Another beauiful day full of experiences

We started our tour day going to a kimchee factory. I was impressed with its cleanliness.

From there we toured a branch of Korean Telecom. This branch serves 270,000 customers with home phones, Internet, and i-Phones. Literally millions of wires running everywhere.

In the afternoon we were treated to a movie...Ironman 2 in English with Korean subtitles. Some enjoyed it and some slept.

To cap it off we attended the Snow Flower Festival in downtown Daejeon. Unbelieivable lights. There are no snow blossoms, they are white lights on the trees.
I know you are tired of hearing this, but the foods and people are wonderful.

The Bar Has Been Set!

Well, yesterday was a nice surprise since we received our first club banners. The Koreans saw how excited we were and realized it meant alot to us. So we assume that we will start getting banners now. I believe we are going to do an exchange this morning. As Jim says, it is all a blur. We are on a fast pace schedule and the Koreans like to make sure of that!! Not a minute goes by that we aren't doing something. I've added some more pictures for your viewing. Oh by the way, that is me with my new style Korean boyfriend. Mr. Shim was the nicest man and was a very gracious host to the team. Our day with his club was wonderful.

It's all a blur.............................

Lots going, never a dull moment or a moment to think. I'll try to fill in the last 4 days.

As you heard from Robin below we visited a Buddhist museum. Pretty incredible stuff in here. That statute has 1000 little hands back there.








We visited the Clan Registry Park where all Korean family names are registered.
The picture is of our translator in front of her registry monument.

We also went to O-World which is an amusement park, zoo, and plant world. It rained horrible all day and we were cold and wet. We had umbrellas and rain suits but got close to stay warm.
I've attached a sign from the amusement park. Guess where I had to go?

On the 27th we went to Daechung dam, third largest in the country. We were allowed to tour inside. They told us we were special people, probably not though.









We toured Moonse Village, a historic village to see and understand historical life. Beautiful setting.













From there toured Chungnamdae, the presidential vacation resort. Unbelievable setting and splendor.

On the 28th we went to a tree garden, the Art Museum, the Science and Technology museum.
The highlight was a tour of KBS, the Korean Broadcast System. We saw a plant/flower in the lobby and met with anchors plus had access to everything. I do not have any pictures upstairs but these are great.



Today we visited KAIST, Korea Advanced Institute for Science and Technology. Rated number 1 in Korea and number 69 in the world. Very impressive university.
We did the Geological museum on campus also.
We toured KB & T, a cigarette manufacturer. Unbelievably clean and efficient.
After that we toured two manufacturing plants.

Did I mention we eat a lot..........................

District 3680 Conference

Keeping Us Busy!!

Our daily schedule is very busy. We leave the hotel at 8 am in the morning and don't usually get back until around 9-10pm. Our hosts are very gracious and it has been fun getting to know them. Like Jim says we have been eating and drinking a lot! Our day yesterday was interesting. We started off at the Buddha museum and learned everything Buddha. Very beautiful!
After the Buddha museum our host took us to Puri Park. A nice park with family registers and shrines. Each family name has a registry and this park had it listed on a board and recognized with the shrine, also very beautiful! There were many kids there and it saddened me for a bit because I wished my girls were with me. After Puri Park, it started to rain which was kind of uncomfortable for us since we were all in our dress clothes, however the Koreans proceeded to take us to the zoo!

The zoo was very interesting, it was a combination of a zoo, amusement park, and botanical garden all in one! Although miserable, it was fun! Our Korean hosts got us rain parkas and umbrellas. It was just weird seeing all of us in dress clothes walking around in the rain looking at zoo animals! HA! This park was called O-World.
After our cold day at O-World, we ended the night with dinner and then proceeded to present our club banners to our host Rotarian president!

Brown Chicken, Brown Cow........there it's done!!

Just a note, Most of the others are taking the pictures, so my shots are limited.
I don't want to repeat here but, in a nutshell this is what has happened since Geumsan.

We are in a very nice hotel right in the center of things. We have spent much time exploring and eating. We toured Chungnam National University. You can see two of the permanent structures at left.

The city and campus are full of cherry blossom trees. It is an extremely clean and beautiful city. Everywhere are parks, gardens, trails, and outside exercise equipment.

After arriving we attended the District conference where everything went well. I do not have any pictures but the others do. I must say this conference is completely different then ours. Laser shows, live entertainment... very high technology.

