He's ours!!!!!!

It's hard to believe, but we have Henry and we get to keep him!!!! He's our son!!!! At 1:30 this afternoon we went to Eastern and Dr. Kim prayed for Joon Seong and the son of another family. Eastern arranged for a driver so we headed to the car with Henry Joon Seong. I was so very, very happy, but at the same time I was sad for Henry and Mrs. Song. It was heartbreaking and bittersweet watching them. It's awful when something you've wanted for so long causes such heartache to people you care a lot about. I was sad to say goodbye to Mrs. Shin ~ she's become such a dear friend.

Within about 3 minutes Henry had fallen asleep in the car and kept sleeping until I made the mistake of trying to lay him down in the hotel. He woke up and was very unhappy with us. He cried for about 2 hours. We gave him snacks and a bottle and held him and tried to play with him. Poor thing had a rough time. Then we turned on some music and he was ready to start playing and dancing. We got to the hotel at around 2:30 and at 5:40 Brent got the first smile and giggle out of Henry. Since he was better we took a walk outside and got something for supper from the grocery store to eat for supper in our room. On our walk we passed by a man in Insadong who we had bought a couple things from this morning. He had given us a baby gift (a little stuffed bear for free). We of course stopped and talked with him so that we could show off our son! :) Henry loved the walk outside and didn't make a sound.

After eating and more playing I got Henry ready for bed and he finally couldn't hold out any longer -- he went to sleep at 7:40. I know that's early for him, but I thought with no nap he might sleep through the night.

I am so very wrong!! Henry just woke up about 5 minutes ago and he's ready to play! Brent and I are packed so we're going to let him play with us a while. We can't help it -- he's so happy and adorable. He's smiling and laughing at everything. He's already showing signs of being a Daddy's boy. Henry comes to me, but then he quickly walks over to Brent to play or sit in his lap. When Henry woke up he wanted Brent to hold him, not me. I'm totally fine with that -- I'm glad that Henry is bonding with Brent so quickly. :)

Well, I'm off to play. Should be fun!

Great Day!

Brrr! It was cold and windy today--the high was in the 40's. I only brought a jacket with me, so I actually layered a couple of sweaters on top of each other for when we were outside walking. Of course seeing Henry was the highlight of the day, but we had some other fun, too. In the morning we went to the Janganpyeong antique market and I got some really cool antique boxes that are around 100 years old. They are decorated on the outside and inside. They will be very special "treasure boxes" for my kids. After that we went to Dongdaemun Gate so I could see it and take a picture. Dongdaemun Gate is advertised as "National Treasure #1" so I figured if I was in Korea I better see the #1 most important national treasure! I didn't want to be late getting to Eastern, but we had just enough time to go back to Kwangjang Market. It's one of our favorite places and we wanted to eat there one last time. Brent tried the dish pictured above. We're not sure exactly what it is, but it sounds like "topa". Brent thought it was meat in a spicy sauce, so we sat down and he pointed to it. A couple old men said "Oooh!" with smirk on their face. Brent took his first bite and I could tell by the look on his face that it was not his favorite. He liked the sauce, but it wasn't exactly meat in there. He's not sure if it was liver, intestine or tongue. Brent managed to get about 1/3 of it down and then he had to stop. We tried asking one of the men what was in the dish. He said "pig" and then pointed to his stomach area. What does that mean?! I told Brent that at least he knows it wasn't dog meat!

After our meeting with Henry and his foster family we had the honor of going to dinner at Seven Springs with my friend, and social worker extraordinaire, Mrs. Shin. We had such a lovely time! We talked her ear off and suddenly it was after 9 p.m. She is very easy and fun to talk with and that is one of the highlights of my trip. Such a great lady...

More fun with Henry!

