It's Finally Here!

We have been waiting and waiting and waiting for a phone call from our agency that the time had come to travel to get Anderson in Korea.  But after a week of sitting around the house, we were going nuts!  We decided that was not going to work for us.  We headed to Holden Beach, then to Lake Lure, and finally down to Ocracoke Island, OBX.  (Will post a couple more details about these mini-adventures soon.)

Along the way, on Andy’s birthday actually (July 5^th), we got a call from our agency but not the call we were expecting.  We were told that travel to Korea had been pushed back and we shouldn’t expect to travel to Korea until after August 1^st.  That was a BAD day.  I could not stop crying.  We were down on Ocracoke with Andy’s parents when we got another unexpected call from our agency.  I was in another room when I heard Andy say, “Hey Darlene… You got it.”  I went running into the living room and jump into Andy’s arms.  We were approved for travel to go get our little men- just 3 days after we were told it would probably be weeks until we would get to travel.  We knew that God had heard and answered the prayers of family, friends, and us who were pleading to God to move the obstacles that had been placed in our path. 

We work up at 4AM on Thursday morning to go to the airport in Charlotte to catch our flight to Chicago and then on to Seoul, Korea. Now usually Andy and I are not morning people, but I have to say we both got out of bed with a little extra spring in our step because we knew what was wait at the other end of this flight. 

The thirteen-hour flight from Chicago to Seoul was long to say the least, but Korean Air was great.  The flight attendants looked like they were straight out of 1952.  Andy was able to grab a couple winks of sleep here and there, but I have never been able to sleep on a plane.  We ended up going 29 hours without sleeping.  Yuck!  After 2 flights, 1 bus ride, and a short hike from the bus drop off to the guest house we were finally here.  We had a little trouble finding the SWS guest house, so we trekked through the streets of downtown Seoul lugging 50lb suitcases for about 30mins before we found it.  I’m sure we didn’t stick out to the locals.

We went out to grab a bite to eat.  Seoul is a massive city.  There were so many people out on the street.  The traffic was nuts.  We were amazed by the sea of people surrounding us.  We found a Starbucks and grabbed a quick sandwich.  Then it was back to the room to shower and crawl in bed (at 8:38 PM).  

Since we went to bed at 8:30PM by 5:30AM we had gotten 9 hours of sleep.  We had made prior plans to meet Elizabeth Shin, an international student at Davidson College that Megan and Trey hosted last year.  She has graciously agreed to show us around Seoul on Saturday and Sunday.  The weather does not look great, but since we have time we are going to face the day head on. 

We’ll try to post as often as we can so stay tuned!

~Andy & Kate