Uiseong Hospitality

We are in an agricultural town... population about 70,000 I think. The main crop here is garlic and fruit. We are surrounded by fields of green garlic chives sprinkled with apricot blossoms as far as the eye can see.

Once again we are humbled by the generosity of the people here. Not many foreign tourists visit here and our hosts keep saying that they wish they had more to show us. We have been gifted with wine, bells from temples, fans, towels, food at every turn. They even brought out hamburgers for us after one of our stops. I graciously declined, but the team reported they were very good.

We finally had an opportunity today to visit two Korean homes -- one traditional and one modern. Three of the team members are spending the night with a family and Mina and I are braving a night at another girls high school (story to follow).

It was such a treat today having tea at our hosts home. The floors are all heated here and the decor is lovely, sliding rice paper screens covering the windows. Our host's wife is a celebrated calligraphy artist of Chinese characters and her work is displayed throughout the home -- absolutely breathtaking. While we had tea, our team sat on the couches while our hosts (6 men in their 50's and 60's) sat cross legged on the floor in their business suits. It was such an intimate setting.

It was fascinating to visit the traditional Korean house today and see the modern mixed in with the old style. Looking into the back yard you see amazing Korean style roofs and beautiful stone statues with a plastic slide and a soccer ball next to it. In the kitchen is a modern refrigerator and traditional cooking tools. So cool. The traditional houses have several buildings on the grounds. Different buildings for the men's quarters, women's sleeping rooms, entertaining, cooking, etc. There were a group of about 12 elderly women having a tea party. They were all sitting cross legged on the floor enjoying tea, beer, juice, cookies and kumquats. Their faces are so lovely and so full of life. They have seen much pain in their lives having lived through two wars. They were wearing matching quilted colourful vests. We wondered if they were like our red hat society.

Tonight we were blown away (again) by our visit to the public girls high school. We haven't quite been able to figure out the difference between public and private schools. It seems that public is funded by the government and therefore have better equipment (furniture, computers, textbooks) and private schools seem to have a slightly higher grade of teachers. Both have equal tuition fees. School is mandatory up to middle school, high school is optional. About 80-90% of children finish high school and carry on to university.

The school we are staying at is very modern and high tech -- they just finished a big remodel. The entire school is wireless, with an interactive education broadcast system which the girls can log on to and study any subject at any time. They have American movies on dvd for the girls to practice their English -- they can replay lines over and over again to practice along.

We were invited to give a presentation to about 36 girls. We were told to wait in the principals office while they prepared the students for our talk. We feel like rock stars on tour with our entourage. We heard them introduce us and walked in to the room to 60 or so girls screaming and cheering. Brittany Speers has nothing on us. Every picture we show them is met with a loud, "Ahhh, very beautiful!" They are screaming and giggling every time I show a picture of Jono -- "Ah, my style, my style, please introduce. Very handsome!" These girls are BOY CRAZY. We had a few minutes to visit with the girls after the presentation and they all hug us, shake our hands, wave and give us little gifts of tea, gum or candy. Tonight we had to be escorted out of the room because the girls were getting out of control. Mina and I now are on the computer (it's after midnight) and we have a supervisor watching over us so the girls leave us alone. It's just nuts!

They are so sweet, though. They tease each other saying they look like a bear or Garfield the cat. They say to me, "Oh, so pretty. You have small face and big eyes." One girl even said to me, "Your eyes are so big and white. I want to go swim in your eyes." All of their compliments are followed by lots of giggling with their hand shyly over their mouth. Even the older women giggle behing their hands.

I don't know if I mentioned how hard they work in school here, but it is worth mentioning again. Their day starts at 5:40am when they are woken up to Korean pop music playing over the p.a. system. They get ready, have breakfast and clean up until 7:00am when classes start. They have a 10 minute break between classes and an hour break for lunch and dinner. Official classes finish at 7:00pm and then it is mandatory study time until 11:00pm. Most of the girls study on their own until 1:30 or 2:00am. They will say, "She's so lazy, she just wants to sleep." They are so sheltered, no wonder they go so crazy when something new happens. We asked them what they do between classes on their 10 minute breaks and they said either sleep or study.

Some of the funny things we have noticed and are quickly becoming normal are:
- Being served coffee or tea in little paper dixie cups.
- Squat toilets (Mina and I are still having some 'splashing' issues, but are getting better at it)
- Chopsticks -- the chopsticks here are metal and very thin. Our friends often say "I recommend that you use a fork," but always decline. Tonight we enjoyed our cake by chopsticks.
- I can now sit on the floor cross-legged through an entire meal without my legs falling asleep.
- Taking shoes off before entering houses, temples, bedrooms, restaurants and wearing funny little slippers to go to the bathroom
- Korean English written on signs and brochures. For example:
"Uiseong is a righteous and courteous county with unbroken loyalty, filial piety and agrarian tradition."
"This forest with about 10 kinds of trees is a natural and cultural heritage to give a glance about how our ancestors saw the nature and it also becomes a habitat for common herons."
The box from our cake tonight read, "Being fresh is everything to nice cake, however fresh taste and scent are easily affected, so taste before it may go too late."

Still laughing everyday and loving the people and each other (even though our leader can be a bit trying at times -- we remind each other to see him as a little child, with compassion).

We are almost brought to tears each time we have to say good bye to move on to the next town.