Meeting Evie

Well, yesterday will be a very memorable one in my life. I celebrated my 32nd birthday, and got the best birthday present I could ask for. I got to meet my daughter Evie. Her foster mother and everyone called her Ji-Soo, so we will probably call her that, or a combination of names for a while. I didn't meet her until 3:00 that day, so earlier in the day my graduate school roommate, Ki-Eun, took my mom and I around Seoul and to the Nam Dae Mung market in downtown Seoul. It is a huge, traditional Asian market and you can buy pretty much anything you wold ever want. I got lots of toys for Evie and Jake, a hangbok (a traditional Korean dress) for Evie, and some various other things for different people. We ate a traditional Korean meal at this place popular among Koreans-it was fish and radishes in a spicy sauce (delicious). Besides the great shopping, it was a fascinating place to people-watch. We went back to the hotel then and met up with another family to head over the adoption agency. It was out in more the suburbs of Seoul, and was over an hour away from where we were staying. We were told to just take a cab out there, but Ki-Eun came with all of us and helped navigate the subway system and then we took a shrt cab ride the rest of the way. The subway system in Seoul is very impressive. Seoul is a very big city with over 10 million people in it, and a lot of people don't have cars, so they rely a lot on the subway system. It is very clean, and the people were very polite and not pushy at all. We took 3 different subway lines, and definitely could not have navigated it without Ki-Eun's help. So, got to the end of the subway and line and each of us took separate cabs to the agency. Well, we didn't realize how hard it was to find the agency, and the driver got lost! We were panicked because we did not want to be late in coming to meet our kids. We finally found the place after the driver called twice. The other family made it even after us. So, we walked into the agency, and took our shoes off because that is what is polite in Korea. I walked up the stairs and her foster mother was holding Evie. I barely recognized her from her pictures because she is 5 months older than in her pictures, and she has thinned out a lot. She was very chunky before, but now she is crawling and even walking 5 steps, so the foster mother says that she has thinned out a great deal. She was so cute, and I choked up when I first saw her! Ki-Eun and I went to school for photography together, so she took lots of photos of the meeting (I will post them when I get them). She was a very sweet baby, and obviously loved the foster mother a lot. She's 10 months old right now, and has been with her and her family since she was 1 month old. We couldn't believe it when we saw that she was walking! She was so cute because she would stand up and clap her hands together and laugh. Her foster mother said that she was very smart and advanced for her age, and that her family just adored Evie. She said that they would miss her very much. They all kept saying how smart she was going to be. The foster mother got Evie a present of a beautiful hanbok that she can wear when she's a little older. I will write more later, but it was a very nice meeting and I look forward to getting her tomorrow and introducing her to Brian and Jake, and everyone we love back in the States. I'm so glad that I could come to get her and experience her wonderful country.