Flight home - celebrations!

We are now approaching Dalian in China on our way home.
Thank you to everybody that has made this GSE travel possible.
This includes, but is not limited to, DG Harry Hedman of 1420, Birger Stjernberg, Jyrki Kariniemi, DG Roh Kyung Bin of 3740 and Hysan Gearing of RI.

A special thanks to the AG:s and Clubs of Jechoen area that showed fantastic flexibility and created some great vocational program on the fly.

Special thanks also go to my team:

Carita has always been dependable, especially ready if there is a possibility to find a cake, with a smile on here face.
Anna has been a solid singer when: "the Finns have this funny thing about singing before we drink...". Her kickboxing and wineblogging were sure to create good discussions.
Kristjan managed to squeeze into every car offered and never complained about the seating arrangements. His consideration for others often calmed the situation down.
Rope pushed for "let's do it" and many program changes made for improvements!

Without your individual traits the team would not have been complete!

This would not have been possible without the support of my wife, Tarja! Kiitos, Tack!

Incheon airport going home

Gamsa ham ni da Rotary D3740 in Korea! We have had a good time and will miss you.

Friday - Cargotec visit, fantastic buffet lunch and team 1&2 activities

Since October we had an invitation to the Cargotec factory and that we managed to have on Friday. The 35 year old history of Hiab in Korea was interesting to hear and the factory tour showed a clean environement where eg hardhats were used. The CEO, Mr Heikki Ranta, has lived in Korea 24 years and was able to answer the questions that were still puzzling us.
One was that we still see new dishes at most buffets, after one month in Korea.
He said he's not surpriced, as it occationally also happens to him after 24 years!

The recycling cranes and waste management equipment was stressed and that is an area that seems underdevelopped in Korea, in comparison to other countries. Using more of them would clean up the cities further.

Next we went to lunch. Originally the team had planned for this to happen downtown for starting shopping right after it. However, as so often, plans change and we were driven to a suburb mall. The lunch at "Jolie Maison" was a superb buffet.
We then separated so that Suntae Kim would take Calce to the dentist and the rest of the team would go with our guide Jerry to do shopping downtown. We agreed to be in two separate teams with separate routes.

Well, there was a lot of confusion that afternoon... in the end everything worked.
Calce got his tooth refixed. He got to have coffee at Suntae's printshop and the two even managed to do a 1h+ mountain hike!
The others found the needed suitcases and shopping was conducted downtown.

Dinner was held at the hotel. We were joined by Tony, the teacher that was on the GSE group that came to Finland. Hehun also came for a quick visit bringing a big box of cupcakes for us! Gam-sa-ham-ni-da!

Cheongju was busy with many visits and my tooth gave another sign of itself

Wednesday we drove southbound, to do hiking - well it was a 45 min walk around a temple area that had been moved when the dam was constructed. The day was warm, so we bought everybody icecream before continuing by bus to the dam. We then walked to a photographic exhibition along the river.

Fantastic lunch yet again, this time in the countryside with sashimi.

Presidents old summer residence was a beautiful place and we had some nice hiking around the golf course. Dinner was at a steakrestaurant "Red&White" where we also got some wine.
The first bottle of 1865 Cab Sav by San Pedro was very good.
The second was "corked". The bouquet had a strong sting and the taste was clearly bitter. Judging by the reactions of the manager it was the first bottle that was ever returned for being "corked". They did not know what to do, it was like Finland in the '80s. However, we were asked to select a new wine which Anna did.

Second bottle was a Chianti and third was an Escudo Rojo. Both very nice wines. Here we were also served the first cheeseplatter of the month!

Thursday we went to the Hankook factory - seeing the Bone china manufacturing was very interesting.

We visited Korea Telecoms Cheongju site and were taken to:
a) their handyphone repair centers service point, where people come with their issues.
b) the crossconnect rooms - where ADSL connection wires where configured
c) the operations center and the adjoining fixed, transmission and LTE equipment rooms
afterwards we had coffee in their cantina and it evolved to a small fingerwrestling...

