Sunday, July 26, 2009

Thinking out loud

Here's what's on my mind today.

I'm thinking about whether it's possible to visit the town and the hospital that Clarissa was born in while we're in Korea. Clarissa was born on the complete opposite side of the country from Seoul. All babies in the whole country who are placed for internatial adoption come to Seoul while they wait for their families, but they can be born anywhere. Our daughter was born in a city on the coast of Korea.

Korea isn't a very big country. About the same size as a small US state I would guess. I sometimes forget that because I'm used to living in such a big country. When I realized that it was on the other side of the country I immediately thought that it was too far to travel. Then I had to remind myself that the other side of the country is maybe five or six hours by car and much quicker by train. I looked it up and I think it would be about a three hour train ride.

So in theory we could get on a train first thing in the morning, be there by lunch time, spend the afternoon exploring and then get back on the train and be back to Seoul that night.

How amazing would it be to take a train ride across Korea?! You know me, I'm completely obsessed with Korea and everything related to it, so the opportunity to travel across the whole country sounds pretty cool to me! I'm interested in seeing what it's like outside of Seoul.

There are some people from my Korean adoption message board who have been lucky enough to speak to the doctor or nurse that was there the night their baby was born and a lucky few who even managed to track down the hand and footprints taken at birth. Those would be extremely special treasures to us.

Even if we could do nothing but see the hospital and take a picture of it, it would be one more piece of the puzzle that we could solve for Clarissa later in her life when she wonders about Korea and where she came from. To walk where her birth mother walked and experience the place where Clarissa's life began is something that would be really special to me.

Clarissa's first foster parents are also in that city. She lived there for two months before she was transferred to Seoul. Wouldn't it be great to have a meeting with them? Or the social worker that facilitated it? She would know Clarissa's birth mother.

When you have a biological child you take for granted that you get things like an ultrasound photo, a hospital bracelet, fingerprints and footprints and all those special little momentos that we all keep. I kept everything from my kids first few days of life. But with Clarissa we get so little. We get a paragraph here, a document there....every little piece of info we get is such a treasure to us. I feel like piecing together her first few days or weeks of her life is something that I need to do for her if I can. Someday those photos or those stories might be really important to her.

I'm still trying to figure out the logistics of exactly how we'd actually go about that though. The city she was born in is large. We'd have to figure out how to find the hospital, how to get around, and all of that. I suppose we could just get the address and have a cab take us there, but then what?

I'm going to check with our agency and see if they can set something up for us. It's something I'm really going to push for if I can. It would be one exhausting day out of an already busy and exhausting trip, but honestly, I think I'd fly to the moon if I thought I could uncover one more nugget of information about our daughter there.

So that's what's on my mind today. My body is in Idaho and my brain is in a hospital on the coast of Korea. It's been on my mind pretty heavily today.

1 comment:

Tracie said...

I've been thinking about it, too. Our daughter was also born in a coastal city across the country from Seoul. Be sure to post what you find out!