Ethan’s first run in the jogging stroller with mom, looks like he needs to work on his endurance.

We obviously did get off….. We arrived in the area of the office and sat on a bench for a few minutes since we were a little early.  Once it was time to go it was like we were walking in for a job interview–wanted to make sure everything looked good and we had everything we needed.  We got in the elevator and met DJ, the Social Worker for Holt.  We chatted for a few minutes and she said, “When you are ready, he is in that door”.  The door was directly behind us and was shut.  I could hear a little chatter and didn’t know if I should take a few minutes to collect myself or dive right in.  I opened the door and there he was standing there and looked at me.  The foster mom asked us to have seat on the couch.  The room felt like  it was about 95 degrees.  I don’t think it was quite that warm, but they keep their places extremely warm here so it was definitely warmer than we are used to.  I looked at Scott and his forehead was beading with sweat.  DJ came in and sat down with us.  She did the interpreting for us.

Before we even started asking our questions, Ethan was pulling out his cheese puffs and feeding then to everyone in the room–it took me a bit by surprise. I was not really expecting him to warm up to us as much as he was.  The foster mom said he is very good with strangers, and we could tell that he was definitely fearless, in more ways than just with strangers!  I think we will definitely have our hands full with watching after him making sure he doesn’t seriously hurt himself!

We asked our questions which seemed very quick.  I gave the foster mom her gift-she seemed to like it. We also gave her a beautiful bouquet of flowers we had picked up at a nearby florist.  After our questions, we headed down to see the Dr.   He looked in his ears, took his temperature and next thing  I knew, the foster mom and DJ were out the door catching us a cab.  We got out to the curb and I completely lost it.   It was becoming so real and I was having a hard time with how his foster mom must have been feeling.  I could tell that she was upset, but was doing very well with keeping it under control.  She was still holding Ethan and when she was trying to hand him to us, he didn’t want to come with us.  That started to just break me.  He wouldn’t come to either of us and the taxi was waiting.  We finally pulled him away and got in the car.  I couldn’t handle even looking out the window.  I felt like I was in a movie or something that wasn’t even real.  I looked over and the foster mom was waiving and Ethan was sitting on Scott’s lap just looking over at her.  It felt like we were sitting there forever, even though it was probably less than a minute.  The taxi took off and that was it-we were on our way to the hotel with our new son.  There were so many emotions and I still don’t think it has set in yet.  Tomorrow is going to be interesting.  A 13 hour plane ride may be the hardest thing I have done yet!

After we got back to the hotel, we sat in the room for a bit and then decided to go for a short walk to a nearby park type area.  We hung out there for a while before coming back to the hotel.  Once back we changed Ethan into PJs and tried to put him to bed.  Despite seeming tired, he wasn’t a big fan, so we sat on the couch together and just put him down for try number two!

Here are some pictures from the ride home and time at the park!

With Monday being devoted to a tour of some cultural points in Seoul, our goal for Tuesday was to explore the city, or as much of it as we could – the main goal of the day was to take the subway and find the Holt office, so that we knew how to get there on Wednesday.

Monday night we did some research and sketched out a rough itinerary – go see the Ministry of Health and Welfare building.  The MOHW is the government agency responsible for issuing EPs, so we thought it would be neat just to see what the “big” deal was!  Unfortunately I (Scott) – read the map wrong and we ended up searching for it about 5 blocks west of where it actually was.  Turns out it is only about 3 blocks from our hotel – so depending on how Wednesday develops, we may stop by there.

After giving up the search for MOHW, we hopped on the subway to head to the Holt offices.  It was  the first time either of us had ridden on the subway.  In reality it was surprisingly straight forward and easy to get around.

Holt was about a 3 minute walk from the subway station we exited at, and in the short walk from the subway to Holt – Mary and I are pretty certain that we saw a handful of foster mom’s with kids!  Holt is in a pretty unassuming building.

After stopping there, we walked back to the subway and stopped at a pastry shop – “Paris Baquette” and some yummy snacks!

The next stop for the day was to take the subway to the National Assembly, which is the Korean equivalent to the Capital Building.As it turns out, Seoul has a very similar seasonal timetable to Washington, D.C. – and we arrived in the midst of their Cherry Blossom festival!  The grounds of the Assembly was full of people, a street lined with trees was closed and packed with people (and street vendors).I was a little disappointed not to see Rob’s Famous Fair Foods present…but I did notice that dried Squid, candied beatles (??), and some boiled shells seemed to be very popular.  Dad you can expect to see my bill for market research in the mail shortly…