Meeting Number two

Meeting number two was again scheduled for one hour in one of the playrooms set up in the adoption agency in Seoul. Violet again was very active and playful. She wanted to play with Jae and even several times said to Jae, "come on brother" which is just amazing.

She is going to compete with Jae's activity level soon after coming home. 

We tried getting a family of four picture but with two active children with new toys in the room, that proved to be a difficult task.  

Another bit of good news that we learned from foster mother was that Violet like most kinds of fruit. She even fed Jae and I strawberries and bananas during one of our visits.  Nice to have kids who enjoy eating healthy foods.  

Violet seems ready for ballerina class.  Dressed in her tu-tu (or whatever you call those fluffy skirts, (I guess I'll have to learn that type of stuff) she liked trying to walk on her tippy-toes at all times.

To end our meeting Violet gave us hugs and kisses. It will be hard to wait until we get final approval to see her again, but Jae will no doubt keep us busy.

Today we have the court appearance in which we speak to a judge via an interpreter for approximately 10 minutes and from there we wait for the afore mentioned final approval call.

First meeting with Violet

Holy cow! That went a lot better than I could have imagined.

Since this is our second time adopting my expectations were realistic when it came to meeting Violet for the first time on Tuesday. When we first met Jae he barely acknowledged Angie and I other than to occasionally check out what we were trying to lure him over to us with.

When Violet first came into the room in which we were waiting, it was one of those dreams that adopting parent's have, that is all together unrealistic.  She walked right over to me and looked at me for a couple seconds and gave me a hug. It is obvious that her foster mother had prepped her for our meeting by showing Vi pictures that we had sent of Angie and I in care packages over the last couple years.  That was all we could do up until now to help with the transition from foster family to forever family; send her pictures of us and even the dog and cat and pictures of our house.

It was a big day, exciting, to say the very least.  However it was also a relief, knowing that maybe just maybe the transition for little Violet will be easier than what I remember it was for Jae.  Now I'd be a fool to not admit that having a playmate in Jae seems to also be beneficial and a "role-model" for Vi.

Angie and Violet also seemed to have a connection that is already "motherly" as Violet stared into her Mom's eyes several times.

Today we see her again for another hour before we have to leave her for several more weeks.

Here's to hoping that meeting number two goes as good or even better than meeting number one.

National Adoption Month

National Adoption month doesn't get nearly the publicity that other months get like breast cancer awareness month, black history month, or especially recently Movember. Nothing against any of these but for the month of November I'm going to try to resurect my blog and update it as frequently as I can with issues related to adoption.  (comment: I started this on November 1st, saved it as a draft and am only now, on 11/15 finishing it up, so my plan of updating often doesn't seem likely.)

To kick off my first entry in over three years let me begin with stating every child, kid, person deserves a a chance to live a good life.  That life should be with parents that care about them, love them and can provide for them.  Everyone has something special to offer, a gift, talent or ability that can make them unique.  When kids spend their childhoods without parents the chances of them discovering this gift greatly dismissed.  

Just look at the New York City Marathon wheelchair female winner Tatyana McFadden.  She was adopted and by winning the NYC  marathon, she won the grandslam of marathon wheelchair racing. That means that she won the Chicago, Boston, New York and London marathons all in one year, becoming the only person to ever do this... And she's done this twice.  What's my point here? She was adopted.  If she hadn't been adopted, I bet she would not have the good life that she has today. She lives with spina bifida and by all accounts lives quite well.

There are so many good kids in need of a good home out there.  Think about giving one a good loving home.

