We're in Korea!

Ready for our trip!

Mommy loves her big kid! And he was Ready to GO to Korea!!!!

Safe and sound, we arrived in Korea on time last night around 7 pm Korean Time. It was a pretty uneventful flight, except that I got a migraine and got sick for about 3 hours. Throwing up on a plane is NO FUN! I am really hoping that I don't get sick on the way home with 2 kiddos in tow, allen was pretty much on duty the whole time I was sick because all I could do was try to concentrate to not throw up... he did great though! Calen was such a trooper... this kid only slept maybe 3 total hours of the flight. He really is the type of kid that can go without a lot of sleep and I guess for this trip I'm going to be grateful for that. Once we landed I couldn't wait to get off the plane...no one should endure a 13 hour plane ride with a migraine.

It took us about 45 minutes to get out of the airport between bathroom stops, a diaper change, and getting through immigration to find our driver. Poor guy must have thought we were lost as we were one of the last people out of the airport from 3 big flights through. Immigration took the longest just because of the sheer amount of foreign people coming into Korea. But it was just a matter of standing in the line and getting through. Can I just say... it's very strange to have to go through a FOREIGN Passport immigration line!?! HA! We got a lot of looks in the Incheon Airport from Koreans, but no bad looks. Just looks of interest. I did have a mini heart attack looking down on the luggage carosel... I didn't see our bags!!! Can you imagine being in a foreign country with no clothing??? Not to mention that one of our suitcases was FILLED exclusively with gifts for our daughter's and son's foster families AND for the Holt social workers AND for 2 other families kids!?! Yeah, mini heart attack was just about to happen. Thankfully though, someone had taken them off the carosel and left them all together on the ground for us! WHEW!

Thank goodness for knowing others who have gone to Korea. Just from reading their blogs and "talking" with them I knew how to get through the airport and out to our Van driver. I also knew to expect NO seat belts for us or Calen. It's a little strange to have your 2.5 year son old sit between you and grab him every time the brakes get slammed on. Other than our driver being a very "jerky" driver (meaning he would go on and off the gas petal every 2 seconds!) the drive was pretty easy. We almost ramed into a few cars or rather they into us, but I remembered to just stare straight ahead and trust God that he would get us to our hotel safe and sound... which is exactly what he did!

Our hotel is AWESOME. It's one long room with a single bed and a king bed, a living room area and a kitchenette. It is perfect!

It's strange to think that I may only be a few miles from KatieJoy instead of across the world from her. It's not yet light here so I still don't really know what the landscape looks like. I know the night life is very alive here... there was CRAZY traffic as we were coming into Seoul last night! We have a busy day of sightseeing today thanks to Allen's GodFamily... yes, they just HAPPEN to be here in Seoul right now. Jeremy, allen's godbrother, has been working in Korea the past few years teaching English and his parents are visiting him right now! Small world right? Anyhow, they are picking us up at 10 am today to take us around! Then another one of my friends from the adoption world is picking us up for dinner at 6pm! We are so excited to see what our children's country of birth looks like and I can promise that starting tonight or tomorrow morning (my time!) I will post lots of pictures!

We love you all so much! Your prayers have ABSOLUTELY helped to get us to Korea and we are just so excited about that!

~Mandy~

PS- no, there are NO pictures of the weary travelers arriving in Korea... I took one look at myself in the airport bathroom and threw that idea RIGHT OUT THE WINDOW! :-)