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.