Wednesday, April 11

This was another "switch day,"  changing to a new city and set of Rotary clubs.  Switch days are a little stressful, wondering what the next group of Rotarians will be like just as we've become comfortable with our current group.  In this case we're moving to Hongseon City, where there are 5 Rotary clubs.

We said fond farewells to our gracious hosts from Boryeong and greeted our new Rotarians from Hongseon.

From the outset, our new group appears very friendly and somewhat more relaxed than the Boryeong group.  The spokesman for the new group, Mr. Lee, speaks very good English and gave us good instruction about what to do with our gear, which van to get in, what would be happening, etc. 

Also part of this group as our interpreter is Julie Lee, our main contact and best interpreter thus far.  It turns out Mr. Lee is her father.

The trip to Hangseon was not long - about 45 minutes.  When we arrived, we met a number of other Rotarians and toured a traditional market downtown.  The market takes place every fifth day, as we understand it.  The market consists of 10-12 square blocks of open air vendors, everything from meat, fish and vegetables to clothes and crafts to a blacksmith.  It was a bustling market and gave us a feel for traditional Korea.  We tried a variety of different foods along the way.

We lunched downtown and walked around a few of the shops there, then stopped at the local Rotary office.  Rotary has an office in one part of town and a meeting hall on the fourth floor of anoffice building downtown.

We next visited a plant that packages and ships kim (the dried seaweed), owned by one of the Hangseon area Rotarians.  Imagine our surprise when we saw boxes of Korean kim marked as Trader Joe's brand!

Before dinner we got a supermarket break at the LotteMarket in town.  LotteMarkets are three-story one-stop-shop stores, with groceries, clothes, jewelry, toys, books, shoes and much more.

April 11 is also election day for their National Assembly positions.  It has been vey entertaining to see men and women standing at intersections wearing jackets promoting their candidate, always designated by a number.  check out the picture.

As always, the day ended with a Korean dinner, then off to our new homestays.