Alright, so it's been awhile, and nothing like leaving my faithful readers hanging mid-international trip... Sorry about that. Mike's finished his 2nd year of pharmacy school, and we just found out yesterday that he just racked in another semester's worth of scholarships and grants. The kid's a genius, what can I say, let alone the fact that he's the leader of half of the student organizations on campus. My little flower business is practically booming; I've already got at least one wedding booked a month for the next four months. We've been taking advantage of some flexibility in schedules to do some traveling, and both Mike and I's work has
been picking up a little over the summer.I liked the way I started talking about our jaunt to Korea, but it'd take me forever to tell you all about everything with that kind of detail, and we literally filled as many minutes as we could while we were there, so aside from that first entry, we didn't spend much time on the computer. So instead, I think I'll finish telling you about our trip by telling you about the people we met. Some of these great individuals might sound familiar if you check Heather's blog at all, other's
Heather didn't even meet...First, there's Choy and and his mom, Shinbanook. Shinbanook is married to the pharmacist who lives/works just down the street from Heather. They've sort of adopted Heather, they've set up a sort of language exchange for Heather to learn Korean from them, and Choy to practice his English with Heather. When they heard that Mike and I were coming, they offered to take all of us "driving." Heather didn't exactly know what that meant, but she agreed and scheduled for Friday night, the first night we were there after we arrived on Thursday night. As it turns out, "driving" meant they drove us thru all the beautiful parts of Busan, Gwanilee, a gorgeous beach with a beautiful lit bridge that spanned the bay; at night it was lit beautifully. Having a car in Korea seems to be a luxury, so to be able to drive where we wanted was amazing, and in the end, they took us out for traditional Korean barbeque where they cooked all the food right in front of us. None of it was familiar to us, so Mike kept asking Choy whether
certain combinations were appropriate, and Choy, very politely, would state that this would be "a new taste," meaning, no, normal people don't combine such things, but Mike could if he wanted to.Shinbanook ended up offering to take Mike and I out again on Monday afternoon while Heather was at school. She fit us into her busy schedule for a few hours, this time taking us to another beach, then up the shore, north to an amazing beautiful traditional Korean house, which thru her friend Wee from college who she brought with her to translate for us, she told
us was a traditional house of a very wealthy person. They had made this gorgeous house and surrounding gardens into an amazing restaurant where they just kept bringing food; Shinbanook even ordered Mike his own fish, worrying that he wasn't getting enough to eat! After lunch, they drove us to the APEC House, a circular building Busan built for an international conference held there in 2006 for many world leaders, including President George W. Bush. We also found out that good ol' George W. stayed at the hotel we ended up staying at for Heather and my birthday's Saturday night.Choy ended up being a very gracious host, meeting us and going out with us, he even took us to
a Korean baseball game with his friend Phil. This event might be one of the best expereinces I've ever had! Koreans know how to do baseball games; they sing and chat for each player, they fill the benches, make pom-poms out of newspapers, they cheer and grieve with each success and failure in the game. Makes American baseball seem downright boring!Then there was Sun Sung Duck. Sun Sung Duck is the fish lady who runs a stand on Market Street selling, obviously, fish. She was the first to take Heather in, she was the first to adopt Heather as her own. And every time we passed her on the street, she smiled, waved us to her, gave us food, just welcomed us in as well. She was the epitome of the warm welcoming spirit of the Koreans in a world not always so trusting or accepting of
people.We spent several evenings with Jenny, Hannah, Tae-hun, Tyler Kim, Young Hee, and quite a few others. I love that nights out with good friends are fantastic wherever you are! And I will always count all of these people as good friends!
One day, in typical Meg-fashion I'm afraid, I went looking to buy flowers. One shop I stopped in, a cute Korean man helped me. I knew how to say "how much," "please," and "thank you." He proceeded to help me pick out my flowers with much grace, then asked me "birthday?" at which I responded no, then he asked "present?" and I said yes with a huge grin. He then proceeded to
wrap my bouquet of roses and lilies which would have cost me at least 3 times as much in the US in a great deal of pink tulle and ribbon, making this huge presentation bouquet worthy of any Ms. America pageant! I didn't have the heart nor the knowledge to try and tell him that I was going to take his gorgeous work of art apart to put in a vase. I fanned out my Korean bills, he took his payment, and I thanked him profusely. And decided to bring this bouquet back to Heather's apartment before hitting the next shop.
At the next shop, I encountered a young woman, maybe about my age, holding a small baby, maybe about 3 months old. I feebly attempted my pointing and mispronunciations, at which point she put her baby down on a sort of changing table behind the counter. She started to gather and arrange my flowers, and her baby started to cry. I tried to indicate that she could tend to her daughter; she put my flowers down, went to her daughter, picked her up and placed her in my arms! This sweet girl calmed instantly and went quickly to sleep in my arms while her mom proceeded to gather my flowers. Again, in the end, I held out some money, she took what she needed, I reluctantly returned her daughter to her, and I left with flowers in hand.
All in all, the people we met and saw in Korea made the trip; seeing Heather in her element was priceless, seeing how everyone around her seemed to enjoy her adventurous spirit, her sweet smile, her generous heart, and her easy laugh. Choy shared with us that Heather is a bit of a local celebrity; many of the foreign teachers don't "waste" time getting to know the Koreans, their neighborhood, their language. Heather went there to do just that, and you can tell that they love her for that. And everyone that we encountered, whether people Heather knew, strangers on the street, everyone seemed genuinely interested and accepting and almost excited that we were there. Not that we're anything that special, but maybe Americans don't get to Busan that often, and when they do, they don't get to the areas we went to with the people we went with. All in all, this was one of the most memorable, enjoyable, amazing trips Mike and I have ever been on. And if you ever want the full story with all the bajillions of pictures, come find me; I'd love to show you!
