Why Korea??

Surprisingly, few people have asked this question, but probably many more have wanted to. So, I will attempt to entertain your curiosity. After making the decision to adopt (which is a huge decision in itself), we found we had many more decisions to make before we could even start the process. There are so many options: Domestic or international? Open or closed? Private, agency or independent? Then, what agency? Which lawyer? What country? If open, what degree of contact to have with the birth family? Needless to say, we felt a little overwhelmed. At this point we had told very few people of our decision (not even our family...sorry!), but we did feel international adoption was the right for us. We also knew that we wanted to adopt a healthy infant, beyond that we were clueless. We felt totally lost in this big world of adoption, and Joe confided this in a co-worker (whose husband just happens to work at Holt). Cosette and Dean (can't thank you guys enough!) invited us over for dinner just to talk about adoption. What a huge surprise when we learned they invited one of Holt's intake social workers and her husband to dinner also! She was gracious enough to give her own time, on a Saturday, and detailed each of Holt's international programs with us, giving us good points and not-so-good points of each. This helped us so much. We instantly decided that if Holt had staff this dedicated to the job, it was the agency for us. So, in the end, we decided on Korea because we fit their criteria (China was also at the top of our list, but we did not meet the age requirement), and they fit ours. The age of child at the time of travel (in 2006), was about 4-6 months; the babies are well cared for while waiting to travel- in foster care, not institutions; they are generally healthy; and most importantly, Holt has been working with Korea for over 50 years, their Korea program is very stable, something that was very important to us after going through several years of repeated miscarriage and unexplained infertility. Finally, a plan that would end in the arrival of our child!
RA