Day 4 Shenyang, China

Shenyang is a fascinating city! It belonged to Russia at one time so the architecture reflects that influence. There is a roundabout just down from our hotel (Intercontinental) that has a huge statue of Chairman Mao in the center of the road surrounded by a grassy area. We are staying in the downtown area, but there are small, very simple shops wedged in between glittering high rise buildings. There are lots of piles of vegetables, mainly lettuce and onions on the sidewalks. Our guide told us that since it gets very cold in the winter here, the people are preparing the vegetables to store for the winter. The thing that is really hard to get used to is the driving habits of the residents. There are very few traffic signals and pedestrians are supposed to just walk out in traffic, avoiding eye contact with drivers who are hurtling towards them. The pedestrians expect that the drivers will avoid them, but it is far from a certainty. Also, when cars do come near pedestrians, the object seems to be to get as close as possible without actually making contact. It seems that motorcycles are allowed on the sidewalks and bicycles are absolutely everywhere. My favorite are the bicycles that have huge carts attached in front of them; we actually saw one that had a couch on the cart in front. 

We met our wonderful guide Kathy today and she is making our lives much more simple and more secure. We spent quite a bit of time together this evening during which she helped us exchange money, took us to a photo shop for yet more adoption photos, took our laundry to a cleaner, briefed us on tomorrow's events and accompanied us to a dumpling restaurant for a superb dinner. We had huge portions of several items and two large beers - the total tab was $15 American!

Saving the best for last, tomorrow is Gotcha Day! We will meet Gage at 10:00 at the Civil Affairs office. We are getting used to calling him AiJun, his Chinese name, which we have been encouraged to use for the first week or so. Kathy hasn't met him, but she did have more information than we previously had. Apparently, he has really wanted to be adopted which is so wonderful! He is nervous, but excited. Sounds like us! She said he is a very good student and physically very strong. He has spent the last couple of days back at the orphanage in Dalian being prepared for this big change in his life. He and the orphanage director will drive up tomorrow from Dalian to Shenyang.

Thank you to all of our precious family and friends who have journeyed with us to this point. This is the day we have been anticipating for 18 months and we couldn't have made it without your love and support. Please pray that God will gently knit Gage into the fabric of our family.

 Nandaemun Market
Lunch on top of Shinsegae
Jake with a lady in traditional Korean han bok in hotel lobby
Jake at dinner in the hotel
Korean artwork in Renaissance Hotel lobby

Day 3 Seoul

Tomorrow we will leave Korea in the morning and fly to Shenyang, the city where Gage lives! He was initially in the orphanage in Dalian, but relocated to the orphan boarding school in Shenyang about 3 years ago which is typical for kids in the Liaoning province. It will be an amazing feeling to fly into Shenyang tomorrow knowing Gage is there. I don't think any of us will sleep much tomorrow night as we anticipate welcoming him into our family.

We feel sad to be leaving Korea tomorrow as it has been such an incredible experience for all of us to live a few days in Jake's homeland. It is a beautiful country with fascinating people. We will always treasure the memories of these days and hope that we will be able to return someday.

Today was mainly a shopping day as Jake wanted to have a few clothing items from Korea to take home. As I mentioned before, the people here are very stylish which gives an added pleasure to people watching. We went back to two of the huge markets, Dongdaemun and Namdaemun. The open air market at Namdaemun is enormous with about 10,000 shops, many of which are small stalls. The shops are punctuated now and then by stalls cooking all kinds of things in the open air. It was not unusual to come across a huge pile of green onions between shops with people sitting on the ground peeling and chopping. We had lunch in a garden on top of the Shinsegai department store. There were numbered displays of food items which you could look over and then select. The food was great and it was a perfect day to sit outside. It has been pretty hot here, but today is overcast so it is much more comfortable.

We are going to take it easy this evening with the guys going to the driving range in the hotel and Barb doing some laps in the pool before dinner. We have to get up really early since we need to be on the airport shuttle busy at 5:45 AM as we depart for Incheon Airport.

Thanks to all of you who have posted comments on the blog. It is wonderful to hear from you and to feel that connection with home. When we write tomorrow we'll be in China and just a day away from meeting Gage. 

Day 2 Seoul

We have had some real adventures here with our lack of ability to communicate. Last night we got into a taxi and asked the driver to take us to Dongdaemun Market which is considered the center of fashion shopping here. It was hard to tell whether the cab driver didn't know where it was, didn't think we would like it or refused to take us there for reasons of his own, but his remarks and gestures seemed to imply refusal. The comedy was amplified because everyone here, including this cab driver, expects Jake to speak Korean. The man went on and on while talking only to Jake. We quickly gave up and offered an alternate destination of COEX where we had been earlier in the day.  Unfortunately, I wrote it down as COET instead of COEX which made it completely unrecognizable to our driver who finally hailed a pedestrian who was bilingual and we sorted it all out. Even when Jake says he only speaks English, people continue to talk away directly to him in Korean.

Today we went on a bus tour, the kind which allows you to get off and on at any of the stops. We figured this would be a good idea since it didn't require us to communicate with anyone at all. We did make it to Dongdaemun this time and enjoyed the experience of shopping in a completely different way than  we are used to. The entrances are called gates and this entire, huge shopping area has tons of individual vendors selling absolutely everything. Even the underground passage that allows you to cross the incredibly  busy street is crammed full of merchandise for sale. Every so often you encounter a booth wedged in where people are cooking things that look pretty interesting, but we weren't quite that brave. The most intriguing one to me was what looked like a mound of french fries stuck together on a stick.

After shopping, if you can call it that because we only bought one shirt, we got back on the bus and went to Changdeokgung Palace.  Now I thought we were going there to watch the changing of the guard at 2:00, but it turned out the changing of the guard was actually at Deoksugung Palace. If you remove the "Chang" don't those words look about the same? I thought "Chang" might be some type of palace prefix since the other palaces in the tour book seemed to begin with it. Anyway, we were so pleased to arrive at about 1:45,  just in time for the changing of the guard or so we thought. The ticket taker tried to shove Jake into the palace and to shove us out. We later realized this was because the tour guide was narrating in Korean and the English tour was later. I can't tell you anything about this wonderful, ancient palace because we couldn't understand a word of it, but it was beautiful and the grounds were lovely. We are attaching some pictures!

Any of Jake's teachers who are reading this will be pleased to know we are about to do some homework! Tomorrow we will be able to say that "day after tomorrow" we will get Gage!!