The judge asked us a variety of questions, many based on our home study report. Her first question was why I came to South Korea 10 years ago and if volunteering in a orphanage during that trip made me want to adopt a child one day. So my best friend Aimee got a shout out and how I was visiting her in Mokpo after college. She asked about our careers, if we wanted to adopt more children some day, Cody's Chilean heritage, and what we would do if Grant had self identity issues one day and wanted to search for his birth mother. I did most of the answering because I was next to the interpreter and Cody could barely hear her with Auden's heavy breathing in his ear. Luckily the Judge understood English because the interpreter was very poor and I think many things would have gotten lost in translation otherwise! For whatever it's worth the interpreter said the Judge seemed to like us and we did a great job.
So, what happens now? She knows we plan to do one trip and we gave her our return flight plan of 6/25. Most Judges have been making the process faster for families choosing to do only one trip instead of two (since we are rare). But there are a lot of factors at play here and we don't really know if she is one of the judges that would do this. The thing that makes our process more complicated is that the Court was unable to locate Grant's birth parents to sign re-relinquishment papers. So, that means our case will have to go to "public posting" on a website for public legal notice. Sometimes this takes a while but it doesn't have to if the Judge issues a quick preliminary approval and then goes right to public posting for 2 weeks. Unfortunately, we just have no idea what this Judge is going to do and if she will take her sweet time or give us a faster process because we told her we planned to stay in country. If we don't hear of preliminary approval 7-10 days from today we will have to consider coming home and turning it into two trips because there is no reason to stay here without preliminary approval since we need that to take custody of Grant. So, please send positive thoughts for us to get great news next week!
After we came back we explored the university that is nearby to where we are staying. It was a pretty cool campus and Auden got lots of smiles and attention from the students.
Then in the afternoon Cody and Auden went on a little exploration while I went back to volunteer on the 3rd floor of the agency where the nursery is. It is so heartbreaking that the babies are so old in there now, which is a result of a lot of things- the new law, nobody wants to sign up for the program now that they changed it to two trips or one long one (too expensive), etc. The ladies that work there are doing their best but there are so many babies that they all get fed by a bottle propped up on a blanket on their side so even two month old babies are feeding themselves. I was trying to work on muscle tone, sitting up, and tummy time with some of the about 5 month olds there. They were so precious and I couldn't help but look into their eyes and wonder what their future was going to be and if they'd ever be matched with a family:(. I'm so thankful Grant only spent his first 2.5 months of his life here but as I looked around it still could bring tears to my eyes. Every baby deserves a parent's love from day one, not confined to an institution.
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