Korea!  We plan to visit the Hangang Park next week.  We familiarized ourselves more with the surrounding areas of our apartment and took note of the many parks surrounding us to take Charlie once he is with us :)

World Cup Stadium

Monday we went out to the same area as the Seoul Tower in Myeong-Dong.  Brent had researched a popular traditional Korean restaurant known for their delicious noodles and dumplings.  This place did not disappoint and we really had great practice with using our chopsticks and eating noodles :)  We are getting better each day! The rest of our time in Myeong-Dong we just walked around the shops taking in all the views of the city and the beautiful Christmas lights and decorations.

Tuesday we checked out another area of Korea, Insadong known for it's markets, art, and antiques and where a recommended street vendor who makes hotteoks (similar to a fried donut with cinnamon and sugar melted on the inside) this also researched by Brent :)  It was delicious!  We walked and shopped in this area all afternoon and it was really neat to be able to see the older buildings of Korea and it's architecture.  

Wednesday we decided to take a tour of the Gyeongbokgung Palace.  It is the largest palace in South Korea and was built in 1395.  It is absolutely beautiful!  The weather was beautiful this day and had actually warmed up to be comfortable as the tour is all outdoors. We joined the English speaking tour versus walking around and reading information at the sites.  We were so glad we did this as we learned a lot about the history of Korea during this tour. 

Changing of the guard

Entrance of the Palace 

The King's throne

Banquet Hall for parties

Private quarters where the King and Queen would drink coffee.

During our tour we learned that behind the exit of the Palace is the "Blue House". The Blue House is the executive office and official residence of the President of South Korea. As Brent and I exited we took a picture of the Blue House.  

After touring the Palace and seeing the Blue House we decided to try some Korean BBQ.  Brent again had researched out a recommended place so we hopped on the subway and found our way.  The food in South Korea has not been disappointing it has been amazing! When ordering Korean food they give you so many little side dishes with your main meal including soups and salads.  When eating Korean BBQ they bring your meat to you raw and you cook it at your table eating it along with all your cute little side dishes :) We had a good time cooking and eating together.  

 Thursday and Friday was Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We ended up hanging around the apartment more during these two days just resting and spending time together.  We found a church service to attend on each of these days, more details in the "Christmas in Korea" post.  We have enjoyed our time in Korea so much and we are grateful for this opportunity to be able to learn and experience as much as we can during our final wait until we get to see Charlie again!

Christmas in Korea!

When we first realized we would be in Seoul during Christmas this year we were a little sad to know we would miss this time with our family and friends.  However we were very excited and thankful that even though Charlie would not spend Christmas with us at least this year the three of us would be in the same country!

Over the past few years now we have gained a much better understanding and insight into how holidays we celebrate with our families can be super hard and at times just sad when you are missing someone you love.  As these holidays come throughout each year the reminder of absence and or loss is magnified.  Celebrating birthdays, Christmas, Mother's Day, Father's Day etc. at times has been heart breaking.  It is the worst kind of heart break because on one hand you want to celebrate with your family and friends on these happy occasions but deep down inside there is this pain, this part of your heart that is missing.  We have found that we have had to make a true effort and "dig deep" to avoid anger and bitterness during these times, and at times we have failed.  To make an effort to focus on the blessings in our lives of what we do have and not just focus on what we do not have.  We have come to realize we have been able make these efforts and to "dig deep" by trusting in Christ even though we may not understand these hard times.  Trusting and knowing that Christ is good and that He is faithful has led us to true repentance of our bitterness and anger, allowing peace in our hearts during these hard times.

This year being in Korea we have had the opportunity to be away from the busyness of the Christmas season and to be able to slow down and reflect on all that God has done in our lives.  So many blessings each and everyday!  Being able to focus on Christmas, the birth of our Savior.  Taking the time to really read God's word and remind ourselves that we have salvation through Jesus.  Christ was born, lived a perfect life, and died a death we all deserve, rose from the grave after 3 days in order for us to be made righteous before a Holy God. Amazing! We are so thankful for this time and reflection.

