Last week, Darrell and I were blessed to have Jessica Dempster come and visit us. We’ve had so much awesomeness during our time in Korea. First, we had the lovely Leslie Price visit us in May and now another dear friend visit us in September. God has truly blessed us during our time here!
Last Monday Darrell and I left Daejeon on the shuttle bus to Incheon airport. It took about 3 hours to get there, but the time flew by…due to me sleeping the whole way. We finally arrived and were delighted to find out we were on time and that Jess’s flight would be early. Woohoo! We waited at the arrival gate for a blue-eyed and dark-haired girl, since we knew not many of them would probably come out of the Korean gate. As we were waiting, Darrell and I were having an amusing time watching the airport gate workers. They were wearing masks and running around with thermometers, checking anyone who came off the flight who could potentially have H1N1. Darrell and I were debating “if we cough, do you think they’ll jump us?” There was just too much to risk…even if it would have been funny. However, the idea flew out of our heads as we saw Jess coming out of the gate. I think she was the loudest and most excited person the Koreans had ever seen come out of the gate. It was awesome to see her! After some hugs, a small snack and a shuttle bus of fun conversation, we were back in Daejeon.
Since we still had to work from Tuesday to Friday, Jess would entertain herself while we were at work. She did many different things – came to see some of the classes we taught, met up with some people from Wycliffe Korea, relaxed and went on beautiful nature walks. When we were free, Darrell and I filled her with Korean food…and lots of it! Every breakfast, lunch and dinner we would try to go out and introduce her to something new, and she fell in love with EVERYTHING…except shrimp sticks. Haha…they kinda looked like cheesies, but she was sadly mistaken. She wrote down everything in her notebook, so when she got back to Toronto she could find some of these foods in Korea town.
Darrell and Jess thought they would try and climb a mountain while she was visiting, too. The mountain was called Gyeryongsan. Darrell knew the mountain was famous and thought it would be an adventure. Since I had quite a number of classes that day I decided to stay home and relax, so they left around 6am on Friday morning. They arrived back at the apartment by 1:40pm and looked exhausted. They didn’t realized how HUGE this mountain was, or that the side they climbed even “mountain people” found hard. When Koreans go climbing, they REALLY go climbing! They wear special jackets and pants, huge head visors, gloves, sometimes facemasks and mountain shoes. Darrell and Jess were wearing regular t-shirts and pants (Darrell ripped his pants badly going down the mountain) plus sandals. Koreans were pointing at their feet and saying “Oh, very dangerous!” but they survived and got amazing photos out of the deal.
Friday evening we met up with my cousin Chelsea and went out for dalkgalbi (chicken breast, rice cakes and cabbage in hot red pepper sauce), which was amazing! Darrell and Jess met up with Chelsea earlier to introduce Jess to our most favourite clothing store, Elves. The shirts just make you happy! Another favourite Korean pastime is going to the photo booths where you do pictures together. You can pose in the craziest positions and then add on any backgrounds to this photo. We finished the night with noraebang! Jess fell in LOVE with it as she sang her heart out to many many many songs. It was a grand Friday!
The fun didn’t end with Friday as the four of us (me, Darrell, Chelsea and Jess) headed to Seoul for a long weekend. We wanted to try and take Jess to all the places we had been that we knew she would enjoy. We arrived in Insadong and began the hunt for a motel. We had no success finding a room with two doubles beds, so we began looking for two rooms. We were starting to get worried we might not find a place since many of the motels had couples waiting in the lobbies for a room. Many of the workers told us to “come back at 10pm” and it was 6pm now, but we found a place. It wasn’t the best, but the lady who worked there was very nice.
The weekend was filled with different adventures. We went shopping in Insadong and had supper at a beautiful outdoor Italian restaurant. The evening was starting to cool down, so the outside was lovely. Sunday, we went to Yoido Full Gospel Church (the largest in the world), and afterwards, we went to Gyeongbokgung, which is one of Seoul’s five palaces. Darrell and I had visited this palace before and had a fantastic time. We wanted to show it to Jess and Chelsea. It was a splendid day to visit and took lots of pictures…especially jumping in the air photos in front of the palace
That evening, we got together with Heather and Seung Jin in Gangnam. Jess was saying she had not seen Heather in 5 years and was very excited to see her. We went to Shabeu Shabeu restaurant, where we had Japanese food. The dessert of the evening was Baskin Robbins’ Ice cream balls dipped in fondue….mmmm…I’m getting hungry just thinking about it. The food was delicious, and the company was even better! It was great catching up about ‘back in the day’ times at ABU…oh…correction…Crandall University ;)
It was time to head back to Daejeon and have an evening of relaxation before Jess left in the afternoon the next day. We bought some pizza and played some games, plus both us girls communicated with our parents on the other side of the world – through the wonders of technology. It was quite nice!
It was morning…the final day. We helped her pack all her belongings and she too was terribly kind to take some of our stuff back with her. What a sweetheart! It was sad to see her go as we watched her board the shuttle bus back the airport, but we knew we would see her again once we got back to Canada. Once we are back we will plan the next big adventure. Maybe Darrell and Jess can climb the Mt. Katahdin when we get back…only this time they will be in “mountain people” gear!
This past weekend, we had a rather unique opportunity; not only did we get to take a trip to a 600 year-old Korean folk village, but we also got to do it with our church family.
I also learned on this trip about the reverence that Koreans hold for the forest. There are very (and I mean very) few old trees in the whole country. Apparently, not much of the landscape survived the Korean war, which led to a massive reforestation effort by the US and Korean governments. The result is the beautiful countryside that exists now, and any old trees that remain are preserved with great reverence by the people. The tree at the center of this village is roped off with row after row of wishes that visitors have written on slips of paper.
After that, we made our way to lunch, where we had a delectable chicken dish (I forgot to ask what it was called), before we went to check out the Hahoe Mask Dance. This was certainly one of the most unique experiences of our trip, but was fascinating to witness, as this dance has been a part of the culture for centuries and is even considered to be a national treasure. I won't go into all of the details here, but you can learn all about the dance at http://www.hahoemask.co.kr/.
