Every three years, each child gets a Daddy Trip. We try to land the trips on birthday years, 5, 8, 11, 14, etc.
But, for Taylor's 14th birthday, she planned a very special trip to visit the Baby's Reception home and her foster mother in Seoul. When Taylor was an infant Mrs. Lee cared for Taylor for almost eight months. To plan this trip Taylor had to contact the social welfare service in Seoul and ask for help in this matter. We both filled out paper work; there was information only I could supply, and there was information SWS needed specifically from Taylor in her own handwriting.
We put a date on the calendar and Mrs. Lee was asked to meet us at the SWS office in Seoul.
March 3, 2017
We have friends in Seoul who offered a place for us to stay, so we arrived in Seoul late on March 2nd. I decided we didn't need loads of time in Seoul for Taylor to get nervous, so we booked a short two-night stay, so we could be back in our home for her to process this experience. It's only a 3.5 hour flight from Hong Kong, so it's a relatively easy trip.
On the morning of March 3rd, we were up at 8 am and out the door by 9:30. When we arrived at SWS Mrs Lee was already there. From the moment I saw her, I recognized Mrs Lee from Taylor's baby pictures. She didn't speak English, but she was smiling from ear-to-ear when we entered the room. She was calling Taylor, YouMee, which was her Korean name, and the name Mrs. Lee would have used while she was caring for Taylor in her home almost 14 years ago. For the next 45 minutes she spoke through a translator about Taylor, and Taylor through the translator asked questions about that time in her life.
Surprisingly, Taylor wasn't nervous at all. I think, deep in her soul, she she knew was finding pieces of herself that had been missing to her.
The only piece that Taylor could not find was something she wanted of her birth mother. Taylor didn't want to physically meet her birthmother, although we did find out that she is now married and living in Seoul, but she was hopeful there would be a photo of her in her file at SWS. She asked the post-adoption social worker if she could contact her birthmother and ask for a photo, but the social worker told Taylor she felt it would be best to wait for that request. I'm not sure I agreed and I promised Taylor we would revisit that request in a few months.
Before leaving SWS we were given a tour of the Baby's Reception home where the newborns are living before they go into foster care or into a children's home. The Korean government has vastly changed the rules around international adoption in hopes that domestic adoption would take its place. Sadly, this isn't the case.
As we were leaving SWS Taylor told me she wanted to learn Korean and someday return and work in the Baby's reception home. In a profound way, this trip gave Taylor peace.
About a year ago, our church showed a powerful video called, The DNA Journey. It's a five minute video and all the kids saw it and decided they wanted to have the test. Here's the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw7FhU-G1_Q
As the kids were talking about this, I realized how this very affordable test from 23andMe might help Taylor and Claire find some pieces to their puzzles. We ordered DNA tests for Taylor and Claire (of course, Forrest, Jeff and Ellis all have kits on the way) and sent off for the basic ancestry test. It takes about two months to receive the results.
Taylor found she is 54%Korean, 38%Japanese, and the remainder Chinese. Claire found she is 68%Korean, 17%Japanese, and the remainder Chinese.
23andMe is a privately held personal genomics and biotechnology company based in Mountain View, California. The company is named for the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a normal human cell.[1] Its saliva-based direct-to-consumer personal genome test was named Invention of the Year by Time magazine in 2008.[2]
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