We had another great visit with Henry today. Brent and I were very honored that Henry's foster father came to the visit so that he could meet Brent and see me again. Seeing Henry with Mr. Song was a powerful reminder of how close those 2 are and how tough this is going to be on Henry. I was excited that when Brent and I entered the room where Henry was he toddled right up to me as if he was glad to see me. He immediately went back over to Mr. & Mrs. Song, but the initial greeting was there. :) After a little while of playing the Songs and Mrs. Shin left us alone with Henry and the instruction to give Henry a snack if he cried. Well he cried pretty quick, so I gave him a snack (potato stick--tasted like a puffy potato chip) and of course he had to have one for each hand. Henry ate about half of a potato stick and then left that half eaten stick in his mouth while his empty hand went back into the bag for another potato stick. Wherever I moved the snack bag Henry followed it around. Then Henry cried and I picked him up. He kept crying as I patted his back and suddenly I remembered this exact thing happening in January right before he went to sleep in my arms. Henry rubbed his eyes at that point and I knew he was about to go to sleep. Even though his eyes were closed in half sleep, Henry managed to finish the potato stick he had in his mouth. Then he went completely limp in my arms! He slept away while Brent snapped pictures and I just held Henry and loved every second of it. Bliss...

We get to pick Henry up at 1:30 tomorrow afternoon!!!! We'll get him for the afternoon and evening before we leave for the airport at 8 a.m. on Thursday morning. I'm a little nervous.

Nanta

Tonight we decided to celebrate our great day seeing Henry by going to dinner and a show. We went to a restaurant called "Korean Restaurant" and had bulgogi (Korean BBQ). With bulgogi a pan and the meat and vegetables are put in a pan at your table and cooked

right there at your table. The waitress came over and put the pan on our table and turned the burner up on high. We tried to ask her if we cook the food or she did, but she didn't understand any English and the other waitress spoke Chinese. The lady never came back so we flipped the meat and cooked it, but we weren't sure about turning the burner off. We ate the meat -- which was quite tasty -- all the while the mixture is boiling away. Finally we got worried about creating too much smoke so we went ahead and figured out how to turn the burner off. You can see the charred remains of our meal. The other people in the restaurant were looking and laughing at us. If you've never had bulgogi what you do is take a big lettuce leaf (they bring you a plateful) and put some meat and vegetables on, add some hot bean paste, a dollop of rice and then you eat that like a taco. Messy but delicious!

We then went to a show called Nanta. This was a show where the actors and actress are dressed as chefs in a kitchen and they make music and rhythm with kitchen utensils like pots and pans, brooms, knives, the chopping of food, etc. There was a lot of crowd participation -- thank goodness we were not picked! It was extremely entertaining and I highly recommend it.

Henry!

Today Brent and I went to Eastern in the morning. We met briefly with Mrs. Shin and then immediately went to see Henry!! Brent met Henry and there were no tears at any time!! Henry was happy and enjoyed playing with us. He loved going down the slide, playing a little zylophone, and playing ball. At the end of our visit Brent put Henry up on his shoulders and Henry really liked that. We both had a great time and feel that our first meeting went very well. The foster sister came along today, and tomorrow the foster father will come to meet Brent. I'm looking forward to that. I'm still on cloud nine from this morning.

After our meeting with Henry we met, along with 2 other families picking up children, Dr. Kim. She talked to us and showed us the Eastern video. Then we all went up to lunch at the Eastern cafeteria. There we were joined by more families picking up children. We were served bibimbap along with some other yummy foods (you're never served only one thing in Korea). We had some soup, kimchi, honey chicken, fish cake, fried cucumber, meat dumpling, some fruit and a piece of green cake.

I will say that Eastern is extremely busy right now. There are 10+ families picking children up from Eastern this week. People are everywhere, meetings with children are happening in all kinds of different places since Eastern only has 1 meeting room, and workers are moving very quick. All was quiet when I was there in January, but today I noticed the extreme busyness. Mrs. Shin said that next month (May) there will be 30 families travelling to pick up children. I think I may be watching the blogs of some of my friends next month!! Here's hoping!

We wanted to put some video of Henry here along with pictures, but we didn't have to right software to do it. These pictures will have to suffice. Henry's a happy adorable boy!!

