Korea Day 4!

Hi Everyone,

This post shouldn't be too long as we didn't do a whole lot yesterday (okay- it will be long because of pictures/explanations but not from me talking about myself the whole time- lol). We kinda feel like we're duds- so many of my bb friends go to so many places when they are in Korea, but with Calen it is a little hard to do all of it since he is a bit overwhelmed by all the people- especially all the people that come up and talk to him in Korean!

So, yesterday we went on our City Tour of Korea with a guide that Holt provided for our family and another family from Boston who is in Korea picking up their son a half hour after us... our guide was so sweet. She is a college student and her name was Ji-Su. She was very easy going with our two families as we both had "crazy" kids that just wanted to run every where. We started our tour off by going on a subway ride to one of the Palaces in Seoul. It was called Deoksugung. I took a million pictures which is probably good because we didn't end up going to the other palace like we were supposed to because it started raining again after we had lunch in Insadong. Our guide was very informative and told us all about the Palace. Apparently this wasn't a main palace for the Royal Family back in the day, but it was a Palace to stay while their main, bigger Palace was being built- tough being a royal, right?!? :)

Main Throne

There are statues like this everywhere in Seoul!

My beautiful Korean boy with a Beautiful Korean Palace behind him! :-)

There were lots of these archway door ways throughout the grounds

The Ceiling of the Throne Room... very pretty!
The Throne
All the different buildings were like this- high up on big stones. This little gate led to where they would burn wood underneath the buildings to heat the buildings... Very inovative if you ask me! Oh and this is still the way that Korea heats their rooms- well not with fire anymore but with hot water!
The Roof

This building was like a larger grandeous patio. It's where the Royal's would have tea and relax...

The Garden Room led to their private Garden

The end of our tour Calen just wanted to climb stairs

One of our family pictures from Korea- it's hard to get family pictures when there's no one to take the pictures!

Our group :)

After our Palace tour we had about a 20 minute walk back to Insadong for lunch. It was SUPER windy out as the storm was coming in. All Calen wanted to do was get in the pack and sleep on my back- which was just fine because then we didn't have to worry about him running around. We were told that it was very uncommon for Korea to have this kind of wind...just our luck right?

Sights on the way to lunch

A picture of our Hotel for good measure. :) A few minutes before this picture we passed the US Embassy... stupid me tried to take a picture and then got whistled at by the gaurds- Oops!

Both kids with our awesome guide after our lunch and before the down pour of the day!

After lunch we all parted ways. Allen went back to the hotel room and I stayed in Insadong to try and get all of our souvenior shopping done, which I did! Woohoo! It's amazing how safe it is in Seoul... everyone is super friendly to Americans. At the palace all the children wanted to tell us 'Hi.' and 'How are you doing.'- they just want to practice their English skills which is so cute! It's very nice that Insadong is only a 5 minute walk from our hotel. We stayed in the hotel most of the rest of the afternoon since it was raining so much. Calen was super moody since he had only slept on my back for about 30 minutes- if even that. We thought we'd try to find an Outback Steakhouse for Dinner but that didn't go so well...Once we got dropped off by the Taxi Driver at where Outback supposedly is this is what we saw...

We searched for Outback for about 10 minutes and then settled on McDonald's for dinner instead! Calen was super happy with his hamburger and minus the Pizza Hut we had a few days ago, this was the most he had eaten our whole trip...

The last dinner as a family of 3! :)

Once we got back to the hotel, Calen got a bath, asked for some milk and as we were getting his milk this is what happened...

Poor kid! It was only 9 pm and he was just done. He has done this several times while we've been in korea. He never does this at home! He is such a trooper though... I am so proud of him and how he has behaved while we've been here!

We're hoping to see the Korean War Memorial this morning before heading to Holt to pick up KatieJoy forever! It's so wierd to say that... I can't believe this day is finally here... I hope to at least post one more post about today before we leave, but it will all depend on her. Please be praying for her as I can't imagine what she will be feeling when she watches her Foster Family leave. :(

We love you all,

~Mandy~