The Illicit Package

It's weird knowing that your child is somewhere very, very far away and even though you haven't met them yet, there is a very strong need to somehow try to connect with them. From the message board groups we'd been on, and even in the classes we had to attend, we were told that it was quite normal for parents to send a small package of goodies overseas to their child.

After the acceptance paperwork was taken care of, I contacted the staff at our agency and asked for the address and any information they could give me with regards to sending the package. They pretty much flat out told us not to send anything. I won't quote directly from the correspondence, but the gist of it was that they can't guarantee the package would even get to the correct child, and that the workers in their Seoul office have much better things to do than to hand-deliver hundreds of care packages to children who have shown up at the offices for the well baby visits with their foster moms.

We were a little shocked and surprised. I had spent quite a long time working on a photo book to send. I included pictures of the immediate family with the words for each family member printed below the photos in Hangul and their first names in English. (You can view the whole book here.) I figured I'd make a few copies of the book, send one over and hope for the best, and then bring one with us when we traveled (and also have one at home in case something happened to the first two). Now we were being told not to send anything? Because they couldn't guarantee that he would get it, or return home with it? Who cares!!? Don't they understand that we had to at least try!?

Someone nameless, and off record, basically told us to just go ahead and send a small package anyway. But do so knowing it may never get to him. We bought a small stuffed dog, two pairs of pajamas with dogs on them, and a Rutgers University onesie. I stuffed all this into a gallon zippie, got the address of the Seoul office from a nice person on a message board (thanks again!!) and sent it on its way. Here is what everything looked like before I crammed it into the plastic bag:



We knew it probably wouldn't make it in time for this month's well baby checkup, so we are setting our sites on the one for early July. Keep your fingers crossed for us that he gets it!