N Seoul Tower

One of the places we went today was N Seoul Tower. It is a very, very tall tower that has an observation deck that you can look out over Seoul. At the top is a very nice restaurant called "Top Cloud" that revolves around as you eat. At the bottom is a park that you can then take a cable car up to the tower or walk up a path. Our tour bus took us up to the base of the tower, so we were not able to ride in a cable car. (All my BOF friends can understand my disappointment not to ride in a cable car!:() We looked around and it was an amazing view. It was quite overcast, but I've included a few pictures anyway. Then Brent and I shared a pizza at the restaurant down near the bottom of the tower -- not Top Cloud. There were a lot of people at the tower. I can understand why -- the view is worth the walk!

A Tale of Two Tours

Annyeonghaseyo! We had an interesting day today. It started out fabulous -- I got to skype with Lydia and Trixie!! It was so great to talk with them and especially to see their faces -- I miss them. After that we tried to go to Kyobo Bookstore, but it was closed for remodeling.

We noticed music and banners at Deoksugung Palace, so we headed that way. We saw a re-enactment of the changing of the guards during the Chosun Dynasty. It was beautiful and colorful. I've tried to include a short video of this.

Next we headed to the Seoul City Bus Tour. You buy a ticket and then the bus goes to 24 different hot spots of Seoul. You can get on and off at any stop you want and then go back and catch the bus when you're ready. It seemed like a great way to be able to see a lot of the high points of Seoul without having to walk the entire city and figure out where everything was. We managed to find the first stop and were ready for a relaxing day of riding the bus from place to place and walking around at the stops of our choice. At Naemdemun we got off the bus to explore the market there. It was wonderful! It was sunny and warm, lots of people were out, and I found several things that I needed to buy. Since it was lunch time we stopped at a woman's cart and had lunch. I had some yummy chicken kebabs and Brent had tteokbokki, which is small fingers of rice paste cooked in a spicy sauce. He'd been wanting to try it ever since we got to Seoul. He liked it, but said he wouldn't get it again. It was very chewy and thick.

After Naemdemun we headed back to the City Tour bus stop, but alas we couldn't find the street or buildings we needed. After a lot of walking all around we decided to walk to the next bus stop at Seoul Station. It was a pretty day and it wasn't a terribly long walk. Well, we walked all over the place and tried several different streets on both sides of the street and we couldn't find the bus stop. We eventually made our way to the Seoul Station Mall and walked up and down that road twice and couldn't find the bus stop (the map they gave us was no help). Finally we decided to ride the subway to the next stop. One hour later we had finally managed to get to the next stop. After a 15 or 20 min. wait the bus finally came. Whew!!

Back on the bus we decided to skip the Dongdaemun market and save it for another day, so we next went to Itaewon. We were not impressed with this American base, but I was able to find the scroll guy to write Henry's name in Hangul. It's very cool! We did find our way back to the bus stop and were starting to feel like the bus idea wasn't such a hugew fiasco after all. Next stop for us was NSeoul Tower. We went and on our way back it started to rain. I was fine because my jacket had a hood. Poor Brent didn't have a hood and his jacked wasn't waterproof. It wouldn't have been too bad if the bus had come promptly. Unfortunately we had quite a wait. The bus FINALLY came and we got on. At this point it was past 7 in the evening, so we got off at Insadong, which is close to our hotel. The rain had stopped and lots of people were out in Insadong. We saw some guys making kkultarae (Dragon's Beard) and stopped to watch their little song and show. It was really neat. They would take a little glob of honey (frozen or cold I think) and roll it in cornstarch. Then they would poke a hole in it to make it look like a donut and roll it in more cornstartch. Then they would pull the honey donut apart and twist it, then do more pulling and twisting. All the while they kept dipping and rolling this in cornstarch. After several rounds of this the honey and turned into long very, very thin strands that look like a beard (thus the name Dragon's Beard). They took these strands and wrapped them around a spoonful of 7 different types of chopped nuts. They ended up looking like little white squares. They made me think of a Frosted Mini Wheat. Evidently they are a Korean tradition. We put them in the freezer like the man said to do and they really are good -- very different.

That was our day. A day filled with tours we meant to take and tours we didn't mean to take. I loved all the exploring we did and can't wait for tomorrow to see Henry!!!! Brent has never met Henry and I'm very curious to see Henry's reaction to him.

The video of Deoksugung Palace doesn't seem to be uploading, so I'll try again later.