May 28-29 Youngmun Temple and Rotary initiation Yeoju and Seongnam

This picture is of the group negotiating a walk that's supposed to be good for your feet; all kinds of stones and logs. I tried it but it really hurt, so I just took the picture. But afterward your feet feel really good. It's on the way to Youngmun Temple, the one with the largest nut-bearing tree in the world that Dave has on his blog. Below that is a photo of some of the little rock piles that are everywhere around. I think people make wishes and put the rocks on them. Our guide started throwing stones, trying to knock the rocks off the piles!

In the evening we went to the president's inauguration ceremony for a women's Rotary club in Soengnam. Almost all the clubs in Korea on single gender. This ceremony was exceptionally elaborate, but we've been to several as I write this, and they are all formal, with a dinner afterward, and everyone gets gifts. Here's the president of the club presiding:

The district governor gives awards. The woman on the left is carrying the flowers he will give to the award winner.
New members initiation. The women at this event all wore traditional Korean dress, which is very beautiful.
Photograph of the club, the district governor (fourth from left) and district governor elect (third from right). They included me (left).

May 28 Yeoju

I've been pretty much without interet access since the last time I posted anything. Some things in Korea are very technologically advanced, but not everyone has an internet connection at home that I can use on my computer, so I'll be doing a little catching up here.
The purpose of the picture below is just to show the wall of the Yeoju Rotary Club, where we attended a meeting. Every club here has its own meeting place, often above a business owned by a Rotarian. Since the clubs are rarely larger than 60, it's possible to accommodate everyone. I'll be posting more Rotary Club meeting place images.
Our host in Yeoju was Mrs. Lee, who will be the GSE team leader next year for a group of Koreans going to Atlanta. She served as guide, translator and home stay host for the three women. Her English is self-taught and quite good, and she's a lively, enthusiastic, and generous person.

We've visited quite a few Buddhist temples. This is the temple of Silleuksa, which is in a large park and is the only temple in Korea by a river. For Buddha's birthday, which was a few weeks ago, people give offerings in hope of good things happening. These lanterns are one form of them and they stay on the temple ceiling for a year.

Here's the statue of the Buddha flanked by two other Buddhas and with a painting of Buddha and his attendants behind. You can see the offerings, with their name tags, hanging from the ceiling on both sides.

Yeoju gave us our first pottery painting experience. Here's the team working on their art. After we had done our pretty amateur work on one side of the pots, a professional painter painted what we requested on the other side. You can seen the bamboo that Timothy and David asked him to do.

Korean Rotary meetings are always in the evening and often the Rotarians go out afterwards for dinner and drinks. Or at least that's what they did when we were there. The Yeoju gathering was outside and particularly lively. You can see Mrs. Lee between Sarah and me. This picture was taken rather early in the evening. It got a lot livelier later on.

May 27 - Kwangju again

The mayor of Kwangju gave us huge ceramic plates, of course made in Kwangju. We gave him a wheat weaving. Here he and I hold our respective boxes. I chose this picture in hopes that his beautiful tie would show. Koreans wear very distinctive ties - pastel colors, shiny silk, often with glitter. What could be better?

I can't get over how beautiful the rice fields are. Sometimes, they're small and between houses in or near towns. In this district there are larger ones as well. The rice is bright green in very even rows and the water reflects the sky and trees around it.
Bulgogi lunch in Kwangju. There were at least a dozen of us and five burners with bulgogi cooking on them, plus all the condiments you see here.
We went back to Namhanganseong, so I could put a couple of views of it on my blog. This fortress is on a hill that was a important defensive position where in the 17th century the Koreans held out against the invading Manchus until their food ran out and they had to surrender. Like many important sites in Korea it has been restored (rebuilt).

We also visited a primary school English class and the site where the first Catholics practiced in Korea.

The group did have one problem in Kwangju, which was probably exacerbated by the fact that we don't speak Korean; in at least one instance our translator was told not to translate what was said to the group. But for the most part, the Rotarians in Kwangju were as hospitable and thoughtful as we could have hoped they'd be. The three women stayed at Mrs. Kim's beautiful home and she spent a full day cooking a splendid dinner for 20 at her home. She also provided toast, eggs, bacon, jam, cream cheese, and pastries for us for breakfast. There is no similarity between Korean breakfast and American breakfast and she did her best to replicate what Americans eat. We were taken to many sites and had wonderful meals out. We attended a Rotary meeting and I spoke there briefly. There were many questions. We have learned that word about us is passed on to the future hosts, so when I mentioned that I thought the group would like a hamburger, the next Rotary Club was ready to give us one. And, in fact, it seems that now I need to assure our hosts that we don't want a hamburger with every stay. Our guides, Mr. Chong and Mr. Lee (We always have a Lee.), tried to fill our days with interesting sites and experiences, and they made sure we had excellent food.

