Back to blogging

It's been a long time since we updated our blog. But, now we have something to write about.

On January 7, 2009, we accepted a referral for a cute, baby boy in Korea. He is now 6 months old. Andrew Nathaniel Ervin was born July 17th, 2008. He had a rough start with a brief hospital stay after contracting a virus, but is healthy and growing well.

Now we are slowly inching our way toward being able to go get him and meet his foster family. His legal papers (birth certificate and custody) arrived about a week after we signed our papers, which is incredibly fast. The typical timeline is 2-6 weeks.

Immigration signed off on our paperwork on Jan. 27 and we got our invitation to be fingerprinted today. We will go first thing in the morning. Then, it's about six weeks for immigration approval and six weeks until we travel, give or take a few weeks on either end. We're getting closer!

Traditional Korean Food Lesson

One of the neat things about adopting from Korea is being able to incorporate different parts of the culture into our lives. Korea is know for it savory, different, and enjoyable foods (something that Shawna and I both enjoy is trying out foods from other cultures.) While Korea has many foods that both of us enjoy, one item that is shared by only me (and not too many others apparently) is the wonderful dish, kimchi.

In Korea kimchi is as ubiquitous as squid. Kimchi is eaten at every meal, and some might say the aroma and taste must be acquired. For others (Shawna, my coworkers, my family, my friends, well really everyone except a select few) it smells something like dirty feet or old, rotten shoes. To me (and that select few) it’s a treat to be savored.

There are actually several varieties of kimchi to complement different meals much like wine. They are made from pickled cabbage, radishes or tofu, and seasoned with peppers, onions and garlic. If you’re in kimchi’s homeland it will be put in large jars and allowed to ferment underground for months. Yes, months. When we buy the Safeway variety it is so fermented that it explodes upon opening much like a shaken can of Coke. Not only do the cabbage and radishes pop up to say hello, but that lovely smell of rotten shoes permeates throughout the house. I really can’t understand why more people aren’t rushing out to get it.

If you think that this treat is only good for its effervescence, you’re wrong. It’s actually been named by Health Magazine as one of the five healthiest foods. (Well, yogurt is on there too.) Yes, apparently the Koreans are quite healthy for eating kimchi and you might wonder if all of the germs in the world are perhaps scared off by the pungent odor. But, really it kills viruses and bacteria, including the SARS virus and the bird flu. So, we’ll have a secret weapon in our household (even if I have to resort to sneaking kimchi into Shawna’s or the baby’s food).

Why Korea?

Many of you have been asking why we chose Korea. Fair question.

When we started looking into adoption we had some criteria: get a child as young as possible, work with a reliable agency, and work with a stable program. Once we looked into many of the other countries, and domestic adoption, we felt Korea met our needs the best.

The American adoption of Koreans started in the 1950s after the Korean war. At the time, most of the babies were half-Korean and half-American, the product of American soldiers and Korean civilians. Today the story is much different. The babies adopted in the U.S. today are typically 100% Korean, and are given up due to the social stigma of single parenting and the rejection of babies born out of wed-lock.

In Korea, children (and their mothers) are registered through their father's line. There is no system of birth and marriage certificates, so the registry is the only way to track who was born when, to whom. If you are a single mother, you are unable to register your child, thus making him invisible to the country and all its advantages. So, many women choose to give their babies up for adoption.

Babies used to come to the U.S. very young, but Korea (as with many countries) has a long-term plan to phase out international adoptions and increase domestic adoptions. As of January 2007, babies must now be 5 months old before they are free for international adoption. After that it takes about 3-5 months for visas, passports, etc. to be processed to bring the baby home.

While you may think adopting an older baby has its disadvantages, think again. Korea has a model adoption program and places the babies with foster mothers who give the babies one-on-one attention and take the babies in regularly for checkups. Korea has an excellent healthcare system, rivaling that of the U.S., so the babies are in excellent condition when adopted with full medical histories of the birth parents and the baby. Also, many developmental and physical problems are not able to be diagnosed until around 4 or 5 months of age, so adoptive parents have a better idea of the child they will be raising. The information we will receive on the birth parents and the baby's health up to that point is by far the most detailed and thorough of any country.

We also liked the idea of adopting from Korea because the program is so well accepted in the U.S., and our child will have plenty of opportunities to learn about his culture at culture camps and with the many, many other Korean adoptees in the Denver area. There is also a large Korean population in Denver with a Korean Academy for adoptees and their parents, Korean grocery stores, churches, etc. so he will have access to many avenues to learn about his birth culture. We also plan to take him to Korea at some point on one of our agency-sponsored trips (when he's old enough to really grasp it and remember it) to visit where he was born, his foster mother and maybe his birth mother (if we can find her).