Yours, Mine, and Ours

A good friend of mine is hours away from coming home with her new son from Korea. I've been thinking a lot the last few days about her and what she is going through and also about Appa and my own experiences...both in the past and what might be in the future. We blogged a fair bit from Korea on our family blog, and I think I accurately captured our experience there on a high level for our family journaling. But as I was going through my old posts this morning and reminiscing, I found myself thinking most about the little moments I didn't blog (and hence never captured in any written or video form because our blogs are the only form of journaling we do)...ironically, those are some of my favorite memories.

I wanted to get those moments down for Little Bug to one day enjoy as back story to his own story and for me to revisit some day when my memories jumble together from multiple trips to Korea.
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On our first day exploring Seoul, we went to an amazing old palace. The architecture and history was unlike anything we could find in the United States and I felt so very lucky to get the chance to explore something so wildly different from my own culture. As we took a break during our time in the "secret garden" Appa and I were taking turns making video diaries of our experiences. It was our first day in Korea, so everything seemed so interesting....right down to the shape of the canned drinks. As I was talking on camera, I was holding a can of what we had been told was the equivalent of Gat*raide, aptly called "Ion Supply Drink." I enthusiastically showed the can to the camera and took a big swig....and said to the camera "and, it's kinda gross." If I was ever to consider what pure ions tasted like, I think I would have imagined that mineral/chemical/element tasting drink. Dehydration be damned, we switched to water and Diet Coke after that. That drink was the only thing that I had the entire time we were in Korea that I truly could not stomach. Blech...just thinking about it...blech.
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We took the subway back and forth from our hotel to our agency. As we were riding over to meet Little Bug for the first time, I could barely believe that this was how the most important moment of my life was playing out. No drama, no fanfare...just a couple tourists on a subway train riding over to have their lives rocked to the core. It was so simple that it was ludicrous. When we rode the subway over to the agency a few days later to take custody of Little Bug....well, my mind could not even wrap itself around what was happening. If anything, taking the subway alleviated some nerves. It was just so normal for such an abnormal situation.
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The first moment I laid eyes on my son in the flesh was through a small window as we were sitting in a holding room filling out some paperwork. We were alone and there was barely enough room for the table, but I looked up just in time to see Little Bug's foster mother walk in with our baby on her back. Angels didn't sing and time didn't stop. In fact, time seemed to speed up. In the time it took me to somehow open my mouth to tell Appa that there.was.our.son, he was gone. It was almost like I had dreamed it happening, but I knew if I had dreamed it, I would have been able to hold that little baby and not just gape at him. It was a solid 10-15 more minutes before we actually got to meet and hold the child who would become our everything.
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After meeting Little Bug for the first time, Appa and I were really emotionally overwhelmed. We tried to shop and nap, but ended up in this amazing hotel lounge with floor to ceiling windows looking out over Seoul. We sat for a few hours at a secluded little table and drank wine, whispering about life and love and our future. Sometimes we would both fall into silence and then just look at each other and laugh incredulously at how lucky we were in that moment. That evening will go down in history as one of the most intimate and special "dates" of my life (and was the only night I got a decent sleep).
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On one of our free days, we decided to take a bus to Suwon, about an hour outside of Seoul. The subway was easy...we assumed the bus would be, too. I'm proud of us for sticking with the plan even after we realized we had no idea how much it cost to get on the bus, what bus to get on, or how we would get off said bus once we were on. I clearly remember how uncomfortable it was to be on the bus and not know how we were even going to know where to get off (a stop or asking the bus to stop), but it was an adventure and a little thrilling to get so outside our comfort zone. Not to mention how to find the bus stop and correct bus to get back to Seoul. (Thank goodness for my emergency flash cards!) The added bonus was getting to see South Korea outside of Seoul; rolling green hills, bright blue lakes, huge factory complexes, road tolls that looked like something out of Vegas, and amazing leafy forests. When I think of Korea, I don't automatically think of the hustle and bustle of Seoul. It's so much more than that.
