Our Last Day: :-) & :-(

Sunday is our last day in Seoul. I am tired and ready to get back to my bed, but I am soooo thankful for the opportunity I had to come over here and pick up my daughter. She is a beautiful little girl and I can't wait for Meg & the boys (and all of you) to meet her. We waited for three long years for this and now comes the reality of adjusting to life with a new baby.

Like yesterday, she dictated the schedule. I guess that's probably a good indicator of what life with her will be like from here on out. She slept late, until around 8:20 and then she got up, ate and played a little bit, and around 10:15, she was ready for a nap. She slept for two whole hours. I wish I could have done that!

We went to the Lotte Mart today which is an enormous shopping department store with 12 or 13 floors. We had to venture up to the 7th floor for the infant section to finally find diapers. We couldn't find any in Seoul. We left there and went to another famous market, the Dongdaemun Market, which is an indoor and outdoor market where there is only clothes. I walked around for about 3 miles looking for last minute souvenirs, but there were only clothes. I have jokingly told Meg that I was going to finally buy an HDTV and lug it around the streets of Seoul on my back to bring it home. I didn't even SEE one, in a city where Samsung and LG are from... pretty amazing.

Mom and Jayne Riley went back to the room while I did all that walking and I'm not sure I've ever been that famished before. We haven't been able to eat any Korean cuisine due to having her with us the majority of our time here, so most of my meals have been a candy bar here, a sandwich there, or nothing at all. So as I was in a taxi driving me back to the hotel, I saw a McDonald's as we were passing it and I said in a very quick and excited voice for him to stop the car and let me out. I was able to work my way through an order and I got two Big Macs (one for mom) and a 10 piece Chicken Nugget. When I got back to the room, I scarfed them down and they were just like home. Absolutely AUsome! (did you think I would fail to put AU somewhere today with a nice victory?)

Well, it is now almost 10:00 pm Seoul time, my bag is picked, Jayne Riley's bag is packed, and I believe mom's is as well.
Our driver for the airport will pick us up bright and early at 7:30 in the morning and we begin our trek back to the states a day early. because we changed flights, we have now picked up an extra flight. We now fly into Chicago THEN Atlanta to Jackson, instead of straight to Atlanta. Oh Well, please pray for Jayne RIley's plane ride, that she would allow her daddy to keep his same shirt on the whole time (no spit up) and that he wouldn't have to apologize to the whole plane for a loud, crying baby.

Because it is late and I am quite tired, I will put some pictures in here in the order I just described above.

thanks for keeping up with us on our adoption journey. It has been wonderful and we have a little bit to go before a whole new chapter begins. I'll try to let you know how the flight went.

You can see the building on the right goes down as far as you can see... and the market goes with it. The amazing thing is it is not just one row, it is inside that building as well, several stories of little stalls where people are making their livelihood every day.


I know Meg really wanted one of these, but I resisted!


Can you see what's in this picture?

Let me zoom in a little more for ya!


Good night!