In Korea

It's 5:30 am, a respectable time to get up.  Although a few hours short of normal.  But I have been in bed awake since 2:30 am listening to the loudly laughing men five stories below on the street.  I'm guessing the bar closed around 4 am since their voices were no more.  But the city traffic soon replaced them.  The hum of the air conditioning help drown out the outside noise, but then it caused the vertical blinds to tap tap tap against the glass windows.  This is what one notices when she gives in to her deep drowsiness and goes to bed at 6:30 pm and thus awakes at 2:30 am.

Today is our magical day of welcoming Jae-min into our family.  We have been praying like crazy for him and his foster family as they go through this time of loss and sadness.  We hope his grieving time is short and that we are able to sooth and comfort him.

Yesterday we went on a tour with a sweet twenty-something guide named Elli.  She took us to meander through a palace then to an area called Insadong to shop.  It was a great time.  We got ask her lots of questions about Korea and she helped us find the things on our shopping list.

For our first meal in Seoul back on Tuesday night, Paul and I walked around looking for a restaurant.  The one with the sign, "We speak English" won our won.  (ha, that was a joke.  won is the Korean currency.)  We ordered Bulgogi soup and hot noodle soup.  Before the bowls arrived, the server brought out five small side dishes: kim chi and namul, which are mostly veggies prepared Korean style.  I went for a tan olive and took a bite to find that it was a super small hard boiled egg.  So now we had to determine what kind of bird it came from.  We asked Elli the next day and she said, "You know the story in the Bible of Moses and he takes them out of Egypt and they're hungry and mad that they don't have food and God gives them this bird to eat?"  Quail.  They were quail eggs.

We're not sure how we're going to spend our time until our afternoon appointment at the adoption agency.  The World Cup park and stadium isn't too far and we could probably walk to a University.  For some reason I packed one less shirt than I need, so I should probably buy one.  But nothing is really of interest knowing that we finally get to meet and hold our new son today.

And tomorrow.  What will we do with a whole day tomorrow?  Perhaps we will connect with WooSeok and Inbum.

Thanks for praying for our family.  I'll post pictures probably when we get home, or sooner if we can figure out how to do it here.