We both have missed our families, friends, and our Christmas traditions this year.  We were able to face time to wish our families a Merry Christmas which was nice and a little difficult due to the time difference!  One of our traditions is that we always attend a Christmas Eve church service, so we began to search online different church services available in Seoul.  We found a church nearby and attended a candle light service.  At that service they had information on several local churches who were gathering together for a large service on Christmas Day, so we attended this service as well.  Both services were really neat experiences!  At the Christmas Day service with all the local churches coming together there were a lot of people of various nationalities.  We have learned from our time here in Korea, many people from different countries are moving to Seoul for business, jobs, military and teaching opportunities.  It was just awesome to see so many different people of various nationalities and different backgrounds come together to worship.  Brent and I both have been blessed to be able to travel internationally on different mission trips and there is something so special about coming together with other believers from different nations who are your brothers and sisters in Christ. You have this immediate bond with complete strangers and you just understand each other even though you may not speak the same language.  My faith in Christ is continuously strengthened during these awesome moments because I get to see before my own eyes how God is building His kingdom through His people.  I think of what John writes in Revelation, "After this I looked, and behold a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation from all tribes, and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!" And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, "Amen! Blessing and glory, and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen."
Revelation 7:9-12

We are thankful to the Lord that even on this Christmas in Korea away from our families, apart from Charlie, he has blessed us immensely with adopting us into His family, and surrounding us with our family, our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Merry Christmas from Korea!!

Brent and Beth

Preliminary Approval!

We received word today from our agency that we were granted preliminary approval through the court system.  This basically means the judge ruled in favor of our adoption following our court appearance!!  Going forward there is a fourteen day appeal period where birth families are able to appeal the judge's decision.  Our agency communicated to us that this appeal period begins today, December 23rd and receiving final approval could take up to 16-20 days (not just 14 days) due to extra time needed for the court to notify the Korean agency and then pass on the final approval to our US agency. There is still a possibility while we are waiting for the appeal period to expire the judge could publicly post our case information which adds at least an extra two weeks.  This is usually done if there is no response from birth parents or when they cannot be located.  We realize this is a super vague timeline, but this seems to be the nature of the adoption journey.  Once we have final approval a date and time will be set for custody.  This will be our forever family day and this is what we remain focused on during the uncertainty of the this last bit of waiting!

Seoul Tower and Namdaemun Market

Friday night I think I slept the best yet!  We were both still dealing with some jet lag and also recovering from the whirlwind of emotions this past week. Saturday we stayed around the apartment in the morning and decided to head out to visit Seoul Tower later in the afternoon.  We knew it would most likely be crowded as Seoul Tower is visited by many tourist and very popular at sunset to see all the lights surrounding Seoul.  We decided to take the cable car to the top instead of hiking since we were "recovering and relaxing" that is what we told ourselves.  It was still daylight once we made it up to Seoul Tower.  Below the observatory area there are gift shops, cafes, and restaturants. We decided to go ahead and grab dinner at the "Best Burger in Seoul".  It was pretty delicious and the restaurant had great views of the city.  We finished dinner and headed on up to the observatory packing into an elevator.  The observatory is amazing.  You can walk around the circular design and see all of Seoul.  You can't appreciate how large this city is until you see it from Seoul Tower.  The sun began to set as we took pictures and then we were able to see the city at night with all the beautiful lights.  It began to get really crowded so we headed back down.  At the bottom of the tower there are still amazing views.  There is an area designated for "locks of love".  Significant others come to this area and leave padlocks with written messages on the locks declaring their eternal love.  There are thousands and thousands of locks on display.  Brent and I did not end up bringing a padlock so we did not participate.  However, we did have some quite time just sitting together and taking in the views.  On our way back to our apartment we stopped in Namdaemun Market, one of Korea's largest and oldest markets.  We browsed around the streets that are filled with vendors selling food, clothing, and handmade goods.  You literally walk shoulder to shoulder with each other in market, people are out and about everywhere in this city!   We look forward to touring more of Seoul and learning as much as we can about Korea during our stay.

 

Court Appearance!

