FINAL STOMPING THROUGH SEOUL

Sorry for the gap between entries, but from the next 3 or 4 entries, you may see that we had really no time to get on the computer and update everyone. Then last night sitting in the comforts of our office chair in front of the computer, I fell asleep. Well, here we go on the updates. . . .



Friday night, we went to bed somewhat reserved and nervous about the next day and picking up Jessica for the trip home. That is when I wrote the last entry. I googled "adoption and stranger anxiety" but didn't come up with much that directly applied to our situation. We had already read enough on it that I wasn't sure if we would find anything new. Then I realized I should write to our agency to get a feel for what to expect. The next morning Christie wrote us a detailed response which ended up be exactly what happened on our journey home. She was spot on. Her email along with my dad's response, helped to take a little of the mystery out of the look ahead.


For our last few hours in Seoul, we had a lot we wanted to do. We actually woke up at 3am - again our clocks were off and a little anxiety acts as an effective alarm clock. By 5am we were out the door in search of the LDS temple. We had the address written down but our taxi driver had no clue. Julie knew of the metro station that was close to the temple. There are two entrances to the metro that have that same name. Murphy knew well that we would be taken to the farthest of the two. After wandering the backstreets, the mainstreets, and every other street in that area, we found the temple. In light of what was to occur in the next 24 hours, the time spent in the temple was a very emotional 2 hours.



From there we went to a bookstore we hadn't had a chance to before today. We wanted to get a few books for Jessica that had Korean and English writing in them - namely interactive kid books we could use on the plane. We also got some crayons, blank pad of paper, and other things we thought might entertain Jessica on the 12 hours of flight time home.



Throughout the trip it was always entertaining to be ask on the simplest of items that the cost was over 10,000. The Korean won has a 1,200:1 exchange rate for 1 US dollar. We were paying 15,000 won for the simplest of souveniers.


Throughout our wanderings in Seoul, we constantly imagine what the editing would look like if we were on "The Amazing Race". We got stuck with the taxi driver that hadn't a clue on where we wanted to go; I am sure on a few occasions that we were wandering in circles around the place we were looking for. Having seen that show so many times, we knew exactly how our scenes would have been edited.



One other thought I failed to explain earlier was Dr. Kim of Eastern shared with us and another couple from Texas there to adopt a child, an authentic Korean meal. Julie did good trying everything. I cleaned off my plate but have to admit that there were a couple of items that took me to the edge of my limits. I maintained all food items in my stomach. It was funny thought, the two items that tried my gag reflects was a simple piece of fried squash and a dim sum (similar to a pot sticker that I have had hundreds of time with Chinese food). It was somethingn they put with it that I wasn't use to. But generally speaking, Korean food was fine though I still much rather eat Chinese food.




Our final stop after the book store was the changing of the guards at the Deoksugung Palace. They had changed the times when the changing occurred so we missed it the day before. This time we got there just before 10:30am giving us plenty of time because 2 different people told us that it would be at 11am. Well, sure enough the changing of the guards occurred at 10:30am. We would have missed it had we stopped somewhere to eat which we were considering. The guards were dressed in old traditional Korean military dress. The ceremony was really cool to see.



At this point we had over an hour before we had to be at Eastern for our "gottcha date". That is the phrase adoptive parents use to mark the day that they "get" their child. Eastern, the night before, had arranged to pick us and our luggage up at our hotel and bring us to their building. We were able to arrange for them to come and pick up our luggage and just meet us at their building at noon. That really helped out not having to worry about getting our luggage there. So off we headed to Eastern with a lot of excitement and a little bit of anxiousness to go with it.