Gwangju

June 21, 2025

We've made it to Gwangju! The weather is extremely rainy. We are under a heavy rain advisory. Everything else is written in Korean, so I don't know more details than that. We receive public announcement texts frequently over here. At least once a day a text comes through with some type of notice. They are all written in Korean which makes them way too difficult for me to decipher. I figure that if it's a real emergency, we will find out.

We left our Seoul place at 11 a.m. yesterday. Our host, Helena, came to say goodbye. She bought us souvenirs. How kind is that! I asked her if she did that for all her guests and she said no. When I asked why she bought things for us, she replied, "You're special!" I don't know what made us special, but we surely appreciated the sentiment.

Finding our train was a bit stressful due to the language barrier, but we made it in time. We boarded with another American family- the father of that family was also born in Gwangju. He was not adopted, though, and had family to visit. The train ride was quick and within about 2 hours we arrived at the Gwangju station. We experienced more stress as we tried to figure out a way to get to our Airbnb. All the taxis were too small to carry our whole family. Poor Jordan has been relied on heavily. He is the one who reserves all of our taxis for us whenever we need one. This was a complicated situation and I think he felt badly when things didn't work out as planned right away. Aiden said that the rest of us need to download the taxi app so that it doesn't always fall on Jordan's shoulders! He's probably right.

We were in our new apartment for about 10 minutes when we received a call from Mrs. Yoo. Mrs. Yoo is the head of the facility that sits on the site of Luke's orphanage. Her mother-in-law was the founder of the orphanage right around the time of the Korean War. It has a sad history. So many children were in the streets during and after the war without parents alive to care for them. Mrs. Yoo's mother-in-law saw the need and started the orphanage. We are not completely clear on the function of the facility now. There are several buildings on site that provide a place for Korean adoptees to return to in order to seek peace. We are also unclear on how she funds the operation of the facility. She must be close to 80 years old and has only one other employee. She said it is funded through donations, but we find that hard to believe.

We spent at least 2 hours with Mrs. Yoo yesterday while sitting around a table. She told us that we had to begin with a song. She distributed the words to Jesus Loves Me and we all sang together. Then she sang it in Korean. I was able to read the lyrics and sing that with her. We tried to connect with Luke's birth father but were unsuccessful. There are a lot of unanswered questions. Communication was also quite difficult. We found her English to be weaker than it was the last time we visited 13 years ago. Jordan and Aiden sat there for those 2 hours while all the adults talked. I was proud of them. I know it was quite boring for them and it was over the dinner hour, so they were hungry. Yet they did not complain. They knew to be respectful. At the end, Mrs. Yoo engaged with them more. She taught them a simple Korean game and then gave the game to the boys to keep. Then she taught them how to write their names in Korean.

We have not even ventured outside of our apartment yet today because of the heavy rain. We are leaving soon for a Confucian school. Mrs. Yoo said there is an event at 3:00 that she thinks we should go to. I have no idea what that will be like. The website is all in Korean. I'm a little worried they are going to make the whole family dress in hanbok, Korean traditional wear. Not sure how the boys would respond to something like that! Stay posted.