We were outside and a man started walking around with a siren. I thought he was directing us back in but it was a "civil defense" exercise that is held every week to practice should an invasion come. Everyone must stop working and pay attention.

We have had wonderful meals. Night before last we had "burnt mackerel"(a appetizer). This is where the fish is cooked whole on a grill and you just tear it apart and eat it. Good! Sushi is different her. Basically the fish is pulled out of the tank and we eat it. Big thick slices, no rolled up stuff like at home. You just eat it. Also had sea squirt, a sea slug.

Yesterday for lunch we had fish head soup. Large fish, large jawbone. doesn't look so good but tastes great. This picture is of some of us and our host for the day. Next picture, the soup.


We attended the Cherry Blossom Festival at Gubongsan Mountain. Excellent food and beauty. We had a great time with our hosts.










I can not say enough about our hosts and this country. We have been absolutely taken care of had the best time. I think the team is acclimated to the time now and we are marching on. Today we tour the city.

Mr. Andrews, most clubs here alter the meeting times during the month. Say 2 noon meetings and 2 evening meetings. Kind of nice. One club has 2 regular meetings and 2 "outing" meetings. They go to the movies or the opera. Sounds great to me!

Daejeon City

We are in Daejeon City now, which is a nice change. The hotel is much nicer and has a spa. The hotel is located in the hot springs district which is pretty touristy. You can walk down the road from our hotel and see a park that has a foot spa. We gave our first presentation at the District Convention and it was sort of uncomfortable for us. First off, the computer people uploaded the wrong version of our talk which put Jim into stress overload mode! The presentation room was huge. It felt more like being in a theater or at a broadway show. Plus we had to have a translator. Given all that, I think we did a good job. It seemed everyone liked it. Then we had great buffet style lunch at the Unversity Culinary school. Boy was it good!!! After the convention was over, we had dinner with Mr. Choi and had fresh sushi. Then ended the night at a club just down from our hotel. The club owner is our transportation driver. He and his wife along with our student translator spent the evening talking about American Culture!

Picture, Pictures, Pictures

I'm just posting some pics of our awesome day yesterday touring Geusam, the Ginseng capital of the world. Jim says it best, everything is ginseng!!

You say "yes"', your body says "no".

Yesterday was actually the first full day and it seems we covered all of South Korea but, no, just one small city, Geumsan. Located just south of Daejeon. Population approximately 60,000. This is the home of the District Governor. 80% of the gross revenues are from the sale of ginseng (Insam). They grow it and sell it everywhere. This is the ginseng capitol of the world.

We started the day at the "Tomb of Seven Hundred Soldiers". This is a memorial similar to Arlington (much smaller) where 700 soldiers fought off until death most of the Japanese army that invaded. The date, 1592. The soldiers fought to the death much like in the 300 story & Spartacus. We honored them and offered an incense prayer. Very moving.

We visited county offices and met officials. They gave us ginseng tea and a large box of ground ginseng.
We toured................you got it.....the ginseng museum.
The we went to the ..............ginseng market.
We toured the Geumsan museum, much about ginseng.
We visted a large memorial bell that is only rung on new years and the annual...............ginseng festival.
Get the message?

Everything, including the whole economy is ginseng. Very interesting.
We visited and entered a Buddhist temple that we were told was 10,000 yearsold. I beleive it was 1,000 years, but it is in unbeleveable shape in any case.

The highlight for me was visiting a "Retarded Persons" (there words, not mine) home. Very similar to our Sheltered Workshop in that some work and produce products for sale. As in the USA, they are very friendly and love to see people.

The thing that hits you here is the history. In the US we have basically 200 years, here there is 5000, I think.

Our First Meeting with the District Governor

Our first night was wonderful. We had a formal meeting with the District Governor and presented our gifts. Ho Taek, Kim dined with us and welcomed us to his home city of Geumsan. We met other Rotarians and they were all very kind and honored that we were there experiencing their country. After going through all the formalities we were then treated to a traditional Korean dinner. We tried many different kinds of foods. The main meat was smoked duck which is wrapped in lettuce and sesame leaves with soypaste and vegetable. Very Good! The Koreans love to drink also. I had my first taste of Ginseng wine and a vodka type of drink called "soju". These liquors are very low in alcohol content(<20%) which was good since our glasses were kept full all the time! It was a fairly early evening for us since all of us were very tired from our travels. Lesley and I received compliments on how beautiful we were all night and our younger male member of the team was told he looked like Brad Pitt! Can't get any better than that.