I found out that my first meeting with my birth family will be next Saturday, June 18th. We will go to ESWS in the morning to meet my birth father with Jane and a social worker from ESWS. We will have the social worker until 3 pm that day and will make our plans for future visit(s) at that time. One of those will be a visit to the place where my birth mother is buried. He also wants us to stay one night with him.
In talking to Jane, she said the personality similarities between my birth father and I are uncanny. We both like things to be just in order and be prepared. He has been calling ESWS every day (sometimes multiple times) to get details about our visit. He wants to know what my favorite color is and what I like to eat. Not surprising, these are all things they have no idea about! I doubt they would guess my favorite color is orange. Maybe they could figure out that I love chocolate and ice cream. And not that I call CHSFS every day, either. More like every other week and then occasional emails in between calls. Only because I can't wait to receive the letters that were sent from my birth father. Could anyone wait?
I can't believe that we leave in less than a week and that we are going to see my birth family so soon! I am getting more and more excited and have so much to do still. I can hardly sleep at night! I think about what the flight will be like - will I be able to sleep? Should I even try to sleep? How our first meeting will go - will I give him a hug right away? Who will be there? Will I be able to convince him that he doesn't need to feel guilty? Will he like my presents? How many boxes of kleenix will I go through? Will we be able to communicate without a translator?
I am also worried about how much I have to do at work before we leave. I only have two days left, but will likely have plenty to do over the weekend or on our last day before we leave, which I currently plan to take off. How will I be able to get everything wrapped up that I need to? I really don't want to leave anything open for my coworker who will be covering for me. And then I'm gone for nearly three weeks! It helps that the Fourth of July holiday is situated in there.
Today I called the travel agent who planned our trip. When I called Delta the other day, they told me they couldn't talk to me and somewhat rudely went into to the myriad of reasons they couldn't talk to me. Since we booked through a travel agent, just couldn't say anything because I might sue them. Now, I understand that these days, people will sue for just about any reason, but they could have been polite about it. I had to interrupt to simply say that I understood and all she had to say was that I should contact our travel agent. I didn't need the rude explanation immediately following the question.
Fortunately, Shayna, the travel agent CHSFS works with, was extremely helpful and I found out there is room to extend our flight through July 2nd. The cost is under the amount I was hoping to pay per person and there is availability on both flights departing out of Seoul that day. Now I just have to convince Nate that we should do it. We can wait until after we are in Korea to decide, but flights might not be available and it could be more difficult. I don't want to risk not getting a flight when I know this is what I want to do. Who knows how long it will be before I can get back. I know that I would be ok staying on my own, but I would much rather prefer that he stay with me. We wouldn't tell my birth family until we see how things go. If nothing else, we can stay privately on our own if we don't want to stay with them. Here's to hoping he will decide yes tomorrow so I can book the change before the weekend.
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