After our first visit with Sam on Monday, we basically went back to the hotel and took a super long, much needed nap.  We woke up around 5pm and grabbed some Korean BBQ at Hanam Pig before walking over to the annual lantern festival held in Seoul every November.  We met up with another adoptive family (HI ALICIA) and got to hear all about their little girl!  Getting to know other families adopting on the same timeline is a really special part of the process!

We slept a little better on night 2 in Seoul, but jet lag still had us up around 4:00am (3:30am for Josh, I think).   We had another leisurely hotel breakfast before using the metro to get to Eastern since we had plenty of time to spare (or so we thought).  We had allowed about 40 minutes to get from the City Hall station to Hongik University station, where we walked to Eastern.  And we needed every last one of those minutes!  We arrived at the crosswalk to cross to Eastern at the same time as Sam’s foster mom, so we got to walk over together and spend a few extra minutes watching him observe the city from his carrier.

For the second meeting, we were in a different room located in a newly renovated part of the building.  It had a small trampoline and new toys that Sam had never seen before!  He quickly discovered a large play police car, and we lost his attention for probably a solid five minutes while he observed every detail of the new toy!  Love watching toddlers intense focus when they find something they like!

We held his hands and walked all over the room.  Foster Mom pulled over the trampoline and showed us how he cruises back and forth on a stationary object.  He does a sweet little side shuffle, and he’s pretty fast!

I tried to spend a little more time on this day learning more about Foster Mom and Sam’s day-to-day life.  We did find out that he lives with a foster brother who is a few months older, and that foster grandma comes over every day to help foster mom with the boys.  What a cherished little boy he is!

I failed to mention this when writing about our first visit, but we videoed the entire visit on both days.  Josh bought an older version of the Go Pro Hero, and it was absolutely perfect for our needs.  I am so thankful to have those two hours in their entirety to look back on, both for us and for Sam!  He will really be able to see the love of his foster mom in the way she plays with him, tickles him, works with him and holds him.  She is a kind soul.

The visit ended far sooner than we hoped (about 5 minutes earlier than scheduled, but we had heard some families had a little extra time so we had hoped for that!), but we had a meeting with the other adoptive families there for court to learn more about Eastern.  That was followed by lunch where we really had a chance to hear more about everyone’s experiences so far, and of course, to excitedly share about all of our new sons and daughters!

We spent the afternoon at Namdaemun market across from our hotel before trying Korean Fried Chicken at Kkandu (like really spicy chicken wings.  YUM!!) for dinner.  We crashed pretty early, still exhausted from the time difference, but also the emotional high of playing with our son.