We made it!  We arrived in our room here at the ESWS (Eastern) guest house around 6:30pm.  We are just freaking out because it seems so bizarre to be in Seoul!

The flight was good.  I got about 2 hours of sleep while Jake and Jen got almost non.  For some reason the length of the flight didn’t seem to bad to be (13.5 hours).  Jake got a little crazy (cabin fever) after the first 5 hours, but a couple of movies chilled him out.  The food and service was great, but I would seriously consider doing something bad to get upgraded to those first class seats.  Wow, those are cool!

After we got here we agreed we needed to stay awake until about 9pm.  We ventured out into the neighborhood for some food.  We found a small sushi place (SushiGen).  I have been to a lot of sushi places, but it was quite a struggle for me to order at this place.  Of course, I ordered way too much.  I truthfully hace no idea how to communicate here and I am regretting not sticking with my Rosetta Stone software more than I did.  I am frantically going through our paperwork to figure out some basics…nice procrastination huh?

OK…  so…  when do we meet her????

Our driver handed us a letter at the airport that said our meeting is setup for 9:50am in the morning (6:50pm Minneapolis time)!!!  As I write this we are 4 hours away.  We got a good night’s sleep and are lounging in our room while I try to find 1 or 2 bars of free wireless (it is very spotty).  We will be going over the questions we need to ask the foster mom and just trying not to bounce off the walls.  My next blog entry should include photos with Halle!  In the meantime, here are some photos of our trip over here.

Here is a shot from my seat while flying over the southern coast of Lake Superior

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Here is a our flight path.  We flew over Canada, Russia & China (avoiding North Korea).

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I give you…northern Russia…

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Our 93mph crazy scary ride from the airport.

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Bye for now!

Here we are in Chicago! Jake and Jen slept a bit on the flight here while I caught up on some podcasts.

Our traveling partners are reWe made it to the international terminal without any issues. Jake and I walked around a bit but didn’t find much. This terminal is pretty sparse. We did walk by the horde of Korean Air flight attendants that will be on our flight. All of them had on the turquoise scarfs and all of them are almost as beautiful as my wife . I almost had to tap Jake to get him to stop staring.

I’ll take some photos while in flight and post them later, but for now, here is out plane.

Well, here we go! We are at MSP waiting to take off to go to Chicago to catch our flight to Seoul. We have already met another family going to pick up their daughter at the same agency! It is great to be with another family going through the same anxiety and excitement that we are.

Special thanks to our neighbor Russ who woke up earlier than the roosters to be our personal shuttle to the airport. And big ups to Steve Jobs for creating the iPhone to allow me to blog from my phone.

The excitement in the Johnston household is palpable this morning.  We had a great weekend and went out with some great friends (last moments of adult freedom for awhile).  We are getting our poop in a group this morning.  You would think we would have started packing by now, but we really aren’t the advanced packer kind of family.  My methods are very abstract, but it seems to work out…other than the time I forgot my bathing suit in Mexico.

Lots to do today…pick up more leaves in the yard, get Jake a haircut, get Lucy (dog) groomed, pick up last minute items from Target and a bunch of other stuff I am probably forgetting.

I have to say, it feels more real to me today.  Since we found out we are traveling, it hasn’t really hit me.  Jen will say things like, “We will meet Halle in 4 days” and that makes me really happy, but I am having a hard time imagining that it is really going to happen.  I know…ridiculous.

Ok, off to packing!  Check back soon!