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Monday was our big day, the day we were scheduled to take custody of Ryan! Our meeting wasn't until the afternoon though, so we had plenty of time to sleep in, have a leisurely breakfast, and do some shopping. We wanted to buy a bunch of souvenirs for friends and family, so we hopped the subway and took off for the Namdaemun Market area of Seoul [LINK]. Namdaemun is one of the largest markets in Seoul, and unlike Itaewon, seems to be preferred by Koreans rather than tourists as a shopping destination. We browsed through the shops, gawking at such exotic items as giant bottled ginseng roots [Image 139] and purchasing various knick-knacks and tchotchkes, hats and t-shirts, and stainless steel chopsticks and celadon pottery [LINK], both of which are unique to Korea. The variety of goods at Namdaemun Market was amazing, and we spent a few hours just roaming the crowded narrow streets [Image 140, Image 141] and soaking up the atmosphere.
We arrived at Holt early that afternoon, about an hour before we were to meet Ryan and his foster parents, because we wanted to visit the Holt Reception Center first. Situated down a narrow alleyway from the main Holt offices, the Reception Center is where newborn infants sometimes stay for a few days before they are placed with foster families, and where some special needs children stay until they are placed with their forever families. There is one caregiver for every three children who live at the Reception Center, and the caregivers seem to do an exceptional job. The Reception Center building is a simple but beautiful facility where all who enter must remove their shoes. While we were there we had a very happy reunion with Mrs. Shin, who was our social worker when we adopted Joe and whom we had also met with last year when she visited Bethany's headquarters in Grand Rapids, Michigan [LINK]. She is a wonderful, warm, and friendly lady, and she dropped everything she was doing to spend an hour showing us around the Reception Center. We visited the physical therapy room [Image 142] and spent a long time in the nursery [Image 144] holding the babies and talking with the caregivers. Joe even had fun, spending most of our visit playing with a little boy named Ben [Image 143, Image 145], the oldest resident of the Reception Center whom we immediately recognized from Bethany's Children of Promise list of waiting children. Ben is a delightful little boy with some significant special needs--his ears are deformed and as a result he has a serious hearing impairment, and he has a cleft palate and is fed through a tube into his stomach. He is also smart and loving and he followed Tom around during our visit, constantly wanting to be picked up and held. We wished that we could take him home with us, and we felt guilty for leaving him behind. When we received our next issue of Bethany's magazine after we returned home, we noticed that Ben was no longer on the Children of Promise list, so we hope and pray that he has found a family of his own. (Bethany Christian Services currently has more than 150 children such as Ben on their Children of Promise list, all of whom need and deserve the love and care of a family. If you think you might be interested in adopting a special needs or waiting child, please e-mail international@bethany.org or call 1-800-64-ADOPT.)
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