Thoughts and Travels

5.15.2008

May 15th, 2008 Posted in Uncategorized

This morning, we got up early again ? the traffic is loud here at all times of the day and night ? and went down to meet the students for breakfast.  We ended up riding to the university again and had breakfast there.  Donuts, bagels, fruit, milk, cereal (honey nut cheerios) and coffee. 

 

First thing on the list to do was go to the Nong Shim noodle factory in another town.  It was pretty cool. They make tons of ramen for the world and have a plant in L. A.  We all got a huge box of snacks from the p lace.

 

The factory was entirely mechanized and produced 3 million bowls of ramen in a 24 hour period.  They have a huge customer base, and looked like they were planning to try to get into many other country markets. 

 

After that, came lunch (they stopped at Burger King for us although I wasn’t wanting to eat there).  It took forever.  Most of the people who had burgers said it tasted just like in the U.S.   There were many Koreans who came in while we were waiting for our huge order to get food themselves.  I am a little saddened by how many of the chains have made it here. 

 

We then went back to the University to pick up Dick and Dr. Moon (Dick had to spend the morning on a presentation that he has to give in a couple days) and drove to Dr. Lee’s research area  in the mountains and to a park where there was a giant stone Buddha at the top of the mountain that people went to worship.  Turned out to be an awesome hike and a tough one too. 

 

My nose started running and my eyes are itching.  I must be allergic to something here.  I am not allergic to anything that I know of, but this must be what it feels like.  It sucks?

 

We climbed the mountain and saw the giant stone Buddha that had been there since 600 ad and had a great view of the surrounding countryside.  It was surreal. We could hear chanting through speakers while we were hiking up the mountain.  Everything was just awesome. 

 

Then took the students down the mountain and back to the university to do their homestays with students from the university.  Some of them were a bit nervous, but I don’t think they were when they all finally met their student liaisons.  All of them were very nice.

 

Dr. Lee took the 4 leaders to his apartment and showed us around and served us tea. He lives on the 19^th floor of a nice apartment building.  A very spacious apartment with nice wood floors with subfloor heating. 

 

We went to a bulgogi restaurant after that and had one of the best meals (beef bulgogi is awesome) that I have had on the whole trip.  The meal lasted a long time, and we sat on the floor again, so by this time my hips were starting to get sore as was all of the American people.  At the end, we ended up at the hotel.  When we were getting to the elevator, there was a little man in the elevator who was drunk and very belligerent.  We went up to floor 5 and dropped Mike and Denise off, and he got off on that floor too.  When Dick and I came to our room, 5 minutes later, Mike called and said that the drunk guy was pounding on the doors in the hall, was now half naked and had puked a couple times, so Dick went down to the front desk to tell them about it.  I’ll have to see how that turned out in the morning.  What in interesting story?

 

Well, I’ll try to do better at this blog thing here, but there is little time to do it.  Goodnight!