We met early in the morning at our agency with the other families and loaded up in two separate vans. It took about an hour to arrive at the Seoul Family Court.  We enjoyed the ride through the busy city of Seoul.  We also enjoyed this time getting to know other families.  Once we arrived at court it was very structured.  Our personal items were placed in a locker and we sat in a particular order of court appearance.  Sitting outside of the courtroom waiting you could just feel the anxiety amongst all the families.  Brent and I were the second family to appear before the judge.  We were ushered into the court room to our seats.  Before sitting we greeted the judge in Korean "anyong-haseo" and bowed.  We have been practicing our Korean greetings with each other for a while now and in some way I am sure it sounded somewhat southern :)  The first question was to Brent about the sports he played when he was younger, and about me playing softball. We discussed how softball could be considered harder to hit the ball due to the distance from the pitcher's mound to home plate is much shorter in softball versus baseball.  This gave us a since of relief!  Now we can both talk sports!  The second question was for me about my job and why I chose to work with older adults.  The third question was back to Brent why he chose engineering when he enjoyed history in school.  The fourth question was about Brent's job defining exactly what he does on a day to day basis.  The translation in Korean seems so difficult it makes for general conversation very difficult and awkward. So even though the questions themselves were very easy and straightforward the translation between the judge, translator, and Brent and I was difficult.  Brent explaining his job duties seemed to take forever and caused much confusion for the translator and the judge because what Brent was describing just did not translate well.  It's very similar to the difficulty we had in our meetings with Charlie's foster mom.  The last question was to us both he wanted to know how we are enjoying our new house.  After the previous confusion it was nice to end with such a casual question.  We responded we are enjoying having more space and a fenced back yard.  He wanted to know if it was an existing house or newly built house.  Brent explained it was an older house however we did some remodeling and updates.  He smiled and told us there were no concerns with our paperwork and he would be issuing preliminary approval Monday!! We were so relieved court was over!  We gave a thumbs up as we walked past the other waiting families outside the room.  After all the families had appeared we loaded back up into our vans and the agency dropped each one of us back to where we were staying.  Brent and I had a late lunch close to our apartment and just relaxed the rest of the evening as we were so thankful and relieved the whole court process was behind us! One step closer to having Charlie with us.  Oh the things we have gone through for this boy,  but totally worth each and every step!

Lotte Mart and 2nd meeting with Charlie HyeonWoo

Yesterday we had the day off with meetings. We finally slept through the night and took our time getting ready through the morning time. We talked and caught up with our families and finally unpacked!  We ended up eating lunch at a little cafe close by, there are coffee shops on every corner which is amazing! We ventured out riding the subway to Seoul Station to check out the surroundings since this is a larger subway station.  I had read about Lotte Mart which is similar to Walmart or Target.  We walked probably 300 ft from the subway and walked right into Lotte Mart!  This place was crazy! There were so many people but we ended up walking around just checking everything out for about two hours!  There were three floors packed with everything you would every need from groceries including fresh meats and produce, to electronics! We decided to go ahead and buy some groceries and a few items for Charlie for his Christmas gift as we were planning to give to him tomorrow at our second meeting.  It was fun to pick a few items out for him.  A coloring book with crayons, sticker book, Christmas PJ's, bubbles, and a Pororo book in Korean (which is Korean cartoon character that all the kids seem to love).  Even in our meeting with him Tuesday, Charlie took his little finger and pointed out Pororo in our meeting room introducing us to Pororo! We did not end up taking any pictures at Lotte Mart, I think we were too amazed on all that was going on around us! We had a good time exploring even though it was similar to Walmart :)

The second meeting with Charlie was in the afternoon.  But before we met with him and his foster mom we were scheduled to meet with Dr. Kim the president of the agency followed by lunch with her and the other families. The meeting and lunch were both wonderful.  She explained and spoke a lot about the history of Korea and the adoption agency. We also really enjoyed the time with the other families to be able to talk with and share stories.  There are five total families attending court all together on Friday. It seems pretty amazing how you share a unique bond with other adoptive families so naturally.  The lunch was delicious! We were served Bibimbap which is a signature Korean dish. Brent was complemented on his use of chopsticks, it was a proud moment for him :)

After lunch we went back downstairs to the cafe and waited with other families until our second meeting with Charlie.  We had a feeling the foster mom would be early again so Brent peaked out into the lobby and sure enough bouncing in again came our Charlie HyeonWoo!  Our social worker was finishing up with another families meeting so we had another 20-30 mins again to play in the lobby.  We played with the power wheel car again but that didn't hold much attention!  Charlie ran back to his foster mom again calling out to her to make sure she was close by.  We followed him into the agency office where there are a few toys in the reception area.  We put together puzzles, stacked rings, and then he grunted and pointed to the door while sitting on a push toy wanting Brent to push him out to the lobby :)  Using his pointer finger and grunting (this went on for another 10 mins) we pushed him around on the riding toy at his demand :)  During this time he both let us hold and carry him around checking out the cafe that had an intriguing small Christmas tree and snowman. It was then time for our meeting so we went back upstairs to the meeting/play room.  We gave him his Christmas gift which was fun.  He LOVED the bubbles and we have the cutest video of him cracking up at the bubbles.  He played his Pororo sound book a few times, played with stickers and crayons,  and of course we all shared another snack :)  He would share his snack by throwing goldfish at us! Overall it went very well  and that hour just seemed to fly by.  We did see a little more of his grumpy two year old self as he seemed to be more tired since it was later in the afternoon.  He wanted to do everything "himself" and would get grumpy at times if you tried to help.  He also did NOT want to put on his gloves and coat when it was time to leave.  We have no idea what the foster mom told him but with a raised voice whatever she said he stopped immediately and obeyed her :)  The foster mom told us his best time was in the morning.  We were thankful for this as we needed a reality check at this point to remind us that this process isn't always going to be sweet and fluffy, we know we are going to go through some really hard times ahead.  It was tough saying good bye again and we already miss him so much.  But we know the next time we see Charlie will be custody day and he will FINALLY be in our arms forever. 

