Our Seoul Souvenir
In Chicago.
15 hours after that, we were in South Korea. Oh, to be tired in a foreign land.
First, we had to get a place to stay. The Korean adoption agency has a guest house. That was full. When that happens, they make reservations for us at a nearby hotel. That must have been full, because they sent us to a not-as-near hotel. The Hotel Mirabeau. Located in Shinchon, on of Seoul’s premiere shopping, entertainment, and business districts, the Hotel Mirabeau gives you a feel for Paris in Korea. At least, that’s what their web site claims.
The last thing you do when you fly over several time zones is go to sleep, even though you’re tired. You need to go to bed at the normal time; otherwise you’ll never get over the jet lag. (And, no, rubbing sleep back into your eyes at 2:00 AM does not work.) So, you do the next best thing: eat. Too tired to try the local cuisine (that was my excuse that time), we went to an American-ish type place: Han’s Deli. We thought we would grab a good sandwich and feed our rumbling stomachs. Unfortunately, Han’s Deli wasn’t a sandwich shop; it was more of a pasta joint. It seems that, at least to Han, Deli isn’t short for delicatessen. It is short for delicious. And the pasta was delicious, so I wasn’t about to argue.
After that fine dinner, we decided to walk to Eastern, the adoption agency. Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in modern history, I had a better idea of how to get someplace than did Stephanie (and that includes when she moved into a state in which I had lived my entire life). Please, please, be seated. No urgent need for a standing ovation. It took us about 25 minutes to get there from the hotel. Of course, we really had no purpose there at the moment, so we kept walking. We saw a lot of Seoul we hadn’t plan to see that evening. But then we found our way again and headed back to the hotel.
The next day was a big day. At 9:10 we were to meet the social worker, the doctors, and the boy.
We went to sleep and woke up on time. That was pleasant enough, considering the hotel forget about our wake up call. We learned something that morning: be careful when using an electric outlet adaptor. United States’ plugs don’t fit in Korean outlets. You need an adaptor. We asked for one at the front desk. They provided one, and Stephanie plugged in her curling iron to get it warmed up. Well, when she got back to it, the end of the iron had melted off. It’s not often you need to wait for a curling iron to cool before you use it, but that was our lot in life that day. What do you expect from a hotel where the fire escape is a rope in a dresser drawer and a wall-mounted hook. (But it had instructions. That was nice.)
So we had some breakfast and went to Eastern to meet with people. We met with the head of paper work or something. She said some stuff. I have no idea what because I was just thinking “bring us the boy!” Then she took us to the social worker. She said some stuff. (Ditto the listening part.) Then she took us to meet our child and the foster mother. One of the first things he did was grab a football. I was pleased.
We asked the foster mother some questions. Of course, the big questions about the boy before placement and the big questions about the boy after placement are TOTALLY different. In short, we have no idea how to get our child to go to sleep. But he is world class at crying so, on average, we’re doing fine.
After visiting with the boy, we met with the doctor who started Eastern, Dr. Kim. It was more social than anything else; just wanted to meet us. Dr. Kim gave us two books he had written. Once he found out that Stephanie is a librarian, he gave us two more books. Maybe someday we’ll have time to read one. Then we met with Dr. Kim’s son, Dr. Kim. That was another social event. Only, Dr. Kim is more quiet than Dr. Kim.
Then we were off on our own for several days. Pay no attention to the order of these events as I don’t recall what took place when. I’m just that attentive.
We saw churches. We went to a big church because we thought it was a quite historical church. Turns out we meant to be at the one across the street. So we went to that one, too. Doesn’t sound like much, but the priest was nice.
We went to a couple of palaces. I’ve always been a fan of castles, but the Korean palaces are amazingly ornate. I’d describe that in more detail and discuss the significance, but 1) the tour guide had a weak microphone, and 2) the tour guide would start talking when she got to the next spot rather than waiting for the tour group to catch up. In time, you learn to ignore her and just look at stuff. Like the secret garden, which, apparently, was let out of the bag. If you have the opportunity to look at the palaces in Seoul, don’t pass it up.