Then we continued to the Early Printing Museum where we got to understand the seeming contradictions of early information.

Printing in korean with metal types was first done in early 1200's. However the only book that has survived to present days is the Jikji, printed in 1377 in a smaller town like Cheongju.
It was printed with chinese characters as was common in those days. The art of printing was used, but did not spread significanlty. In that it's similar to gun power, fireworks, paper manufacturing and other inventions created in china a long time a go which moved very slowly to Europe.

Hangul is just the alphabet and that was separately introduced in King Sejungs time.

We ended the day with a dinner together with DG Roh Kyung Bin. The dinner included some Chinese Rice Spirits and naturally we also introduced singing and Salmiakki koskenkorva...

That concluded the last part of the Formal Rotary program as Friday should be rest day...

Korean glossary (take your picks...)

A is for Absolutely...

B = beds, there are no beds in Korea or if there are any so the mattress is really hard.

B is also for bucks, that we are actually eating here.

C is for company visits and Cass beer.

E is for our common languege that is English, we also speak Swedish, Estonian, Finnish, Hangul.

F is for food and there has been plenty of it.

G is for Ginseng, especially Red Gingseng.

H is for hospitality.

K is for Kam sa ham nida = Thank you.

K stands for Kimchi as well.

K is for K-Pop.

O is for ONE SHOT.

P is for PSY and his new singe: THE GENTLEMAN.

S stands for Soju and

Some = Soju and Mekchu together makes perfect combination of SOME (= strong alcohol and beer).

S is also for SPA and thosa are great and this nation likes sauna/spa.

S stand also for sighteeing and plenty of it!!!

T for towels that are tiny as stamps. Basically there are no towels in common sense.

T is also for Tuggummi = octopussy raw or steamed - make your pick.

U is for University visits.

W is for Korean money, so Won.

Y is for Ye Ye = ok!

Please continue, when something comes to your mind.

20.4.2013

Today we visited memorial place related to Korean war that really got tears on our eyes. Memorialn hall and museum of the NO GUN-RI. Read the story from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_Massacre. Amazing stuff again with USA war history as well Korean war history.

We also had really really really great lunch once again with alt least 20 "Korean tapas". After the lunch we visited traditional Korean music museum, listen the concert with traditional Korean musicans and instruments. Local people also arranged as two lessons how to play two traditional Korean music instruments. Great fun!

And that was not all, we also made miniature drums by ourselves with one more class. Great.

Weather... Hmmm, today was snowing and all Koreans were really feeling that it's so strange on this time of the year.Cherry blossoms and snow. Great!

Dinner was also really good but little bit unusual. Pictures tell it all: (later)

Main highligts from last week

We visited Red Gingsen farm where they showed for us how gingseng is produced. I had a change to buy some Gingseng souveniers. Really good company visit, like almost Fazer factory.

We moved from Uni hotel to new town and other place. New hosts are really nice and they really like us to enjoy. On Goen we had a change to visit really interesting temple. Great day. We stayd night in small cottages, as normal tiny normal summer cottage.

19th of April we had so great meals, both on luch and dinner, so it is really hard to beat those. Just could not believe that there is still something that can suprice us. But this was really suprising. We also visited ex-presidents wive's birth home and it was really interesting. There were also involved plant farms visit in Okcheon and we also visited city hall and drunk some tea with the local administration staff.

Btw there is no more space in the luggage so we really need to re-think packing and how to handle all the souviners we have already got. Plenty of things to take home for give away.

We also stayed really fancy hotel and golf club next to university of Jungwon. The university building itself was a huge and on the unversity area there were park, temple, swimming pools, spa, shops, several restaurants, golf club and golf course, fountain with the dionasaurs, botaical garden, museum, football field etc. So basic facilities that almost every Uni has in Finland? Or maybe not.

15.4.2013, published on 24th of April (will add pictures later...) - plenty of radio and network silence!!!

