7/14 to 7/15~ Arriving at the Hotel and meeting participants

          In Seoul Korea now... Woke up at 3:00AM on 7/15 to call my parents. I figured I hadn't talked to them for two days and that it would be wise to talk to them to let them know I landed in Incheon safely and had arrived at the hotel. It was rather lonely without them to talk to. My phone card didn't work so I got charged for the quick phone call. My parents were grateful for the call though since it was now 4pm back in the states. They were glad I had arrived safely and slept through the night.

        After talking to my parents, I went back to sleep and woke up again at about 11AM in Korea. I watched some television mainly cartoons and some Korean drama that I can't recall. It was kinda fun to watch cartoons like Sponge-bob in another language. I also was watching "Sex in the City". 

        After all this going on on 7/14 till 7/15 I packed up my belongings  from the main hotel building by about 1:30PM and headed  down the hill to Suite A where I would spend the majority of my time in Seoul.
   I unpacked  all my belongings and ventured out of the room to get to know the other participants. It's muggy and hot here... It isn't raining today thankfully. There's 17 of us!!!

Participants are from USA, Denmark, Belgium, France and Norway. US participants are from Chicago, LA- California, Seattle and Oregon. We all ate chicken for dinner with kimchi. We played an ice breaker game to get to know each other by stating our name, where we were from and a descriptor of ourselves. My word was short/vertically challenged. 

  After dinner about 2/3rds of us went to explore Seoul.. We all sang at a norae bong called Prince Edward. I bought face wash here as well, skin food brand since I accidentally left mine at home... I also talked with Ms. Seol my social worker today and found out the sad news that it is not possible to meet my foster mother now in Seoul... It turns out for a short time ,I had a foster mother in Taegu as well. A new law was passed just last August that you can only have contact with the foster parent if Holt still has them working for them. Another social worker Esther was telling us of this new law earlier in the day and was rather bothered by it.

I also discovered for a brief time I was hospitalized in an incubator in Partima OB/GYN because I was born 2 months early.

The silver lining... My birth mother and father are both still alive...A telegram was sent to them but no word on a verdict yet. The root search and meeting takes place on the 22nd of July...
Everyone here seems pretty awesome. The women outnumber the men...I found this to be an interesting demographic. There were five men and eleven women.
Another interesting note about the participants is that a large sum of us are teachers or in the field of education.
I get a camp t-shirt, a badge with my name on it and I was measured for a hanbok... We all will receive a hanbok to bring home with us. :)