Day 4: Meeting Lola

Wow, wow, wow. We have dreamt about this day for a long long time. The day we get to meet our daughter. Let me just say this, our expectations going into this were not very high. Lola has lived with her foster parents since she was around 50 days old and she is very attached to them, especially her "Omma" or foster mom. So, we expected some shyness, hesitation and clinginess to her Omma. Further, we are American and we speak no Korean whatsoever so we expected that Lola might even be afraid of us. Friends, God works in amazing ways and today He really showed up. 

We met our social worker/translator at SWS offices at 1:20pm. We went the 7th floor, signed some paperwork, and gave our gifts to our social worker and also the SWS staff. They did not open the gifts in front of us, as is very common in Korean culture.

The infamous SWS playroom where we saw the first pictures of Lola.

We then headed out via taxi to the foster parents home.

We've been a little anxious but the whole experience has felt more surreal than anything else. During the 50 minute taxi ride to her current home the butterflies finally showed up. Neither of us ate lunch so that probably didn't help much either. 

After rolling by miles and miles of giant buildings we turned into a short street that was basically a vertical ascent. The taxi dropped us off in the parking garage of a small apartment complex and we went up a small flight of stairs to the foster parents home. 

Without hesitation we knocked on the door and were greeted by a smiling Korean woman and OUR DAUGHTER. 

She was a little shy and timid for the first few minutes but she warmed up little by little and within 15 minutes she was smiling and laughing hard. We learned so much about her in that 90 minutes we were there. She is very observant and inquisitive. Everything we did she would immediately imitate. She makes many faces. She has lots of energy. Omma said that she started walking around 15 months but she was cruising and climbing long before that. She climbs on everything and even broke one of their chairs (she'll fit right in with our boys). She loves to eat. Omma says she loves meat like chicken, fish, pork, beef, she loves veggies and fruits and she loves sweets (that's my girl).   She is Miss Independent. She wanted to hold everything herself. She wanted my phone and anytime I'd try to help her she would push my hands away. Sassy pants!!!!

But the absolute best part....her giggles and laughter....well they are just infectious. I could listen to that all day. We blew bubbles and played peek a boo and Lola was cackling. Take a look for yourself.

I'm going to save the video of us first meeting her for our family only for right now. I'm so thankful for our translator for capturing this special moment for us. It's one we will never forget. Incredible, amazing, awesome, those words don't even do this day justice. Thank you Lord for this sweet day. We are already excited to see Lola again Wednesday.

We ended the day today by going to a Korean dinner with some friends we've met from Soddy Daisy, TN. They have two boys, ages 5 and 8 and they are also adopting a precious little girl. Sadly, we enjoyed ourselves so much and took no pictures. We plan to hang out tomorrow though so I'll try to remember then. It's almost 9pm here and we are exhausted. Night night.

Erin 

Note: This blog won't let me post videos, but I have some pretty amazing videos. I'll try and figure out the best way to share.