In case you missed the introduction of Sarah, you’ll need to scroll down or click here.

Randy and I actually chose the name Sarah years ago, when we only dreamed of a child. My maternal grandmother’s name is Sarah. And both Randy and I like the name.

Ethan Quinn received his name as a parallel to the meaning of his Korean given names, “strong” and “wise.” We tried to do the same for Sarah, whose given name means, “beautiful” and “bright,” but we just didn’t come up with anything we liked. Perhaps that’s because we always dreamed of a Sarah.

The name Sarah is very fitting. In the Bible, Sarah was the wife of Abraham and stories reveal that Sarah was a beautiful woman. The meaning of the name Sarah is “princess” and our princess she will be. We discovered yesterday that the foster dad calls her princess!

My Grandma died in 2002. She battled dementia during her last years. The sicker she became, the more my heart longed to give her a grandchild. Now, God has given us our little Sarah. As my mother said to me in an email, “Gram is probably smiling ear to ear.” Love ya, Gram!

We learned a long time ago that God rarely does things the easy way in our lives (which is probably true for most people, really). Either that, or we are masochists.

For example, we both (separately) pursued bachelor’s and master’s degrees while we were in a denomination that didn’t require higher education (in our pre-UMC days). When choosing between a Master of Arts program and a Master of Divinity program, I chose the M.Div. partly because it was three years instead of two.

And our journey toward ordination has been no easy route. Part of that journey (which is still in process) included earning Doctor of Ministry degrees. When choosing between four schools, we chose the program that was farthest away and would take the longest to complete.

We *could* have chosen to send an escort to Korea to pick up our children and deliver them to us in Detroit (a much shorter trip, in case you were wondering). And after having been to Korea the first time, we *really* could have sent an escort the second time around.

But we’ve been told that it’s less traumatic for the child when the parents travel to Korea and begin the bonding process here, because the child is escorted by the adoptive parents rather than passing through a stranger enroute to the parents. (We realize, of course, that travel may not be possible for every couple.)

We also didn’t want our children’s adoptive stories to reflect that we we were willing to travel 7,000 miles to get Ethan but that we chose to take the easy way to get Sarah!

So, we chose to go to Korea a second time, even though that meant being separated from Ethan for a week … and 7,000 miles.

Joleen wrote Second Impressions earlier. The title was a play on words, based on posts we wrote last time we were here.

Since we’re not really restating/rehashing a lot of our impressions, you might want to read/review some of our posts from last time where we reflected on the culture (incidentally, our last trip counted as our “cross-cultural experience” for our doctoral programs at Asbury and the posts were part of our “journal”).

If you’d like to get more of a flavor of Korea from our perspective, see First Impressions, More First Impressions, and Familiar Places. Also, check out Korean Folk Village and Korean Food.

Contextualization and Thou Shalt Not Be Ethnocentric discuss some reflections on the importance and value of culture and how we were impacted while we were here the first time.

One major difference this time has been the weather. Yesterday, it was sunny and warm (60s), compared to brutally cold temperatures last time (February). We were hoping to experience Korea during a different season this time around!

One thing we’ll add about driving in Korea (which we’re not doing, by the way): Last time, I said you’d need to have ice in your veins to drive in Korea. I still believe that. In fact, I think I’ve driven in most states east of the Mississippi River (and a little in Canada) and I’ve never been afraid of driving anywhere. But it would take some real getting used to, to drive here!

This helps explain the need for extra mirrors, which I was fascinated by last time.

And I’m convinced the many delivery people who ride scooters (on the streets, between lanes, on the sidewalks and crosswalks) either have a death wish or at least a certain kind of wiring. Amazingly, though, during all of our time in Korea, we’ve seen hardly any accidents (I think we’ve seen only one auto accident).

We’re planning to get out for another new experience of Korea this morning (and possibly our first subway experience), so we may have some more impressions to add later. We’ll try to post a few photos, but the PC in our room is painfully underpowered, so we may wait to post the bulk of them till after we return home (I’m just glad — *really* glad — we were able to post the first photo of us with Sarah yesterday!).