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In Suwon we spent the day exploring the perimeter of the Hwaseong Fortress. Every so often you would find a gate or armor house or guard post. Unlike the palaces, those structures are left for you to explore on your own. We sat in the top level of a stone circular observation tower that was built in the late 18th century and had a snack as we marveled over our luck at being able to visit such a rare treasure, looked at pictures of Little Bug on our camera, sweat like crazy in the intense heat, saw a seriously freaky looking spider, and missed our tour car (which was shaped like a dragon). It ended up being a win/win situation because the 2 extra hours we were stranded in that portion of the fortress allowed us time to wander up and down the wall, exploring gate houses and ancient doors and hidden, secluded worship areas. We laid on the grass of an old archery range and watched the clouds pass overhead because even across the world in the most foreign of places, you can always find a cloud shaped like a dog.
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We went out for a nice meal one night, a shabu shabu meal. It was a nice place, but obviously not one that served many tourists. Our waiter pretty much cooked our meal for us and even turned off the heat long after we should have done it ourselves. It was a delicious and uneventful meal, until the waiter brought each of us a small white bowl with a cold, clear yellow liquid with small, white chunks floating in it. He bowed and left. It was like a movie moment where the country bumpkin doesn't know which fork to use during a fancy dinner....we had no idea if this bowl was something to eat or something to wash our hands in...they didn't give us a spoon. So we waited, pretending to make riveting conversation, for a good 5 minutes until another table received their bowls of liquid. They picked them up and drank them down like a drink. So that's what we did, too. The apple-flavored liquid with the fruit chunks was a refreshing and lovely dessert.
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In the hours before we took custody of Little Bug, we had a single-minded mission. Find Phung Phungie, an orange doll that farts. We knew from pictures his foster family had given us that he really enjoyed this doll, and we wanted to bring one home with us. We hit up the larger markets without success and decided to set out to find the toy district. I'm pretty sure we did not find the toy district, but we were directed to a plaza of three large high-rise stores. I enjoyed walking around the plaza and seeing the energy. There were lots of stages and big screens, so I think this place was probably pretty hopping at night. Too bad we were looking for an orange farting doll and not an evening entertainment venue. The first two stores were strike outs. We would ride the escalator up each floor (usually 12 or 13), get off and do a once over while teenagers openly stared at us, and then ride it all the way back down in defeat. If we had more time I would have loved to explore some of the floors we saw in more detail (especially the rows and rows of hanboks), but as we were escalator riding we received a call from the agency telling us they needed to push our meeting up a couple hours. As thrilled as we were, we knew this meant we had to admit defeat. We had a small window of time, so we decided to zip in and out of the last store, only stopping if a toy area was readily apparent. Wouldn't you know, there, on the 6th floor of the last stop on our way home, nestled in between hundreds of other dolls, Appa spotted Phung Phungie, the exact replica of the doll Little Bug loved, in all it's farting noise-box glory. After all this time, the picture I carry of Little Bug in my billfold is the picture taken from later that night, a cute picture of a child tentatively smiling for the camera with his good buddy, Phung Phungie, comfortingly close to him.
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After taking custody of Little Bug, he fell asleep during the van ride back to our hotel. I remember how it felt to cradle his sleeping form against my body for the first time as we walked through the huge lobby. I felt like every eye was on us, and indeed, many people craned their necks around to catch a look at our new family. I knew there were probably a lot of different opinions of us in that moment and in my fragile newness as a mother I felt momentarily overwhelmed by judgment. Yet, by the time we got half way through the lobby and passed the golden lions, I had my head held high and my heart and mind trained on the only two people that mattered in that moment, the man at my side and the baby in my arms.
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As our plane was getting ready to taxi onto the runway, it hit me square in the chest that this.was.it. Of all the moments, the moment the wheels left Korean soil Little Bug's life would be irrevocably changed. The magnitude of what he was losing and what we were taking from him, things that we had grown to love and admire and respect with gratitude that can never be expressed, really weighed on me. As the plane took off, I looked out the window and tears of sadness rolled down my cheek and thought as hard as I could "we will be back, we will be back, we will be back."
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Buggy, I hope you know how much we loved you from the get-go and how proud we are of the way we became a family and how much we love the beautiful country you were born in. As much as these moments are our memories, they weave another layer into your story. So enjoy. (But I would suggest staying away from the Ion Supply Drink...just take mama's word for it.)