Yesterday (14th April) was finally the first day without pre-arranged program. I spent the day in a spa and rested as much as possible. We also had great and cheap pizza with the ladies in the centre of Geojan. We also did some souvenier shopping. Really nice and relaxing day in my opinion. Weather was also pretty good yesterday, warm but not too hot.

Today we are on a road again. We saw more than 1000 years old briddge, museum related to bridge´s history of the bridge in Korean. We also had a nice walk besides a lake near the museum. Lunch was really great and I got finally deacent tofu. The best tofu during this trip so far. There were again approximately 10 or more small plates veggie stuff and for starter pork/tofu plate. Main food was tofuporrige (tasted like mannapuuro really) with rice. Desert included apple slices and coffee for those who wanted to have it.

Wealnut cakes are here delicious and a kind of big hit as well. We had those again today after the luch. Those are small sweet eateble cakes and inside there is some jam or maybe it is redbean souce (sweet one). I was thinking about that this would be really great with some chockled mousse in it. Hmm...

Afternoon included Korean independence hall visit or at least it was a plan, but because it was a Monday so the museum and area were closed. We went to instead to Chungmugong Yi Sunsin Memorial Museum and Hyeonchungsa Shrine that was open. There was an exhibition related Korean naval history between 1300-1600 centuries, really nice park, worship place and also finally on a short distance cherry blossoms also available. We also visited Botabsa temple, that was really nice and especially great moment was when the monks offered us Omija (red berry from Korea) tea which was sour and bitter but also somehow it tasted very well in the cold weather.

Did you know btw that the wooden "drum" instrument does actually have a shape of a fish if you look it little bit closer? This is used during buddhist ceremonies in temples.

Dinner was again way beyond our dreams. You had a chance to barbecue a duck breast meat "on your way" straight in the front of you on the dinner table. Here are some pics attached from the dinner set.

On Tue morning (16th April) we also heard about the tragedy related to Boston maraton. This is a huge schock again for Americans and also for the western sporting scene. So no news about Korean peninsula available on western news channels. North Korea had their big day yesterday and we shall see when there will be new news from North Korea. At least it seems that tings are getting more peaceful.

Updated on 24th on April
Today will be North Korean army celebration day (anniversity day) so this day or none will be auspicious for missile launch. Will see what is going to happend.

Monday and Tuesday hiking and getting into Cheongju

Monday started with morning chanting at 330.
After that Rope and I took off into the mountains at 430, in the dark. By 530 we could turn of the flashlights and had risen about 200 m from the camp. We continued upward and saw dawn around Gwaneuman Temple. The sun slowly rose to hit the various mountaintops and the shadows were long. There was still some snow on the ground.
At times the path was replaced by staircases.

We reached the rim at around 7, and slowly made our way to Mungdaljae, a separately standing rock, about 20 m above the rest of the ridge giving a great 360 degree panorama view.

The walk down was somewhat painful on our knees, but we made it down by about 1030.

After lunch we had a tea ceremony with the nun of Templestay and then we were taken for a guided tour of the Beopjusa. There was a special oven for burning the belongings of a dead person with an altar infront of it that is used to serve the bodyless spirit food.

After dinner and evening chants we still tried, some successfully others less so to get internet access (darma points dependent seemingly)...

In the morning I went for another hike up to the mountains above the temple. After many attempts I found a great rock with lookout over the temple area. Walking down I went to the return route of Monday, as I walked down the mountain it started to rain lightly. That continued to the evening.

The pickup was an hour later than planned. In Cheongju we had lunch at a vietnamese restaurant. We then went to Hyundai department store (local Stockmanns but more expensive).
Next was the Chungbuk National University and its prehistoric museum. We got an Excellent guided tour by the founder and by now retired emeritus professor Lee Jung Joo.

