First USA Pics

Good day today... Here you see us leaving Korea at the airport and a few of the first pictures taken in the USA!

Home Safely!

It was a long trip involving three separate flights, but we made it home!

The Temple

Will try to upload video...

Fingers and Toes

The first photos of the day... (thanks to Robin for this idea)

Ilsan and Temple

We were fortunate enough to visit Holt Ilsan today--including touring the grounds and facilities, visiting with several Ilsan residents, seeing a small museum filled with photos and other things related to the Holt family, and visiting Bertha and Harry Holt's grave.

A nice friend of Jon's friend and Korean teacher (well, one of his teachers) toured us by the largest palace in Seoul and through a Buddhist temple near Insadong. We arrived during prayer time. It was a great way to end our last big day in Korea -- we fly home tomorrow.

Cheonggyecheon Stream

Today was another very hot day--with rain showers at the end. We cooled off by walking beside the Cheonnggyecheon stream--flows right through Seoul--surrounded by high rises, a traditional open market, and other big city things. Some beautiful historical sights too. In the lunch photo of big brother, you can see the east gate of Seoul in the background. Big brother found a cool NASA patch today--in the photo he is posing with the patch-maker. Today, little guy had fun napping in his carrier, eating puffed rice pieces, playing with big brother's water bottle and pulling his hair, and trying to stand up on the subway seats.

Lots of Lotte

We took a longish subway ride to Lotte today. Lotte mart--you'll see a photo of big brother buying formula for the little guy... Lotte adventure--see the rides and other things. Street food for dinner tonight--mandu, go goo ma (deep fried asian sweet potato), and some other things for which I can't remember the names). There's also a funny photo of little guy getting himself stuck in a tight place in the hotel room--he gets really mad when this happens!

Big Day In Insadong!

It was a very hot but fun day in Insadong market. The area is closed to cars for most of the day on Saturday. We shopped and looked at all kinds of things--scrolls, pottery, giant slabs of ginger candy, seafood, and even guitars. We ate some good food too. Little guy rode around contentedly during our shopping trip and then practiced his crawling skills back at the hotel.

We have our little guy!

What a busy and great day we have had! It was extremely warm in Seoul today--and we toured in this weather--to the National Museum of Korea and to a model/demonstration traditional Korean village in Seoul. The big brother really enjoyed the traditional village activities--you'll see him weaving hay into mats in one photo. He was a trooper all day until he began begging to go to bed in the middle of dinner--we got him to bed as soon as we could.

And after our tour... we received our little guy. He couldn't possibly be any sweeter. He is doing a great job adjusting so far. He and his dad are asleep in each other's arms right now!

We met our little guy!

We had a super exciting visit with our agency this morning. We were able to meet our son and his foster mother as well as with our daughter's foster mother. We had yummy kalbi (grilled right at our table) and banchan for lunch. Here's what everyone wants to see... photos!

We're in Seoul!

We made it! Long flight, but luckily everything went as planned. We'll meet our little guy tomorrow as well as visiting with our daughter's foster mother. Much anticipation!

Travel Call!

Well, it's a good thing we got the blog going, because we received a surprise travel call on August 7! We'll be leaving for Korea in 2 days. Can't wait!

We have signed and sent our Class B waiver. Now we're waiting for it to get processed so our little guy can get scheduled for his VI. Then on to TC. So... we figure it's time for our procrastinating selves to get a blog started in case people would like to follow along. Welcome, everyone!

First Post

OK, it works!