Day 1 in Seoul was wonderful!

We started our day off in Seoul with breakfast at Dunkin Doughnuts.  It is a short walk from our hotel and it was so nice outside with a cool breeze blowing.  I'm trying to take in all the sights and sounds and smells of Seoul to take home with me.  Seoul is a very busy place and so are the people.  It's so strange to be in such a big city and see children riding bikes and scooters on the sidewalk by themselves.  I started thinking though most people live in apartments and thats the only place they have to ride.  As we were walking down the street I would look up at the apartments and start wondering about Daria is she up there in one of them with her foster family.  I start thinking of her foster family and my heart starts to hurt for them.  They know their time with her is almost over and she will be in a new home on the other side of the world. Then I start to think of Daria and how she will be leaving the only family she has known.  I get teary eyed and emotional over this.
On a lighter note we went to Namdaemun Market and met up with Angie Betts and her family. They are adopting from here also.  I have become friends with Angie through the Holt boards and facebook. Meeting in Seoul was so surreal.  This is there 3rd adoption from Korea.  They have 2 boys and now a little princess Isabelle.  She is such a doll..so happy.  I've heard many stories about this market but was not really prepared.  It is huge!!!  Remember me saying I wanted to take all the sights, sounds and smells in well I will always remember the smells here!!  It is a very crowded and busy place and I enjoyed every minute of it!  We watched a man make candy right it front of us from a hard piece of honey.  It was so cool.  He just kept stretching it and putting it in flour...and then it turned into what looked like hundreds of white hairs as fine as a spider web.  He then separated them put a mixture in the middle and wrapped it up into a little cocoon.  Of course we bought some...it was very good.  We stayed at the market for awhile and then we had our first experience with Seoul subway.  So glad we had Angie with us.  On the subway it was so funny to see all the different types of people of Seoul.  It is really funny how we are really a lot alike.  You had your older men and women in their suits and dresses, the middle age on the go people, and the teenagers with their ipods and phones listening to music, texting and playing games.  After many stops and transfers we made it to Lotte World.  It is hard to explain this place because it is so diverse.  I can't remember how many floors it had but their were a lot.  There is also an amusement park in it also.  It was so much to do there was no way we could take it all in at one time.  We met up with yet another family adopting here too.  Karen and her husband have  4 daughters and are adopting another little girl Hanna. They will get her Wednesday and we get Daria Tuesday.  We all had dinner at TGI Fridays.  Yes, there are American restaurants here.  We saw an Outback on our cab ride and I thought Brandon was going to yell stop any minute.  After dinner exhaustion hit me, Brandon and Mason all at once.  On our cab ride home I could not keep my eyes open and neither could Mason.  We both crashed on poor Brandon.  He kept trying to keep us awake which was a seriously hard job.  I slept really hard and woke up about 5.  I feel much better this morning.  We have our city tour today and we are very excited about this. We will meet our tour guide at 9:30 in the lobby!  Well that's about it for now.  I will blog later about our day today.  It's Monday here in Seoul and tomorrow is the big day!! Please pray for us and Daria!! Love you all Sonia