Court Day

Tuesday, December 17

We were all ready to head over to Eastern Social Welfare Society at about 12:45 to be there in plenty of time for our 1:30 van ride.  

Well as Fred and I piled out of the cab they were instructing us to jump into the van that had already started to pull away.  Come to find out from the 2 other families in the van we were supposed to be there for a 1:00 departure. Um nope, never got that message....but thanks for waiting for us!!!! We had a nice ride to court building with the Robinson family and the Gilmore family. We arrived with about an hour to wait and found 3 other families had already arrived prior to us and then 3 more families arrived after us.  So 9 families in total had court appearances with us being right in the middle. 

Fred and I were lead in at about 2:45 (15 minutes before our scheduled ten at 3:00) and asked to sit in two seats on the left side of a crescent shaped table.  Our Eastern Social Welfare Society interpreter sat on the right hand side along with another Eastern worker. The judge sat up in front behind a slightly elevated judge's bench with 1 court clerk directly in front of him. We all had microphones to speak into which surprised me.  He was very friendly, smiled a lot, and nodded as we spoke.  Others have said he understands English though all of his speaking was in Korean.  We were asked 3 questions and previously told by our agency to be short and sweet in our answers:

Q:  I understand you've been married since 1997 and have no children?
A: Sarah & Fred - Yes

Q: How do you fee about international adoption? 
A: Sarah - We are excited to adopt. There are many children in this world that need families and we feel we can provide that to a child.

Q: You are a firefighter.  Will you be able to help her care for this child?
A: Fred - Yes.  I work 1 day and then off 2 days so home quite a bit.

The judge then asked if we had any questions or a statement for the court.  Fred thanked the judge for his time today and asked that the process be moved along quickly so we can bring our son home soon.  

Finally the judge made a long statement that translated into "Will you raise your together knowing that adoption is final/lifelong commitment and pledge make your child in priority in good times and bad." Of course we acknowledged YES.  And that was it.  We stood up, said thank you and left the room.  In a matter of about 3 minutes we were done. 

It was quite a nice and jovial ride back to our accommodations as we shared the van ride again with the Robinson family and the Hine family : ) A number of families then got back together for dinner and drinks later in the evening to celebrate...one more GIANT step complete!  Now we wait for initial approval which could take a matter of days or even a week as this is a new judge so we have no trends to go off of. Once initial approval is given we then learn of our wait period for final approval.