Our second meeting

We had our second meeting on December 21st. It went a bit better than our first meeting. She wasn't nearly as tired, and her cold seemed to be a little better. This meeting was about 45 minutes long. We went to a larger room, with a bunch of toys. The foster Mom stayed for a few minutes, and then left the room. She was crying as she walked out, which made me start to cry. We got to spend about 30 minutes with M alone. She was OK at first, and after about 5 minutes she started to scream. I held her close and walked around with her. We cried together. :-( It was so incredibly emotional. Here was my daughter ... someone we had longed for ... and she was scared out of her mind. (rightfully so) We looked different, we smelled different and we sounded different. I can't even imagine what was going through her little mind. Poor thing! The foster Mom came back in the room, and it was time for our meeting to be over. M would spend the next two days with her foster family. We were told that we would get M on Monday morning at 8:30. I was already a bundle of nerves, and very emotional thinking about what the moment would be like for our little girl, and her lovely foster Mom.

After our meeting, we met with the founder, Dr Kim, and a few other adoptive families. We had a traditional Korean meal for lunch. It was absolutely delicious. I could have kept eating, and eating. I'm a picky eater, so I was a little afraid, but it was so yummy! After lunch we quickly changed, and were on our way ...

... to a few markets. We took the subway around Seoul. I could not believe how clean, safe and easy the subway system was to navigate. I felt more safe in Seoul, than I do in the city that we live in. I wouldn't be one bit afraid to walk around Seoul alone, but I would NEVER walk around our city alone ... and our city isn't big, and isn't full of crime.

We did have a hard time finding one of the markets, so we asked quite a few people for help, but nobody seemed to understand what we were talking about. ;-) I'm sure we were probably pronouncing it wrong or something. We did finally find it, and had a lot of fun browsing through all of the treasures. We found a few scrolls, a doll hanbok, a necklace, traditional wedding ducks and a few other things. It was a lot of fun!

We went back to the agency (which felt like a million miles away ... have I mentioned yet how much walking you do in Korea ... ?!) and dropped our things off, checked our email, and decided to go out and walk around again. (seems like a good idea when your legs feel like they are ready to break, and your feet feel like they are about to fall off ... ha!) It was dark, and the city is so pretty at night. The traffic is amazing -- we had to watch out a few times, because motorcycles ride on the sidewalks, and cars will drive right up on the sidewalk to park. A motorcycle nearly ran me down the first night we were there -- scared the crap out of me!

We ended up going to Pizza Hut again to eat ... we're so full of adventure, aren't we?!

next up ... day #3