Korean words and phrases

In a prior post I mentioned that I don't know too many Korean words.  However, I have picked up enough to be somewhat useful and I'll share some of these words and phrases here.  Typing them also might help me remember them better.  Here goes:

Hello: An-young-ah-say-yo
Thank you: Gamsa Hamnida
Yes: Ne
No: Anio
Thank you for the meal: time-mo-go-sa-ne-da
Delicious: my-see-saw-yo
cold water: naengsu
How much is this?: egor all-my-oh
It's too expensive: Neomu bissayo

Korean Barbeque: pure-go-gee
street food: pun-she
spicy rice cakes: doc-bog-gi
fried dumplings: mon-da-chichen
fried vegatables: ah-to-chichen
fried sweet pototoes: coo-coo-ma-tigen
fish cakes: oo-dang
sushi: min-pop

100: baek
1000: chun
2000: icheon
10,000: man

Stupid Frenchman

Regrettably, I'm only able to speak/mumble a few words in Korean (maybe my next posting). However, I don't want to seem like an arrogant American not willing to try to speak the local language so I had a plan. Whenever I can, I'm trying to speak French.  I think I've said "oui" (yes), "si-vous-pla" (please) "Merci" (thank you) about 10 times already. 

I'd rather have the Koreans say "stupid Frenchman" instead of "stupid American".

Meeting Jae Day

Today was a good day. We finally met our boy Jae.  It wasn't the "dream" meeting that either Angie or I hoped for, where he would recongize us from pictures and run towards us awaiting the his first parental embrace.  Rather it started off as expected with him crying as we tried to hold him.  We could tell though that he had recognized us from the picture we sent months earlier. 

Angie and I got down to the meeting area a couple minutes earlier than the "early" time the adoption agency told us to be there.  As we nervously watched the door, our hearts were being tested.  Luckly Ang and I are both marathoners with good strong hearts!  A couple minutes into our wait a middle-aged Korean lady walked toward the front door and we each recognized each other.  She was in one picture of Jae and we had sent Jae pictures of us.  On foster Mom's back was Jae riding contently as most Korean children do, on their Mom's backs.

Once our social worker joined us, we found an open room where Foster Mom tried to get comfort Jae and to have him start to play with us.  He took a while to warm up, but after some peek-a-boo he started to smile, then Angie got him to laugh with some well placed tickles.

Of course, being 17 months old he's already built an attachment with the foster family, especially the foster Mom so asking him to immediately attach to us is a fantasy. 

We did get some good info from foster Mom about his likes and dislikes.  He like apples, seaweed, banannas, playing the piano, cell phones, books... he's not a big fan of orange juice or milk but that's about it.  He's an adventurous and smart little guy according to Foster Mom.  He also pronounces words very well, which is great, he can teach me how to say aluminum.

We also got some unexpected news that we'll have a "Got-ya" date of 9/2 instead of 9/5 which we expected.  Thus, our sightseeing in South Korea will be a little limited, but this is for the better. We'll have the weekend to get him comfortable with us before that long flight home.  So, no trip to the DMZ or to the Track and Field World Championships, kind of a bummer, but the alternative wins any day of the week. 

After our meeting with Jae and letting what just happened settle in, we went for lunch to a place without menus.  I was hoping to point to something.  With no luck on menus, we also had bad luck because nobody on staff spoke English.  So I ordered us both Bi-Bim-Bop, something I know is on most Korean menus.  It was delicious and too much to eat. 

That's all for now.

Big day

Today is a big day for our household; we meet our son for the first time in about 3 hours!

I really wish I could have got more sleep in the last 48 hours; I think my total is maybe about 4 hours. Oh well that's what coffee is for, right?

On the flight over I didn't get any sleep in, but I did watch a couple of good movies: The Lincoln Lawyer and Rio. I had seen where Rio had ties to Moose Lake, MN so I had to watch it, and would give it a high rating.

Last night we tried to find some quick food before trying to fall asleep and we tried to order a bulgogi pizza but wound up with a simple 'American' combo pizza due to a kitchen messup... oh well, we were so hungry it did't matter much.

I'm a new blogger so I may have gotten to excited about being able to publish whatever I want when I want yesterday when I said that I'd touch on some cultural differences about Korea.  That post will still come but it's a couple down the road.