Quick Update

Everything is going so well! I'll put up some photos this weekend when we have a little more time. We are both amazed at how much easier this seems than when we met Quin... maybe it's not being new parents ;-)

Here's a picture of the sleepy heads before we headed to the airport in Seoul.

They both did great on Monday (travel day) considering everything they have gone through.

Posts Removed

I have decided to remove all of the posts about meeting the twins. Those are more their personal story and will keep that info private for them.

Sunday Afternoon

We didn't get to blogging about the rest of Friday and Saturday. Teagan and Caden will be arriving at 4pm and it's now 2pm, so we should probably just say we'll check back in here next week sometime at the earliest. We'll be sure to post some updates when we're a little settled too.

We leave for the airport at 8:30 tomorrow morning, for a flight arriving back in MPLS around 2:45 on Monday afternoon.

We want to send a great big thank you to Grandma and Grandpa who have been staying with Quin and Mattie this past week. Also a great big thank you to Aunt Eileen who came down Thursday with Angela and baby Allison to help. It has made this trip so much easier knowing that Quin is being well cared for and having tons of fun without us!

Thanks for following along and thanks for your prayers! John and Maura

And finally, here's a picture of John, just because he's so cute and I know you miss him Melinda. heehee

Seoul World Cup Stadium

Friday we visited Seoul World Cup Stadium. Korea and Japan shared hosting the 2002 World Cup and the finals were held in Seoul. It was also the first time that an Asian country, Korea, made it to the semi-finals. This year it's in South Africa and there are signs everywhere.

We were hoping to catch a local FC Seoul soccer game but the team was off and they were setting up for a Korean boy band concert. We went through the FIFA soccer museum and took a peek at the field.

Thomas enjoyed the visit as well.

A canal with bike trails runs outside the stadium with a beautiful view of Seoul. With Buddha's birthday, there were a lot of people off and it was busy.

In the afternoon we visited other neighborhoods and walked a ton. Tomorrow we're leaving a lot of time to visit the Korean War Museum and then will start to pack and get things ready to receive the twins in the afternoon.

Buddha's Birthday

Freedom of religion is fully guaranteed in the Republic of Korea, and the 2 main ones are Buddhism and Christianity. The last time we visited, we attended one of the many Sunday worship services at Yoido Full Gospel Choir Church. It was amazing! Yoido is the largest Christian church in the world in regards to congregational size, which is over 80,000 members. (Hosanna has room to grow!)

This time, our travel coincided with Buddha's 2554th Birthday, which was Friday, May 21st. We had read about the celebrations at the temples. Thursday evening, after we picked up the chops in Insadong, we walked over to Jogyesa, a large temple nearby, to see the festivities. They were just setting up for the Friday celebration.

We went to have tea at a traditional teahouse and later returned to see the lanterns all lit. You can purchase a lantern to have hung here during the celebration for $100 - $200.

The Korean Buddhist temples in Seoul offer the opportunity to stay at the temples to meditate, sweep, make repairs, and craft things like lanterns. For John, the most appealing part of a temple stay would be the requirement of total silence during the stay. He is not used to handling an overly excited mom missing her little boy and waiting to get her new twins. Needless to say, we are not doing a temple stay and I miss talking to girlfriends!

Korean Vehicles - For Quinlan

There are so many buses! We miss you like crazy!

Thursday Morning - Meeting Mr. Kim

Thursday morning we met with Mr. Kim, son-in-law to the older Dr. Kim, Duk Whang. Older Dr. Kim is 96 and he is the founder of Eastern, our Agency in Korea. We met with him when we adopted Quin in 2008, but he is officially retired now. Since he is still in good health, they are keeping his office for him in case he decides to come back.

Mr. Kim talked about the history of Korean adoption and overviewed the many different social services that Eastern is involved in. They operate more than just adoption programs. They are a true Christian organization that serves the poor, mentally and physically challenged, abandoned children, elderly, and single mothers.

A sad thing we learned that we didn't realize before is that there actually are orphanages in Korea. With the wait for adoption so long, we had assumed there were just not as many children needing homes. Even though they may not be able to care for their child, sometimes families choose to not relenquish them, so the child is not available for either domestic or international adoption. Due to many different circumstances, the child may end up needing care. Eastern operates a place called Jacob's Hope where they care for these children up to age 3. At 3 years of age they are moved to the state orphanage. We are still shocked they have orphanages and are so thankful our children's birth families allowed them to be placed for adoption at birth.

After meeting with Mr. Kim, we were invited to a traditional lunch with the staff at Eastern before meeting the twins and Foster Family in the afternoon.

Wednesday - Insadong

We made our first trip to Insadong, our favorite area we visited last time.

Insadong is an artsy area, filled with lots of little shops, authentic Korean restaurants, and teahouses. We were on the search for some traditional Korean birth country gifts for the twins. Our first stop was to a stamp maker to have "chops" made. (We're getting some for Quin too, since we didn't think to do this last time we were here.) The lady helping us was so sweet and wrote out their names in English and then their Korean birth names as well. She will carve these onto small stone blocks and we will pick them up Thursday afternoon.

We continued to shop for a few other traditional Korean items and decided to have lunch in the area as well. This is the restaurant we ate at in Insadong.

We recognized most of the pictues on this menu outside and were able to order by writing down our selection.

John's was pork bulgogi and mine was beef bulgogi Ttukbaegi, which I think means "in a broth;" both were delicious. The kimchee has been awesome as well!

Insadong Street ends at a really cool park with a pavilion and lanterns.

After Insadong, we headed out to Dondaemun Market.

Tuesday Afternoon

After meeting the babies we headed out to explore. When we met Quinlan, we were lucky enough to stay a bit longer in Korea and so have already covered a lot of areas on our "places to see." It was raining all day so we opted for some inside activity and headed to the Coex Aquarium and Mall. The mall is similar to MOA with product specific stores, anchored by the very nice Hyundai Department store.

(Quin's Thomas the Train made the trip and is posed atop the shark.)

Our favorite part of exploring came when we had lunch. We decide to order Korean lunch at Hyundai; there is a Marketplace area, kind of like downtown Dayton's. There were tons of professionals in their suits and fashionable outfits ordering their lunch at one main checkout (called Forty Tomates?) The one checkout rings up sales for all of the vendors in the marketplace. You get a slip, wait for a flashing display board to show your number, then you go to that vendor and pick it up. Seems to work great. The only problem for us was everything was in Korean with no English.

We decided to write down our selection in Korean, based off of what the vendors had displayed in their windows, and handed it to the clerk. It worked! Here's our attempt at writing Korean:

And here's our delicious food! Yum!

To say the least, we were very proud of ourselves.

We later treated ourselves to a waffle on the street. This is for Charissa and Tom!