Another Friday

Well, here we are again, another week has passed.

I said that I wasn't going to do Friday updates anymore, but I had a couple of people who asked me to keep going with them anyway, so I think I will, but I'm not obsessing over them like I was before.

At this point a referral for someone else doesn't mean a whole lot to us. We've reached the point where people in line behind us are getting referrals, so a referral doesn't necessarily mean that we're moving up a spot. When you get this close to the front of the line it's possible to get skipped when a baby becomes available if they feel like the person in line behind you is a better match for the baby. We're going to get skipped every time there is a boy referral, since we're waiting for a girl and the woman at our agency said there have been mostly boy referrals lately. There are generally more boys available for adoption than girls in Korea, so it's definitely not uncommon for people waiting for boys to get matched quicker.

So we continue to wait. I'm not going to make another whiny post about how hard the wait is because I think you've all heard it a million times by now, but I'm still going a little crazy here. I'm hanging in there though. We'll get there.

Last night we went to the Korean market, which is my favorite place to go these days. There's not a very big Korean community in Boise, so there aren't many Korean stores, but there's one not far from our house that is pretty good. I'm so funny about anything Korean lately. I just want to be around Korean people and Korean food and Korean music and anything else that makes Korea feel like a real place to me. If Korea feels real to me then Clarissa feels real. Maybe that makes no sense.

Anyway, so we went to the Korean store and I absolutely love the woman who works there. I just wanted to follow her around the store all evening. I didn't, but I wanted to! She helped us pick out a Korean barbeque cooker thing that is so cool! It's the real Korean way to cook and serve Bulgogi. Bulgogi is korean barbequed beef and it's so freakin' good I could eat it three meals a day. Normally I stir fry it on the stove and serve it on regular dinner plates, but in Korea it's cooked on a portable cooking device right on the table and then everyone eats from there. They don't serve individual portions to everyone.

Maybe that sounds unsanitary, but it's the "real" Korean way! :) And since I'm having fun trying to do things the "real" Korean way, we decided to buy one. If nothing else it's a really cool gas powered emergency cooking device for our emergency supplies. If the power goes out for several days and we needed to cook our food, we could do do it on there and the whole thing packs away in a little case. I'm also thinking how fun it would be to go on a picnic at the lake and eat bulgogi instead of hamburgers!! :)

Oh, and speaking of that, it just reminded me of something I'm looking forward to. Someone told me that in Korea you can buy bulgogi burgers at McDonalds! I've got to try that.

So anyway, there's what's keeping me happy lately. If I surround myself with Korean things, Korea becomes a real place to me, which makes Clarissa more real to me, which in a strange way makes this last part of the wait a little easier. It makes me feel connected to Clarissa, which is what I need right now. I know she's out there somewhere and surrounding myself with the same things that she's surrounded by right now makes me feel closer to her. So maybe if I hang out at the Korean market enough and eat lots of bulgogi the real Korean way and watch enough Korean movies, I might actually survive this last part of the wait after all. Let's hope so! :)