Saturday, February 13, 2016

February 13, 2008

It had been a long journey, in every aspect of the word of journey. As I mentioned yesterday, we had fought a hard battle to get to this point in the journey where we were finally going to pick up our daughter. The plane ride to Korea was a mix  of nervous excitement, uncertainty, and sheer terror. It was not helping that my fear of flying is probably number 3 on my worst fears, flying across the ocean for 20+ hours was definitely not my idea of a good time. I was also dealing with my anxiety of leaving my 3 year old son behind to leave the country. Those that knew me then (who am I kidding, who know me now), I do not like to leave my kids. Samuel had also been battling a strep infection and well, he is kind of a momma's boy :). The fear of what Emma would think of us also would creep into our hearts and mind. We had been loving her and fighting for her, but for her, her world was right where she was. We would be taking her from everything that she knew and loved and the emotions that come from that thought are not easy to process. We also had another thing on our heart and mind that only our immediate family knew anything about. You see, a few months before this journey to Korea we had been contacted by our adoption agency that our son's sibling was in the system and they were calling us to give us the first option to adopt her. Here we had been trying to get one daughter home and now we were thrown this curve ball. The moment I heard about this other little girl she was already mine in my heart. Samuel was mine, she was mine. That's how it worked. There was a problem, though, with Korean regulations about the amount of  time between adoptions and age difference between adoptive children. Both of these stipulations would require a written plea that they would make an exception for our case. We were told to to just hang tight and things would be discussed further after our first daughter came home. So, our long trip to Korea was also plagued with the uncertainty that we might have a second daughter in Korea and the heartache of knowing that when we left in a few days we would be leaving her behind.

We arrived in Korea on the 13th. It was late and we were exhausted. We had printed off maps and our friends who had been to Korea just a few weeks before to get their son brought us back maps of the airport and the transportation system. Jeremy had studied the maps and had a pretty good idea on how to get us out of the airport and onto the correct bus to Seoul. We got our luggage, exchanged our money, and surprisingly found the correct bus without any problems. The adoption agency has a reception house that adoptive parents can stay at a reasonable rate, but we thought we would be a little adventurous and made reservations at a local hotel/resident house. We also had a map that the hotel sent us and it had cross streets, landmarks, and which bus stop to get off. We were feeling pretty confident, but we were exhausted and it was 11:30 at night. We got off at the correct bus stop, but found ourselves in the middle of a senses overload. There were people everywhere! The city was ablaze with lights from the business and other stores, the buildings were piled high with business upon business,  the sounds where overwhelming and the smell was unlike anything we had ever encountered. The maps that we were so confident in could have been thrown in the trash. We were so disoriented and everywhere we looked we could see those landmarks that were on the map because there was one on each corner. We knew we couldn't stand in the middle of the street all night, so we started frantically rushing through the streets of Seoul (with all of our luggage) trying to get some bearings on where we were. We would stop several people and show them the paper we had with the address in Korean, but nobody had any idea where this hotel was located. It was almost full blown panic attack as the minutes and almost an hour had passed and we were still on the streets of Seoul. We finally found a man that took us into a local shop that had a huge map of the city painted on the wall. The kind man (I am almost believe was an angel sent to us) and the business owner showed us exactly on the map which way to go and where to find the hotel. Even after their help, we still got a little confused, but thankfully we finally found the hotel and we could finally calm down.

We got checked into our hotel room. Jeremy turned on the lamp and there was a spark and the lamp shocked him and blew all the circuits in the room. He went downstairs and they gave us a different room. It was close to 1 AM when we finally got showered and changed and tried to relax enough to get some rest. We would be going to the adoption agency the next day at 10:30 to meet Emma. The whole ordeal of the night had me on edge and my anxiety was in high gear as I kept imaging us getting lost going to the agency the next day and missing our appointment, not meeting Emma, wondering the streets if Seoul for all eternity....I guess you can say I did not sleep much that night.

Will share tomorrow on our first meeting with Emma :)

Girls decorated cookies after school. Poor Chloe has been blowing her nose so much that her skin is raw under her nose :(

Leaving Seoul

Picture of Emma at her foster family's house

This picture was not taken by us on our trip to Korea. I don't think we even had a phone that took pictures :) But this is a picture of Seoul at night and this is really what it looked like that night eight years ago