Goodbye Andong, Hello Yeoung-ju

My host family was sad to see me go today. Han Jong told me, "No sleeping. Tanya thinking. I feeling sad." He held my hand on the drive to the girl's high school this morning. While we were there, we were offered coffee. "Tanya, no coffee, no alcohol," and then he got me some water and some sun cream. Very doting all day. We will see our families again at the end of the month for the "Rotary Festival" (district conference) in Pohang.

Our first stop in Yeong-ju was the Mayor's office. Our new translator, Mr. Yu a farmer from North Korea, suggested that it would be a good idea if we gave the Mayor a gift since he would be giving us a gift. We were pretty flustered as we had no access to our luggage, so we dug through our bag of tricks and came up with pins and postcards. It seemed just wrong to receive a nice gift from the Mayor and pile him up with a bunch of ridiculous trinkets. We won't make that mistake again.

We have been receiving a lot of sincere apologies and condolences about the Virginia Tech tragedy. The Korean people are so loving and want only to leave the best impression. Each time we visit a new town they say, "Even though you are here just a few days we hope you will not forget us and tell people about your experience of Korea." There is also a lot of talk here about the recently signed FTA. This is one time when I wish I was up on current affairs. Any comments are welcome.

Yeong-ju is famous for ginseng, hot springs and Mt. Sobaeksan National Park... so of course, it makes sense that they took us to... the tabacco factory? I suppose it was a fairly impressive operation -- the processing is entirely automated, they use robots which look like forklifts with no driver and can produce 500-800 packages of cigarettes per minute. Laid nicely around the conference room table were large crystal ashtrays and boxes of cigarettes. Gratefully, no one lit up.

We finished our evening with another fabulous Korean meal. They are now commenting on how well we all use chopsticks. For lunch today we had a Western meal -- hamburger steak with gravy, corn, beans and macaroni salad on the side (yuck). We were given forks and didn't know what to do with them. After dinner was a trip to the singing room. Our new friends are not at all shy. We sang, danced and tambourined to Korean Folk and Pop music. It's pretty funny how into it they all are. The room had 16 screens, a disco ball, a dance floor and a big comfy couch. We were planning on sneaking out early, but as soon as we got up to leave everybody left. Things happen abruptly here. O.K., time to go.

We are staying at the Rich Hotel in downtown Yeong-ju tonight. It is pretty swish as the name insinuates. We each have a computer in our room and a bath with jets. It is sooo nice to have a few minutes alone. We only get one night here and will be picked up at 7:20am to head for the mountain (I begged). The weather report is for a sand storm and heavy rain, so we may default to our original schedule -- cross your fingers for me.