If you have the opportunity to visit the Amethyst Showroom, pass it up. On our tour, it was the next stop after the palace with the secret garden. It was an Amethyst jewelry store with a wall that had Amethyst on it. The tour part was a lady telling us how great Amethyst is in Korea. Then they pointed us to the gift shop, which was the rest of the room. Subtle.
Then came the street markets. They were nice in that most of the rest of the city we saw had “westernized” stores. There weren’t a lot of souvenir shops except in the street markets. Since I can buy shoes, pants, and lettuce where I live, I didn’t need them here. We needed souvenirs. The only problem I have with the street markets is that they are so crowded it is difficult to walk through. And then people set up shop right in the middle of the walkways which were already too crowded. Not for me, I must say. Not for me. But we did discover how Korean merchants deal with one-language-is-enough-for-me Americans. They carry a calculator, punch the price in the calculator, and show us the display screen. Now that’s thinking!
The most expensive thing we bought was water. Not that water was overly expensive. We just bought a lot of it. It was, I believe I overheard, record heat in Seoul. Yeesh! I don’t care for heat and humidity and Seoul had plenty of both. And smog.
If we had gone up into Seoul Tower, we could have seen all kinds of smog. But we didn’t. Oh, we went TO Seoul Tower. We took the subway to some station. Got out. Walked up this long hill to get to the gondolas which take you up to the tower. Paid for the gondola tickets and rode the gondola. Then we walked from the gondolas up some steps. We finally got to the base of Seoul Tower and read the sign which said “Closed until October.” But we did have a nice view of the city and the smog from there. Plus, it was about the only green space we came across. So it was nice just sitting there. But we had to leave.
We had to get to Star Wars. There were two reasons for this. First, we hadn’t seen it yet and wanted to see if the story made sense. We knew if we didn’t see it now because we wouldn’t have time after the child entered the picture (our “picture;” not the Star Wars motion picture). Second, we thought it would be interesting to see what it was like watching a Hollywood movie in a Korean theatre. Unfortunately, we spent too much time enjoying God’s splendor and missed the beginning of the movie. I wanted to see if the Star Wars scroll was in English or Korean. The rest of the movie had Korean subtitles written down the right side of the screen. I rarely noticed them, so it was great for me. I bet it was difficult for the Koreans watching.
The next day was the last full day in Korea for us. We spent it doing some last minute shopping and some last minute paperwork. We also were able to visit with the boy for about an hour. Again, this was before we had custody of him so we didn’t have the right questions to ask.
The next morning, we packed up and headed off to Eastern. There was a short prayer service for the foster children being adopted. Then we got into the van and Liam was handed to us. Finally, it was off to the airport.
Let me say something about this adoption thing. It is difficult to learn how to care for children. It is difficult taking children on airplane trips. Multiply them together and you have learning how to care for children while on a twelve hour airplane ride. It’s just insane. However, Liam did very well. Only one hour of it did Liam scream, but scream he did. Most of the rest of the trip he spent eating, sleeping, and playing. Not bad.
When we finally got to the airport in Minnesota, we had a surprise for us: a welcome home party for Liam. It’s still a surprise. My brother, Jon, was caught in traffic. My sister, Amy, her youngsters, Jacob and Oliver, and their sign, “Welcome home Liam,” were in a different part of the airport. My parents were in the right spot, but were turned the other way as they were looking at the bagel selection in the coffee shop. And we thank them all. And a special thanks goes to Jon for interrupting his Harry Connick, Jr. concert-ticket winning endeavors to let us crash at his house the night before the initial 7:00 AM flight.
Recuperating from jet lag is no easy task, especially when you have to schedule around a youngster who doesn’t know he’s got jet lag and, if he did, correcting it would be pretty low on the priority scale. We know raising Liam will have its challenges. We know it takes a lot to keep Liam on the narrow road to success. In fact, we’re set to start the most important thing.
Tomorrow, we open an account for his college fund!
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The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer and do not neccessarily reflect those of the rest of the family.
© 2005, Mark Wentz