We decided that we should probably not force things today with her. We didn't want to stress her out again since she's definitely starting to figure out that something's up. Her foster mom says she's becoming even more anxious lately and won't let her out of her sight or even let the other family members hold her. So our strategy today was to keep the visit short and not to ask too much of her. Even with all this careful planning, it's inevitable that this abrupt change in caregivers is going to be very painful for her, so we decided it's probably best at this point to just give her one more easy, relaxed day before her whole world turns upside down.
We drove back to our hotel and Chi-Yong met us there. We hung out in the room for a while, where Jin-Ri was being her cute, funny, entertaining self.
After spending some time there, we decided to go out for lunch, and we ended up at an Italian restaurant in the hotel since the Korean restaurant was too busy. She seemed pretty nervous when we left the room since she wasn't sure what was happening, and lately she's on edge when we're on the move. We noticed she is much more at ease in the room and we're glad she's getting used to this setting so when we bring her back here tomorrow, it will be familiar to her.
After lunch, we just had a short visit in the room and then it was time for her to go home. We wanted to give them the rest of the day to spend together. Our thoughts are with the foster family tonight. We know this must be a really sad and difficult night for them. Tomorrow will be a really painful day for everyone, especially Jin-Ri. We'll do everything we can to get her through it.
Chi-Yong and the foster mom decided to take a separate elevator down to the hotel lobby after us, and John managed to carry Jin-Ri without her protesting, and luckily, right when she started frantically looking around, her foster mom re-appeared. What an accomplishment after the other day!
Since this is our last night in Korea for a while, we hit the town with Chi-Yong. We decided to go to the Myung-dong area since we spent a lot of time there on our last visit. We walked around Lotte Department store and we checked out the baby department and the food hall in the basement. The baby stuff in these stores here is so beautifully displayed. They have such nice quality things here. And that food hall is one very impressive, upscale grocery store. People probably thought I was weird to be taking photos there, but I always love getting these interesting travel shots.
After that, we walked around the streets of Myung-dong, had some delicious Italian ice cream at Cafe Pascucci.
And we retraced our steps back to the little, tiny Japanese-style business hotel I stayed at for a while during my last trip while I was alone and scheduled to appear on the KBS Achimmadang search & reunion TV show. The little hotel looked exactly the same, but those nice people I remember from then are probably no longer there.
We had an awesome dinner at Nam Po Myun Oak, a quaint, rustic, traditional style Korean restaurant where we sat on the floor at low tables to eat. We're getting used to that on this trip. Chi-Yong took us there during our very first trip to Korea 7 years ago and we remembered it was really good and wanted to go again. We had the exact same stuff...something called Abok jengban, bin dae duk and mandu. Delicious!
Anyway, that was pretty much it for today. It was a nice, easy day, and we figure it will probably be our last day of freedom and peace and quiet for a very long time. In less than 12 hours, we'll have Jin-Ri for good! Wish us luck!
We will be thinking about all of you! All the best and have a safe flight home.
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