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!