Venturing to Uijeonbu

This was definitely our craziest adventure in Korea. We took Wednesday morning to travel north of Seoul to visit the orphanage where Sora lived for her first three months of life.

In Korea, when children are born, if they are placed for adoption they go to private, non-profit agencies. I don't think the government facilitates adoption at all. The children are first placed for domestic adoption, and if they aren't chosen after 5 months they can be adopted internationally. If children are adopted domestically, they are adopted very young, so I'm pretty sure the only ones who go to foster care are those that will be adopted internationally. If the children are never adopted they will eventually go to a government-run orphanage.

We were happy to have the opportunity to visit where Sora lived. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into. The day before we were told that we would meet the social worker in Uijeonbu at 10:30am. Then we were told to take the subway at that it would take 2 hours to get there. What?!?!?! We had no idea. We knew it would be difficult for Orin and Micaiah. We had to go through about 35 stops and change trains twice. Well, we were supposed to change trains twice, but it ended up being much more than that.

While Seoul is somewhat English friendly, outside of the city is not. We were about 7 stops from our final destination and all of a sudden we looked up and we were the only people on the train. We were so confused. People were speaking Korean over the loud speaker. Finally someone came through and said (well, motioned and spoke in Korean) that we need to get off. They pointed in the direction of the other train. So, we got off, and got on the train next to it that was full of people. As the doors shut, we saw the person from the previous train that had talked to us waving their hands vigorously and making a big "X" with their arms. When we started moving we realized why - we were going back the way we had come from. When the train stopped we got off and somehow found the correct train. Well, about 3 stops down again, more talking over the loud speaker and everyone getting off. We finally figured out that as we went out, some of the trains were being discontinued and didn't go all of the way to the end. This happened 2 more times! Finally, we reached our final stop about 20 minutes late.

The social worker was waiting for us. She spoke very little English. We piled into her car and headed to the orphanage. When we went in we were taken to the director's office. She was so sweet. And luckily she spoke English very well. Unfortunately, we were just supposed to sit there and have tea and the boys were in no mood for this. After 2 1/2 hours of sitting on the train they were wired. They were also still exhausted from getting over the jet lag. This made for a tense 15 minutes while they climbed over the couches. It was difficult.

Finally, she brought us to the baby room. There were babies everywhere. The room was bright and clean. Because this is privately run, it's much nicer than a government run orphanage would be. Luckily Micaiah and Orin were very interested in what was going on and settled down. We all sat for about 45 minutes and just played, fed, changed, and took pictures of the babies. It was a lot of fun.

We showed the workers the picture of Sora and they seemed to remember her. The director said that they had about 250 babies come through in 2009. Of those, only 18 were adopted internationally. It's not like this in most areas, but for some reason most of the Uejeonbu babies are adopted domestically. She said that Sora wasn't adopted because of her ear/hearing.

After being with the babies we went downstairs to a little playroom so the boys could run around. It was so great for them. One problem with us being in the city was that there was nowhere for them to play the entire trip. No parks or even grassy areas where they could run around. The orphanage runs a little day care and it was lunch time so we got to go eat with the kids. It was great. This was REAL Korean food. It was pretty yummy. The boys didn't like much of it but at least they ate some.

We headed back to the train station for the LONG trip back. The boys were pretty tired so we all just chilled on the way back. We got home around 3pm just in time to relax a little before picking up Sora at 4pm. It was a crazy day. I'm so glad I have these memories so I can one day tell Sora about it and show her the pictures of her first home and caretakers.