Please read the following knowing that we are doing our best to get this information to you as quickly as possible and therefore do not have the time required to make this blog as polished as we might like. There will be typo's, please ignore them!
Anyeonghaseo! (hello) Welcome to our blog about living in South Korea, military life, and our adoption journey. We hope this blog will make the distance from family and friends diminish as you share in our life adventures...or as we call them "Chapventures."
I (Ashley) started a blog right after we got married, over five years ago now, and quickly realized I am not the type to sit in front of a computer for a second longer than I have to. However, after moving abroad, feeling like we are a million miles away at times, and most importantly...seeing God begin to open doors for adoption...we simply MUST share!
We moved to Osan Airbase in early August of this year (2013). We have quickly gotten settled into our home and even hosted several visitors [Dan (Patrick's dad), Martha (Ashley's friend and "sister"), and Tdub and Kate (brother and sis-in-law)]. We are enjoying base living and the culture of Korea more than we expected...but more on that later.
The idea of adoption began before we were even married. I had always loved the idea of adoption, how it mirrors our adoption in Christ, and the beauty of that kind of love. Since I have worked with children most of my life I have often thought (yep, I could take this one home and love them as my own). I recognized that my heart seems to be a little more open than most in that department. If adoption were that simple, we would probably have a dozen kids by now. The one aspect of adoption that has always baffled me is...how do you "choose" a child? How do you decide where to adopt from? Neither Patrick or I had a strong call to adopt from a specific place. However, when we heard that we would be reassigned to live in South Korea we wondered if adoption might be in our futre and began to talk about it a bit more seriously.
I researched adoption online and discovered that children in Korea are not eligible for international adoption until six months of age. Once the process begins it takes about twelve to eighteen months for completion. For Patrick and I, this is not an option for two reasons. 1. We are only stationed in Korea for two years and it would be very risky and costly to attempt. 2. We are first time parents and would like to grow our family with an infant. We haven't experienced the stages of development first hand so bringing a two year old into our home would be quite difficult. (This is our opinion - we recognize that many people have adopted in this way but it is not OUR first choice.)
Our research then turned to the idea of "private adoption." This means that we would not go through an agency but rather a birth mother would have to agree to work with us and a private lawyer that we would pay out of pocket. The private adoption process takes about a month for completion and is a fraction of the cost of using an agency. As you can imagine, this is not a common practice in Korea and the prospect of "finding a birth mom" is daunting and a little akward.
So, here we are. We know we want to grow our family, we're not getting pregnant and receiving little info from doctors as to why that could be, and we are both feeling the tug toward adoption more and more. It seems that everywhere we go and everyone we meet is leading us toward a Korean adoption. I will try to break up the following posts so you can follow along on our journey. Here we go...
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