Woke up to rain! Not expected here this time of year. Steady drizzle. Fortunately, I had an appropriate rain parka and hat.
We white guys rebelled this morning and had breakfast at a French bakery, the Paris Baguette, a couple blocks from the hotel. The Korean "breakfast" places don't have coffee and, frankly, it's just not breakfast fare for us. There are a lot of French bakeries in town, and this one was excellent. Good coffee and lots of great pastry choices.
In the morning we first drove to an under-construction dam site a few miles from downtown on the Nakdong river. Big dam. Not a high dam, but a major project that appears to be almost finished. The three huge towers that house the gate lifting mechanisms had impressive bicycle art on their vertical faces. Good views of the landscape from atop the dam. Then we drove a somewhat circuitous route back to downtown and drove right by the bike museum, but that visit happens tomorrow.
Then we visited the Imlan-Bukcheon battlefield site, immediately adjacent to the park where we became citizens a few nights ago. Then we met with the Sangju city council for the usual exchange of pleasantries, tea-supping, and exchange of gifts. That was followed by lunch with most of the council at Hill House, where we had lunch yesterday with the mayor. We were in a different room and the menu was very different from the day before --no steak, but a sea of white porcelain again.
After lunch we met with the equivalent of the superintendent of schools. Final exchange of stuff. Then we went to the Sangju English Town, where elementary school kids are taken for what seem like field trips to enhance their English skills. Cute place. Then we visited a large elementary school and dropped in on a class for a few minutes.
That was to be followed by a return to the park site where we were to witness a "Slow City" declaration and a fashion show. Well, because of the rain, the event was moved into the large gym near the park where the persimmon festival was taking place. However, we learned almost too late that it was also moved up a half hour. Sung Moon, our guide was not with us at the time, so we were in the van with 2 Koreans, including the driver, who spoke almost no English. Fortunately, they knew what to do and where to go. So, the driver is zooming to the gym, way over the speed limit, and ran, without slowing, any number of red lights. We didn't understand what was going on until we arrived at the event where we were hustled into, again, reserved seating in the row behind the mayor, city council, etc. It turned out that we were on the agenda to be introduced to the multitudes. Due to the excellent skills of our driver, whom we now call "Steve McQueen", we made it with a lot of time to spare. Another international incident averted (one of many).
The slow city declaration went on for a while and included some group musical numbers. Then came the fashion show with 82 fashions shown on the runway to loud techno-pop. The avant-garde fashions were followed by men, women and kids modelling more traditional Korean fashions. We got out of there about 5:30 pm and returned to the hotel at a sedate pace. Had about 1/2 hour to rest before dinner.
Dinner was great. It was at a not-fancy seafood place. Large kettles of water were placed into recesses in the tables heated from below. A large variety of seafood -fish, cephalopods, clams, etc. were cooked in the kettles. A few side dishes were added. Sizeable ocotopi, still alive, were also cooked in the vats. All quite delicious. I sat next to a 20-something young white lady, Katie, from Monterey who has been in Sangjou since February teaching English. She graduated from UC Davis in 2007 with a major in Japanese. She had been to the citizenship ceremony the other night, and when she heard the announcement that there was a group from Davis there, she had to seek us out. She did so through the school district and got in touch with our hosts. She was clearly happy to have dinner with Davisites (who wouldn't?), and I filled her in on Davis and UC Davis news over the past 4 years. After dinner: karaoke. Katie joined us, along with another young Korean lady we met at the Persimmon Festival who spoke very good English. We had invited her to join us at something before we left. At karaoke, we did both Korean and American pop songs. Well, I guess just the Koreans did the K-pop numbers. More beer was consumed there, and then we went to a "bar" with very modest food offerings available and polished off a pitcher of local beer and some of the local soju. Goodbyes were exchanged, and we walked back to our hotel.
No comments:
Post a Comment