Dinner was at the Italian restaurant Riccone. I managed to break an earlier fix to a tooth, so half the tooth fell out... My host took me to a fried dentist and we got it temporarily fixed. Fantastic to have local friends that can fix things even at short notice in the evening! More about my hosts of homestay in the next entry. Time to go the the pickup for today!

Sunday - start of templestay at Beopjusa Temple

The drive here was beautiful across several mountain ranges. This time we drove up to the temple and delivered the luggage right up to the office of Templestay. SunLee came to greet us and got us set up.
First luggage into the rooms, Jerry got his own room in the basement, the ladies each their own and we men one for three.
The mattrasses are about 10 cm think and firm. I can still sense the floorheating, so its going to be a good night!

We then walked to lunch. Serving ourselves from the buffet it's important not to take too much as nothing can be left. We have to remember that 80 people have had to work together to create even one corn of rice. We cannot waste their work. After lunch we washed up and set the plates to dry in an intricate pyramid structure. Rope and I were both close to making it collapse, but Jerry actually did. Next we went back to the office to meet with the head nun for Templestay. She explained us about the rules. First and foremost you have to participate in evening and morning chants. Secondly you have to observe the mealtimes, as they are set according to the monks routines. Thirdly we have to wear our devotees uniform.

So we have by now participated in lunch at 1150, dinner at 1730, evening chants at 1830. Next we have morning chants at 330 (yes you read correctly), then some more sleep and up for breakfast at 600. You can see our uniforms in the pictures.

The headnun then went on to tell about program she can arrange for us, we have done woodblock printing, created lotusflowers and done a Forrest walk meditation. The walk was in an area reserved for the nuns and monks.

We continued with dinner and then a little bloggwriting....

Saturday - snow, Chateau MaNi, No Gun Ri and Music

There was a train track right next to the hotel keeping me awake. In the morning started snowing. That continued until past lunchtime, giving the surroundings a surreal snowcover to eg the cherryblossom.

The first stop this morning was Chateau Mani. The owner gave us an informative walk through the show areas and then took us to his private cellar that included Chateau Margaux, Latour and Roma del Conte wines from the first half of 20th century. We then went to the footspa and while soaking our feet in diluted wine we were given tastings of 2006 Sauvignon Blanc (to me it seemed heavily oaked) and 2008 blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot (60 / 40) that was surprisingly light in taste and had a little sting. Turns out the ageing is done 6 months in fresh oakcasks, 12 months on second usage of the cask and 18 months on third usage of the cask.

The marketing and branding aspects of the tour and portfolio were noteworthy.

Firstly they produce 12 blended wines per year, one per month. They give 6 international artists and 6 korean artists the label design work.

They produce a lot of Private Label wine, for a TV series, for Hiddick (the dutch soccer coach that coached Korea national team) and many others. They have expanded the portfolio to Cosmetics based on fermented grapes and wine residues. They also have imported tea and coffee from New Caledonia and roast and package it.

We continued to the memorial hall for "No Gun Ri" a tragedy where American soldiers killed several hundred refugees. We had an english speaking guide and saw a 15 min video about the incident the struggle to get people to believe it really happened.

Next was lunch and then we continued to the Traditional Music hall. We first heard a concert, then got taught how to play on two of the instruments our selves. Afterwards we went to the factory town and assembled our own drum.

At dinner we held the presentation again. The hosts were very welcoming and we had a cute 18 month old child join us for most of the day. Even though language might be difficult we managed to work things out and explain things to each other. The iPad is really good for sharing things and making it easy to hold presentation virtually anywhere. Also being able to share pictures from a large library makes it very handy for language barrier cases, when its possible to illustrate.

Friday 19th - hike, confused poets,

After a good nights sleep I went for a morning hike. The trail up the mountain was steep. In 25 minutes I had climbed 200 m, for a view across the ridge. It was a nice view, when I found some stones that created a hole in the treecover.
Two partridges hurried away from staying close to the trail as I approached them.

After breakfast the new clubs came to fetch us.