Meeting Charlie HyeonWoo!

I woke up about every two hours and could not sleep. Between jet lag and the anxiety of meeting our son for the first time neither one of us slept very well.  We finally got out of the bed around 6 am and began getting ready and gathering all our gifts and children's care packages sent from other waiting families.  Our meeting was scheduled at 11:00 am and we ended up leaving two hours early! Which we are glad we did because even though we had our handy dandy wifi egg and phones it still took us a while to figure out which bus to take and which subway to use to get to our agency.  We arrived at the agency about an hour early and they have a little cafe in the bottom floor.  The cafe is staffed by single mom's who were able to keep their children and by working at the cafe allows them a source of income to be able to provide for themselves and their baby.  In Korea it is very difficult for single moms to keep their babies as culturally they are not given opportunities for jobs, many times their family turns against them, and even unable to continue with their education if they were in school.  There is also not much support of single moms from the government. It is absolutely heart breaking the choice these mom's have to make to give up their babies.  In my mind and heart this is the most selfless act possible to give your child life by birth but then give your child a future through adoption.  We will be forever grateful for Charlie's mom.  We do not know her exact circumstance but we do know she chose life her son and it was her hope to allow him to grow up to live a happy life with adoptive parents. We promise to fulfill her hope and have already loved this boy with our whole hearts since the day we saw his face 20 months ago.

I couldn't even really drink my coffee I was so nervous!  My hands were shaking as I would try to take a sip.  After attempting to drink our coffees we walked over to the office still about thirty minutes early  to let our agency know we were here and waiting in the lobby. We stood around for a few minutes and then I looked over to the door.  Bouncing up the steps outside came our son!! We walked through those double doors like he owned the place!!  The foster mom nor he saw us and turned left toward the office. Brent and I looked at each other in amazement!! A few seconds later one of the social workers walked the foster mom and Charlie over to us and said, "you can play here in the lobby, this is your son." I can still hear those words in my mind, "this is your son." Those were the sweetest words I have ever heard. Charlie starred at us for a few seconds and I really think he recognized us from our pictures, then he ran over to a power wheels car they had in the lobby. We greeted the foster mom who speaks absolutely no English, and of course we do not know any Korean.  So we held hands for a few seconds and I tried to thank her the best I could.  From this point on I felt like the world stood still and there was no one else there except the three of us.  Charlie needed help to get in the toy car so I reached down and picked him up!  Even though holding him for less than 1-2 seconds that moment was worth every second we have waited in this adoption process over the past three years.  He kept looking at us with occasional grins, we pushed him in the car, gave high fives, clapped, helped him buckle himself in the car.  He would interact with us but about every 5 mins would yell out for the foster mom "umma"to make sure she was close by, she would respond and he would keep playing.  This went on for about 20-30 mins and then we headed up stairs to a meeting room where we spent about an hour playing, tickling, giggling, and eating snacks.  I was also able to ask the foster mom with the help of social worker about Charlie, what he's eating, bed time routine, potty training etc.  In the mean time Brent was throwing Charlie up in the air with squeals of excitement.  At one point while I was attempting to talk with the foster mom, Charlie came over climbing on my back grunting and pointing to a light switch he wanted to turn on and off  :)  The communication was really difficult even with the social worker present due to the language barrier so the questions had to be short and simple.  I was so hoping to express our gratitude to the foster mom but it's just not possible.  At first I thought it was my southern accent that the social worker had difficulty understanding me but after talking to other families this seems to be just the way it its! We had some of the sweetest moments with our boy, I will always always cherish and remember these sweet first moments.  So many giggles and wiggles from this boy! Once the meeting was over we said our good byes until the next meeting scheduled for Thursday.  We watched as he bounced down the steps and turned and waved telling us bye.  We left the agency and just wondered through the streets of Seoul. We were just trying to process all that had just happened.  We finally just sat down on a bench, talked, and looked at pictures we had taken and then I just began to cry.  It was a happy cry, a cry of relief and gratefulness. I think all the moments leading up to meeting Charlie finally hit me at that moment.  We are so thankful for God's sovereignty in all of this.  It is absolutely amazing, we are so grateful to the Lord to be chosen as parents for this precious boy.