Seoul arrival!

The second day that the sun never set! As we embraced the girls good-bye early this morning, Callie had big tears on her sweet cheeks. Witnessing her emotion brought on my own, full force, as I crawled into the shuttle van taking us to the airport. All the hectic packing, phone calls, planning and arrangements finally done and the good-bye's said, now I could feel the magnitude of the moment. It would have been easy to melt into a puddle of tears, but a short dialog developed with the passengers aroujnd me. The man sitting behind me was amazingly also on his way to Seoul. He was a soldier from Chattanooga fulfilling his last deployment assignment as a mechanic on apache helicopters at the US Army base in S. Korea. He was to be gone an entire year, and I could tell he was having a hard time leaving his wife and newly purchased home. Suddenly a week away from my home, family and girls didn't seem quite so hard.

Our plane was awesome! A giant 747 packed with lots of people (mostly Asian). The stewardesses were all so beautiful ~ like in a magazine (and they stayed that way the WHOLE flight!) Our seats had a pillow, blanket, and bottle of water waiting for us. Each seat back had it's own movie / computer screen so you could watch any number of movies, listen to music, play games, or my personal favorite, follow along on the flight path! The screen would tell you your current location, altitude, distance, speed, distance, etc. I had fun tracking the little airplane icon across the satellite map throughout our journey. I thought we would fly due west, but, we went north instead, over Tennessee, Ohio, Michigan, Ontario, the Hudson Bay, vast amounts of frozen white stuff, and then down into Seoul. We literally followed the sun! It never set until after we reached Korea! Shortly after take off we were given a little courtesy pack with socks, sleeping mask and a little toothbrush and toothpaste. So cute! Tim and I opted for the Korean lunch, Bibimbap. It was delicious! I passed on the seaweed soup, though. It tasted like warm ocean water ~ no real surprise there!

We arrived in Seoul about 3am your time, and after we cleared customs we found our driver that the agency had sent us. So nice! He took us on the 30-40 minute drive to ESWS, the agency we are working with here. We are staying in the guest house at ESWS and have already met up with another parent here. I am very, very tired and am headed to bed for the night (but it's now 7 am your time, so I hope I can sleep!). We will be meeting Kate and her foster mother in the morning (Friday) at 10 am ~ that's my time, and I'm too tired at the moment to figure out when that would be for you..... I have pictures, too, but haven't figured out all the computer components over here yet. I'm actually typing now in an office downstairs. Hopefully I can get those posted soon.

Thank you for praying! I had absolutely NO motion sickness. None on ascent, descent, in between, or even in the van here! TOTALLY INCREDIBLE! Thank you, Lord! Can I get you to now pray for my arthritis.... It's incredibly bad in my hands and feet ~ I'm suspecting being inactive in the plane for so long really aggravated it!

Girls, I love you so much, and miss you already!!!!
More as soon as I can! I'm off to sleep......