Monday in Busan

On Monday, we took the express train to Busan, where Asa was born. Busan is on the southern coast, while Seoul is near North Korea. Busan is the second largest city and South Korea's busiest port. Its weather was much milder and still HUGE! I think it is between 8 and 10 million people.

We wanted to see Asa's birth city. Our main motivation was to see where he was born, make some memories and to take some pictures and video to show him some day. We are very glad we decided to take a day to do this, it was much easier than we thought it would be, thanks to the express train and our SWS social worker.

Obviously, we could not see his birth mom, but a case worker from the Busan SWS office gave us a tour of the city. She was very young, nice and pretty. I think she was chosen to give us a tour (she said this was the first time, EVER that adoptive parents have come to Busan) because being younger, she probably knew the most English. All Korean students take English for 10-12 years, but if they don't use it, their English fades. Anyway, she was very nice, and she took us to a beach, a fish market and an island that she enjoys. Unfortunately, that was about all the time we had (4 hours) before we had to go back to the train station.

Here are the pics:

This is a view from the train between Seoul and Busan which was pretty common. A valley with either a village, or farmland surrounded by beautiful mountains.



Similar, but very pretty.



Another nice view, closer to the port city of Busan, hence the water.













First pic of Busan. It is a port city, but it has substantial mountains close by.














Elizabeth having fun at the fish market, touching a flounder.



















Squid and something else at the fish market.













One of a few beaches in Busan. The shoreline is primarily rocky, with relatively small beaches between.













View of a major new bridge from the beach.













Janet, Elizabeth and Ye-Ji on the beach (they are looking for pretty shells).














We asked Ye-Ji what parts of Busan she liked and thought we would like to see, so she took us to an island not far from the beach. It was beautiful and reminded me of Northern California. Here we are next to an overlook.













A view of the beach on the island.













The island between two beaches has a beautiful walkway to the top of the hill. We didn't walk up, it was surprisingly steep and we had little feet (Elizabeth).













Busan station- heading home to Seoul!