We're In Seoul & We've Met Our Son!

Greetings from Seoul! Sorry no post until now, we don't have internet access in the room, so we have to come down to the business center :(

Here's a picture of the sign that kicked off our journey at San Francisco International Airport.


Brian and me just before we boarded our plane.


Here is a shot of our HUGE plane. Biggest I've ever been on.

We arrived Thursday night around 6pm (Seoul time = 16 hours ahead of Pacific time). The plane ride was fairly smooth, just long. 11 hours straight in the air isn't my idea of a party, but the Korean Air onboard entertainment system made it bearable. Brian went crazy with the movie selection and took in 4 movies as well as some 1/2 hour shows. I watched 3 movies and made my own music mix (go figure) to listen to while I read through my magazines.

Brian enjoying the onboard entertainment system.


I was in heaven being able to make my own custom music mix onboard.

We landed and breezed through Immigration and Customs and grabbed our 4 pieces of luggage (3 for us, 1 for Wesley/Gifts). We headed outside to find our van driver from the Korean adoption agency and the humidity hit us like a brick. Whoa, was it thick! I could feel my hair curly up and frizzing out instantneously. We saw our van guy with the "FULLER" sign and started waving our hands in the air like tourists who had never been anywhere - we were THAT excited.

He took us to the "Love Mobile" which we thought was so appropriate. However, after the ride we were about to partake in, it should be labeled, "Hell on Wheels."

I had heard about the "fast driver" from the agency, but this guy was insane. Brian and I have had some crazy cab drivers when we've visited New York, but this was a whole new ballgame. I felt like we were in a movie shooting a chase scene. Seriously. We were weaving in and out of traffic going what felt like 100mph. We finally made it to our hotel in one piece as our driver drove up onto the sidewalk almost taking out a few pedestrians. Whew. After checking in, we went up to our rooms, changed and headed out for a quick bite to eat.

We didn't venture too far because we were beat and hungry. We found a little noodle house in the Hongik University District and decided to give it a try. The host asked us if we spoke Korean and when we said "no" he ended up taking our order himself. The food was good and inexpensive - lots of students there. The city was buzzing with young people and it was still very humid and there was a foul odor permiating. You would get a wiff of it everyone once in awhile between our hotel and restaurant. There was a lot of roadwork being done. I'm not quite sure what the "smell" was, but it was bad - maybe the source of the road being tore up? We came back to our hotel, wrapped the gifts to bring to the agency and went to bed. Big day ahead of us. We were going to meet our son for first time.

So, this morning we got up had some Starbuck's and then headed out to the adoption agency to meet Wesley. I think we were both anxious, but not necessarily nervous. Until. . . we arrived.

Here is the front of Eastern Social Welfare Society (Korean adoption agency)

We went inside and met up with our social worker, Mrs. Shin (who I recognized immediately from our videos) to fill out some paperwork and discuss the rest of our stay. We will have a second meeting on Monday, followed by a tour and luncheon with the director of the agency, Dr. Kim. Then, we get Wesley on Wednesday before our flight. They have so many families coming this week, we didn't get a choice on when to get Wesley and we were actually ok with that - someone else made that decision for us.

Then, the moment we've been waiting for came. Mrs. Shin took us down a hallway to go to the playroom and right before we turned we could see Mrs. Park (foster mom) with Wesley in another room with some other FMs. I got chills and my heart started to race. We entered the playroom and I told Brian, "Ok, NOW I'm nervous." A few moments later, Mrs. Shin came in by herself holding our sweet Wesley. The feeling was surreal. We both said, "Hi" to him and went over and he looked at both of us and smiled. What a perfect smile.

Mrs. Shin said to me, "Ok, now you need to try and hold him" and handed Wesley to me. I took him a few seconds went by and then. . . tears, lots of tears. Then full-blown crying. I told him that it would be ok and bounced up and down trying to calm him. He wasn't having it. After what felt like a few minutes (probably not even that long) Mrs. Shin extended her arms and I handed him back to her. She exited the room to go get Mrs. Park. I looked and Brian and said, "It's ok. I'm ok. It could've gone either way. We knew that." He didn't take any pictures, he couldn't.

Both ladies came in a few moments later with Mrs. Park smiling and laughing exactly the way she's done on the videos we have. She instantly put me at ease. Wesley looked at both of us with tears still in his eyes. Mrs. Park explained (via Mrs. Shin translating) that Wesley's foster brother (this is the first we had heard that he had one) left 2 weeks ago to go be with his forever family in Australia. Wesley's been having a very hard time with that ever since. The two boys were the same age and were very close. He seemed to be much more clingy to Mrs. Park. We spent the rest of our hour doing some playing with Wesley, asking some questions and watching him take a bottle.

We both couldn't believe how big he was. I mean we knew from the health reports how much he weighed, but OMG! His feet are huge. His belly is huge. Everything on this kid is big! I love it! I kept starring at his sweet face while he was drinking the bottle and just couldn't believe that we were actually sitting there face to face with him.

Here are a few pictures of our meeting.






When it was time to go, Mrs. Park wrapped Wesley up and went to take him for his last physical. Mrs. Shin asked us how we thought it went. We told her that we thought it went "Ok." I told her, that we were trying not to push things because we realized that Wesley was having a hard time and we didn't want to scare him. She said she appreciated that. She also told us that she's seen worse which I think was kind of her way of trying to make us not worry. We've been prepared for this. It's going to be a big change for this little guy. Now, you throw in that he's experienced the loss with his foster brother - a bit of a curveball. We'll get through it. We love him and we'll get through it.

We're off to explore. We'll check in later with more. Sorry for the long post. Lots to say. :)