Saturday, April 7

Our last day with our first group of hosts.  We walked to a Buddha carved into the stone wall somewhat up in the mountains.  This is a major cultural icon for the area.

From there, we walked to the site of an archaeological dig with a large rock flagpole.

We ate a pizza lunch (!), then relaxed at the country home of the Lees.  That evening was the farewell party for the Seosan Rotarians.  We gave our first presentation (I'm certain it will improve with time!), then had dinner and partied into the night. There were tearful farewells with our host families. The warmth and laughter we experienced with them will not soon be forgotten.

Seosan City - Our First Full Day

We jumped right in on Wednesday, April 4, with a lot of travel time.

First trip was to Gwanwolam Temple, south of Seosan by about an hour. Gwanwolam is a small temple (the "am" at the end of the name signifies that it's small) is set on a small island 50 yards off the coast at high tide. At low tide, you can walk to the temple, but at high tide you take a hand-pulled ferry (a platform on pontoons). The temple is 600 years old. The location is picturesque, with terrific views of the Cheongsuman Bay.

From Gwanwolam, we travelled north to visit Buseoksa Temple. Buseoksa is a large temple (signified by the "sa" at the end of the name) located in the hills/mountains about halfway between Gwanwolam and Seosan City. This temple consists of a number of buildings (7 or 8 vs. the 3-4 at the smaller temple). Buseoksa is 1400-1600 years old. We were invited into the main temple building by one of the monks, and we learned about some of the prayer rituals of the monks there. Several of us tried practicing one of the prayer methods.

After a hearty Korean lunch, we travelled west to the Cheollipo Arboretum, which is on the coast next to Mallipo Beach. The arboretum has more than 1,700 species of trees. It was established by an American, Mr. Miller, in 1964. He had served in the Korean War and came to love Korea and its people. Since it is early spring and still quite cold, there were not many plants blooming. Still, it was quite beautiful.

From Cheollipo Arboretum, we travelled quite a distance to visit a small resort town along the Taeanhaean (seashore) National Park. Here several of us got to try some fresh (as in live animals cut up before our eyes) squid and octopus. Not everyone had the stomach for this, however! After looking around and taking some pictures, we visited the seashore pension (between a hotel and a bed & breakfast) of one of the local Rotarians. We snacked and socialized with a number or local Rotarians who had come to meet us.

Finally, we returned to Seosan for a Korean dinner with many Rotarians. Every meal is a feast in our honor, it seems.

We're quickly coming to love our hosts for the week. Everyone is so helpful and friendly. Our team members are working through their jetlag (Tyel is our Team Champion at being able to nod off to sleep in the van!), and the lengthy van rides have cause some motion sickness for Joy. Not many of our Korean friends speak more than a few words of English - and we certainly don't know much more than "hello" and "thank you" in Korean - but it just doesn't seem to matter. The warm hospitality is overwhelming.

Arrival in South Korea

Having been delayed in Chicago by eight hours by aircraft maintenance problems, we spent our journey's first night in the Nikko hotel in Tokyo, Japan.

We rose early on April 3 to catch our Asiana Air flight to Seoul/Incheon airport.  We were met by District 3620 Assistant governor Jong-Hwan, Jeong and our interpreter.

We grabbed lunch and drove to the city of Seo-San.  There Team Leader Lee met the Mayor of Seo-San while the team saw a presentation about the city.  We also met the GSE Team from District 6690 from Ohio.  We'll be sharing our Korean visit with this team.

Following our visit to City Hall, we got better acquainted with our fellow GSE Team, met our first host families and had a wonderful Korean dinner.  We then departed for our first home stay.

And here we sit...

We've arrived in Chicago and have at least a five hour layover ahead of us because they are "servicing the plane".  This means that we may miss our Tokyo connection.  It's too soon to put us on another flight and so we sit and wait.  We've decided on an impromptu lunch at Chili's.

The adventure begins!

Our team is currently sitting at the Richmond airport ready to board our flight to Seoul via Chicago and Tokyo.  We just found out that our flight out of Chicago had been pushed back and it may affect our Tokyo connection.  So it appears that the advice to go with the flow has come into affect far sooner than we expected. ;)