The Meeting

Hello from the future! It's Wednesday evening here in Seoul, 13 hours ahead of our family and friends back on the east coast United States and we met our son yesterday afternoon for the first time. WOW! Finally! What an experience, but lets catch up first.

Monday we changed hotels form the Hyatt by the airport to the Sheraton Walkerhill in Seoul. It took a little over an hour by bus to get to the hotel, it's not exactly in the middle of it all but I was able to cash in some Starwood points to take care of the stay, one less expense and SWS is only 8 Metro stops away, no big deal.

Before we made our move on Monday our day started with a call to our caseworker at SWS to let her know we had arrived and to see what our schedule would be for the week. She told Paige that for "person reasons" Carter was no longer with his foster family and had been moved over the weekend and to call back after 1:00 to find out when we could meet him. Well Paige looked as if she had seen a ghost when she was relaying what she had just been told, we were at a lost for words, just what does "personal reasons" mean in a situation like this? Had something happened to Carter? Could the foster family just not deal with the fact that they were having to give him up after these 7 months he was in their care? We decided not to dwell on it, like most of this process this was out of our control. We packed up and made the move to the next hotel, our home away from home for the next 5 days.

After we arrived at the Sheraton, unpacked and had some lunch it was time to make a move. Oh, wait, we need to call SWS for our time to meet Carter tomorrow! Paige called our caseworker and she told us to meet her at her office tomorrow afternoon at 1:30, only 24 more hours and we will be meeting our son!! She did tell Paige that the "personal reason" for Carter being moved was because his foster mother's father had passed away. We certainly feel badly for her and her family and at the same time we are relieved that it wasn't something involving the baby.

Now we can make a move. We took the shuttle bus to the Metro and went to a large mall, kind of their version of Mall of America. It's call "Lotte World", it was raining out so we really couldn't go out to explore so the mall seemed like a safe bet. The Metro leaves you off right inside the mall, as you enter the first floor is all specialty foods, the next 5 floors are all woman's clothing and accessories. Retailing in Asia is a lot like it is in Europe, the store is set-up in a circle and each designer has their own little store. I went thru the men's area and the only "American" brands were Hugo Boss, Ralph Lauren & Tommy. The one interesting area in the store is call the "event hall", this is where they set up all of their clearance merchandise in one area. Each category has its own space with a salesperson manning the rack for assistance. Kind of Nordstrom's version of the Rack but within the full line store. One thing we did notice was that as soon as you stopped to look at something anywhere in the store as sales associate was right there at your side, now working for Nordstrom I understand customer service, but I did find this a bit unnerving. After a couple of hours we decided it was time to head back to the hotel, we were walking back to the Metro when Paige saw a Krispy Kream and the light was on!! She had never experienced a fresh, warm doughnut from "KK", she had to come all the way to Seoul, South Korea to have that.

After our "KK" treats it was time to go back and get some rest before dinner, the time/day change was hitting us, we took the Metro back to the bus stop, when we walked out of the Metro Station it was SNOWING!! Boy it was beautiful, big fluffy flakes but were they wet. We had just missed the bus and the next one was in 20 minutes. There wasn't an enclosure so we we just standing there waiting, accumulating snow when this 20 something Korean man walks up to us, hands us his umbrella, says something in Korean, bows and walks away. Paige says there have been Angels all along the way for us, from the random meeting in her office last week with the airlines to this randon act of kindness........

We left the hotel on Tuesday at noon for our 1:30 appointment, we were early. As it turned out SWS is only 6 Metro stops away and not 8, a we were riding this old man insisted that I sit down. He asked us where we were going and we told our story, he looked at out directions and map and told us were on the Right path. Another Angel.........

As I said, we arrived 20 minutes early and we were placed in a waiting room with another couple, they were from Charlotte , North Carolina and had received their referral a few days before us in December and gotten their travel call a few days before us. They left to go meet their son about 5 minutes before us, when our caseworker came for us she told us it would be about an hours drive to where Carter is stay. Hell, its been this long what's another hour right? After almost an hour we arrived in a very modern apartment complex very much resembling an Archstone property back home. Our driver located the building number we need and our caseworker took us to the 18th floor. When the elevator doors open there he was. Our son! His foster-foster mother was waiting in the door with him, of course Paige started to tear up right away, I would expect it any other way. We were able to play with him for about an hour on the living room floor. His foster-foster mother gave us some snack, we were told they were rice cakes, I don't think so. They were green and kind of tasted like spinach, all-in-all they were pretty good, she also cut up some huge apples. She took half the apple and just spooned out some of it and feed it to Carter, he loved it!!

Carter is so happy, he laughed at us, smiled and loves to jump. Our caseworker was very surprised at how social he was with us since he had some trouble adjusting from his foster home to his foster-foster home. As an hour came he was starting to get cranky, it was his nap time. The caseworker told us we could have tomorrow, and we did but the foster-foster mother asked to keep him one more day. We agreed, it would give a day to go sight seeing and shopping. We will go to pick him up on Thursday at 11:00 a.m.. or that's Wednesday night at 10:00 for everyone back home. On the ride back to Seoul it just felt as if a tremendous weight had been lifted from me, one I had been carrying for some time and that everything was falling into it's rightful place.