Life and Times of the Arkansas Stucky Seven

Thursday, October 15, 2009

As we leave Seoul...

Today is our last day in this amazing country. Tomorrow we will get picked up at 8am by the Holt van and take a crazy fast scary drive to the airport in Incheon. Even scarier this time since we will have our precious bundle with us! But it won't be 5:00PM rush hour traffic like last time, so that is good!
Here I am at 5:30 am wide awake for our Gotcha Day! There are so many thoughts swirling around in my head and memories of the week that I don't ever want to forget. So this post may be boring for you but this is our way of journal-ing the trip, so indulge me!
Yesterday just getting breakfast was such a challenge...we had seen a Starbacks and Mister Donut earlier in the week that we intended to hit. So we walk into Starbucks and see that a mocha, one of our favorites, is $5.30! Well to be culturally correct it was 5,300 won. But you just drop a "0" so it is easy! No tax, no tip, drop a "0"! Sounds like a motto! But seriously, overall this week we have felt like prices are very comparable to ours in the States. But $5.30 for a mocha? We couldn't do it! So we walk across the street to Mister Donut (which claims to have "the world's best coffee and freshest donuts!) and they are closed! Don't open till 10:00am!! What is that?? You sell the best coffee and donuts but don't open till 10:00am??? Crazy! But it fits that with the incredible night life in downtown Seoul maybe morning activities are a little later! Wow! Things are even more hoppin' at night! It is something to watch! So in the end we found Tom n Toms Coffee that makes these huge stuffed pretzels (we had apple and cinnamon oozing out everywhere and napkins are hard to come by here!) and really good mochas!
If someone was preparing to come here and had some time to take a side trip first, it seems like it would be helpful to navigate New York City for a week, in English! Then, even though this seems like NYC times 10, you would at least be familar with buses, subways, the endless alleys and crammed in feeling! Not to mention the walking and walking and walking! Boy, have we walked! Yesterday we got up the courage to take the subway on our own and we figured it out! We made it to the HUGEST bookstore on the planet! So incredible!!! Some employees could speak just enough English to help us find an English/Korean Bible for EH! We found some board books with both English on one side and Hangul (Korean writing) on the other. They also had CDs of kid's Christian praise songs in Korean, so we hope they are similar to what our kids are used to!
Overall, we would both say the Korean people are kind, hard-working and beautiful. We had so much help from various people to get where we needed to go, see what we needed to see, eat only what we SHOULD eat : ) and purchase only what would be truly important for Korean culture. Our friend Ju-eun from the City Tour has gone out of her way to carve out more time for outings with us, negotiate sales transactions for us, take us to more great sights around town ( the beautiful stream that runs through the center of this bustling city, the Seoul World Cup Stadium built in 2002, the bi-level Home Plus Store similar to Wal-Mart, within the Stadium, that has an escalator for your shopping cart!), and educate us about the thoughts and feelings of both the young and older generations here. It has been fascinating to just pick her brain and learn from each other. What an unexpected gift her friendship is.
When families adopt children from Korea, you have the option to come here and escort your child back home or you can choose to have a caregiver escort your child to the States and arrange the pick-up at the nearest available airport. We have seen it done both ways and see pros and cons for both. But for us, as soon as we knew there wasn't that huge of a cost difference, we prayed for the opportunity to visit Emma Hope's birth country for ourselves. We again want to thank everyone who truly made it possible for us to be here. We hope someday we can bring our whole family to experience this unique Asian culture, and also get out of the city to some of the remote country areas. But for now, we have been so blessed to learn a little of what makes the Korean people tick and then to be able to pass it on to Emma Hope.

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