Below is what I thought was a particularly lovely restaurant courtyard. We ate in a small room, sitting on the floor, of course, and then went to the Rotary meeting.

Here is the sign for us at the Kwangju Rotary meeting. All the clubs here have their own meeting halls. They generally seem to meet at 7 p.m., after dinner, and then at least when we're there, everyone goes out afterwards for drinks and snacks and socializing.

After the Rotary meeting, we moved to on to Yeoju, where the women stayed with Mrs. Lee, a Rotarian who also served as our guide and translator, and the men had hotel rooms.

A Full Day in Kwangju

Today we spent most of the day at the Korean Folk Village, a 263-acre living museum of the life styles of earlier Koreans, plus a museum of international folk art, an art museum, and an amusement park. It's kind of like Colonial Williamsburg. Three Rotarians accompanied us - our main guide was Mr. Lee, seen below showing Sarah the gentleman scholar's house.
We saw silk being spun, bamboo weaving, a traditional Korean wedding, a jail, a huge array of house styles, various farm plots, and implements, and shopping. For lunch we had delicious noodles and a sort of Korea pizza (actually three).
Here's just one of the dozens of buildings we saw:

And, of course, we were invited to dress in traditional Korean clothing, then carefully posed for pictures.
We then went to the Lotte Chilsung Bottling Company. Amazing machines and systems for bottling Chilsung cider, Gatorade, Pepsi, and many other drinks. Compared to our 1917 cider press, this suggests that Tom and I have a long way to go..... Cans making the rounds below.
Beverage vats

After this we visited the Maga Museum, where we saw very impressive tapestries, screenprints, and woodblock prints by the artist Song Burn-Soo. His tapestries are huge and have remarkably illusionistic space or brilliantly colored dramatic patterns. I took some pictures, but think perhaps it wouldn't do him justice to show them here.

This morning I had an American breakfast for the first time since we started homestays and it's amazing how completely different it is from Korean breakfast. They have soup, fish, meat, tofu, rice, and several kinds of kimchee. We have bread, rolls, eggs, butter, and jam.

For dinner we had a huge bulgogi spread that Mrs. Kim spent the day preparing. There were about 20 people, us at one table, most of the Rotary men at another, and the other women at a third. Our Rotary hosts are extremely accommodating and do everything they can to show us interesting sights.

Leaving Soengnam and first day in Kwangju

My Soengnam host family in the park near their home. Park Pong-Soon and Lee Son-Hi.

Tug of War at the biennial Opo Festival, near Kwangju. This is one of the big events at the festival.

Tea at an art gallery - Timothy, Melissa, David, Sarah, Andrea, Hyo (our translator) and the gallery owner

Korean pots outside the gallery. I sure would love to bring one home.

Third: Hyo and David at our welcoming barbecue with Kwangju Rotarians. Hyo's father is to the left

Again the welcoming barbecue. It's on a deck overlooking the area at the home of one of the host families.

Today we moved from Soengnam to Kwangju. It's a short drive over a small mountain, but it's a huge change in context. There are hardly any high-rise buildings and lots more trees and small farms. We had a brief tour of the city, including a drive through the very lively market, and we visited a lovely art gallery that shows both traditional Korean ceramics and furniture and also contemporary painting.

In the evening we had Korean barbecue on the deck of the home of one of our host families. There were many Rotarians there and much beef, pork, beer and soju.

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District 3600 conference, shopping, and Korean soccer game

I'll try to show some Rotary-related aspects of our trip, and maybe complement what Davesinkorea is doing.

Rotary District 3600 Conference

Andrea with GSE Chair Jang Kee-Yoon and Governor of District 3600, Oh Hea-Kon

District 3600 Conference Dinner. Western-style food, seating and utensils

Traditional Korean dancer at District Conference dinner. Notice the size of the banner.

My homestay breakfast Friday morning. Each day was a similar number of dishes, but many were different. Eggs, rice, soup, tofu, fish, roots, fish, seaweed. Delicious. My host mother is a great cook. Home-made yogurt.

Lazer light show at district conference. The drummers are on DavesinKorea blog. They were really, really impressive.

District 3600 Conference audience. It took place in the new Seongnam Arts Center's Opera House, which seats 4000 and it was pretty full, both orchestra and balconies. Afterwards, we went to an art exhibition on the lower level of the Arts Center.

District 3600 Secretary Ma Sun Sik as Master of Ceremonies of the District Conference. They used three projection screens and a variety of visual and sound effects.
Announcements of major gifts included an individual who had donated $1.2 and a club that had raised $800,000.

Below: Another version of the trip to the Harley Davidson shop. Timothy was busy choosing his purchases. Sarah, David and Melissa tried on alternate "looks."

Soccer fans at Gyeonggi Suwon World Cup Soccer Stadium Saturday evenin. Suwon beat Pohang 1-0. One of the cheers was to the tune of Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer." One of the banners (brown and blue in the lower section) has an image of Che Guevara. I asked, but no one knew why.