Speechless in Seoul

Well first we are sending our prayers for Grant to make a full recovery!! We love you Grant!! Please get well soon! Monroes please keep us updated on this blog. Anyone who reads this please take a moment to pray for our nephew Grant. He is in a Minnesota hospital battling encephalitis/meningitis.

Tuesday June 10th at 10 am:

Yesterday was a day of joy for us, we finally met precious Ava! She is so cute and wonderful and smart and happy and.... We arrived at Easern and met with Mrs Park, travel coordinator, to get Ava's papers and passport for her trip back home. Then plan was to meet with Dr Kim, founder of Eastern in his office and Dr Kim, President of Eastern. We had some time to spare and found the Wilman's in the business room and joined them until the 11 am meetings. I had to use he bathroom (by the way Koreans don't know "bathroom" or "restroom", it's "toilet") and walked past the foster mothers and their babies on the way; this was where they bring the children for check ups. I wondered if I would see Ava or Aiden. (we look at all the kids we see and think that) When I left the toilet and began to walk back it happened!!! I saw Ava and her foster mother walking towards me in the hall and I approached her. She immediately knew who I was and we smiled at each other. I ran to grab Leslie and we all were together in the hallway. She took Ava out of the carrier and proudly showed us how well she is walking while holding her hand and Leslie and I were just balling. Other foster mothers were looking at us and talking and smiling at the site they were witnessing. While we were there, a women form Dr Kims office came by and said we were late to our 11 am meeting him! Oh boy, we are crying and the time just flew by. We gathered ourselves up, waved goodbye and said see you in an hour. When we got to Dr Kims office, the Wilmans and another family were there with him already. Dr Kim likes to meet all of the new parents and the children when they leave his custody. He is a young 94 years old and told us about the history of Eastern and all that they do for Korea. Next we all met with Dr Kim, President. She is very nice and thankful for caring for their children. It was about 11 am now and was time for our scheduled meeting to see our social worker and Ava! After we dropped off the AAC gifts we headed back to the business room and Ava and her foster mother came in. By then our social worker already found out we met before and laughed. We exchanged gifts and the foster mother bought us very nice Korean gifts and gave us Ava's beautiful Hanbok and she loved the picture we gave her of her and Ava. The social worker said that they need to meet privately and said that Ava is not used to strangers and could cry when they leave the room. The left the room and no crying! She loves Leslie and is a happy little girl. We already can see her Leo personality shine when she shakes her head "no" and gets what she wants. And she is active!! Grandma, we need walker toys too now, plus more baby gates!! She is so interested in the toys and books and shiny stuff. We had a great time together and will meet with her again this afternoon for a longer period of time. Can't wait to take her home! At noon, they fed us all lunch and we met a couple mothers and their adopted daughters visiting from Minnesota. Seem nice... The Wilman's had set up a trip to Pyeongtaek, where John Martin, Ava, and Aiden were born and we really wanted to go. We asked Mrs Park if we could and after a long korean conversation and a few strange looks, they eventually said yes! Yay! But we were out of memory on our camera and could not get back to the hotel to download pics in time. We asked if they knew where we could buy a new memory card. The Hi Mart was down the street and we ran to get there and back in time!! By the way it was about 100 Degrees F today, HOT! We found a memory card and bought a 4 GB memory card!! Nice, now we are good to go!!! Our destination was Eastern's Pyeongtaek facility. Where they have a school for the mentally challenged, and Esters Home; where the pregnant mothers stay before they give birth to the children. What a great place. Dr Kim has done alot for the underprivileged in this country. What a neat, neat place. It took about 1.5 hours to get there and we toured the campus. Very nice place and we met the caretaker of Esther's Home. We bought some crafts that the mother make. After that we visited the hospital where our children were born. Overall a priceless trip!
Wish us luck today and see you soon! We love you Grant!!!!! Get well soon!!!!!!!
Adam, Leslie, Ava and Lily :-)