Also called "Han-gawi (한가위)". Korean traditional Harvest Festival. It is one of the most important Korean traditional holidays. As a celebration of the good harvest, Koreans visit their ancestral hometowns and share a feast of Korean traditional food.
We are so thankful that we traveled to Korea right before this holiday. We arrived in Seoul on Monday, September 28th. The day we planned to leave was October 2nd.
Chuseok is celebrated on Saturday but everyone starts to travel and prepare on the Friday before as they generally have that day off work.
Eastern is closed on that Friday and our foster mother had a distance to travel as well as a lot of things to prepare for the holiday so we got to have Isabella a day earlier that we thought. (AAC had told us this was a possibility but I could not hope for it, as I did not want to jinx the chance.)
What a precious gift to get our girl and spend some time in Korea with her before having to get on the flight home. 10 hours is a long time to be with someone that you don't know at all. We made the time in Korea count. We doted on her and she was the center of attention at all times. We tried to make it peaceful and welcoming for her. She is such a good baby. She tolerated us quite well until bedtime.
We took her out to eat for our first family day to the Outback Steak House. We figured that this is a tradition that we could keep going back home. She did okay there and even ate some of the bread. She started to get fussy so I took her back to the hotel. She enjoyed the walk and loves the traffic and lights. When everyone else got back to the hotel it was time to go to bed. We tried to get her to sleep but she got very upset. I handed her to my husband at this point as she was more comfortable with him and would calm down better for him. He started to walk the hallway of the hotel with her but she did not calm down. We did not want to keep everyone in the hotel awake so we took her up to the open roof of the hotel. It calmed her down and she quit crying. As long as we would walk back and forth near the side wall so that she could see the lights and cars she was a happy baby. She claps her feet together when happy and she was just clapping them away. Finally she was tired enough to sleep. She only woke once for her 3 AM feeding and then was off to sleep again. She woke up in a splendid happy mood. She woke up and looked around at us trying to decide if she recognized us or not. When she sat up she just clapped and smiled and let the kids entertain her. She watched a little Korean TV. My son had the TV on a Korean cartoon, proving that kids will watch TV no matter what language it is in!
We took her out in the city again as we had several hours before we had to catch our flight. She was thrilled to be outside. We carried her in our arms so that she would start to get to know us. We walked around for about an hour and then went back to the hotel to get ready to catch our flight.
All in all this time was good, a few stressful moments but nothing like what I had expected.
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