The drive from Boeun to Ok Cheong was beautiful. It reminded me of the drive Tarja and I made in Steirmark in 1988 and drives in western Switzerland around Gstaad and Gruyere in 1994.

The first event for the day was a visit to a Poet's memorial hall. It was very confusing and reminded of "Lost in translation", but it seems the poet has gone missing in North Korea in 1950. His son was found in North Korea in 2001, he is believed to have passed away in 2002 or 2004.
Kristjan later researched and found this informative article on him in a blogg.
http://www.daily-korean-stuff.com/2011/05/korean-poetry-jeong-ji-yong.html.

Next we went to the birthplace of Yook Young-su (Ex-president Park Chung-Hee's wife) , a clearly wealthy family's house with plenty of rooms for servents and many rooms with kalligraphy sets or needle work kits. It was one of the first sights with an english leaflets, most have been in korean only, some with english headlines.

Lunch was again delicious, it's amazing how there is always some new dish that we have never had before! The diversity is such that among the 20 or so dishes something is always new.

As we had wanted to see a farm we were taken to a "fruit tree plantation garden". There were blueberries, black chokeberries, grapes and many others.

We continued to City hall were we got to discuss about the tourism state of the city. Ok Cheon is situated right on the Seoul-Busan highway and the people of the city were very approachable.

Next we were taken to a Local recreation hall with gym, massage chairs, music instruments for a band and a large sporthall with tabletennis practice equipment as well as tables.

As the local health station was next door and we had some time. We were taken to have a look. We had time to take weight and height measurements for all that wanted. Kristjan said he has lost around 10 kgwhile in Korea with the healthy food and the exercise... For myself the measurements were in line with my expectations after feasting.

Before dinner we took a short ride around a reservoir to get some great pictures of cherryblossom and mountains.

Thursday 18th - Boeun, Signmaker, Solarpanelfarm, Beopjusa and a new first regarding sleeping quarters

My throat is aching, but finally I managed to catch some sleep. As I woke up it was already daylight, 9.25! I have not slept this long since 2012!

Packing took some time, so I came down a few minutes late. The team had already had breakfast.

The new club is from Boeun, it took about 1 1/2 hour to get there. We started by a cup of tea at the local Rotary office. After a short discussion we drove to a print house for signs that one of the Rotariens had. He has done it for 28 years.

Next we headed up towards the Beopjusa Temple. On the way we stopped by a farmer of Jujubes, a fruit, that grow on trees a little smaller than appletrees. He had 5 years ago built a first solar panel park, almost 600 panels that each can generate 170 W. The investment looks at a payback of 5 years. It seems the businesscase flies, as he now is in the process of expanding the panel area to 3 times the size of the orginal one. The current that it generated now was about 100 A at 300 V DC. He said because of the clouds its not generating more than half or so of what it could generate. He also picked up his phone and showed an App that he can use to realtime monitor the electricity it generates. The inverter he uses is for 100 kW by HiFlex.

We continued to lunch, a large meal in the town at the entrance to the Songnisan National Park which is known for a pine tree that lifted it's branches for a passing king. Now 9 branches are supported with poles so they don't break the tree.
This is a habit we have seen at very many places in Korea.

At lunch we took the time to present our group to the hosts. Then we continued to the entry gate and into Beopjusa Temple. It was a nice calm temple area, with many temples still being repainted or under slow repair. The standing goldplated Buddha that is 33 m high is imposing, but fit nicely in to the mountain environment, as did the wooden pagoda and the temple buildings.

We then drove to our night quarters, a set of wooden villas where the team got 2 houses, the teamleader and guide each their own. The wooden houses are nice, maybe 10 square meters with a small washroom, a kitchenette and a heated floor. Bedding is in the cupboard and to be used on the floor.

Dinner was barbecue duck, that again was delicious.

Restday - turned into a mountain hike and a wet evening in seafood heaven

Sunday was a restday and we all got to do relax. In my case it involved more travel than usually...
At 7 I was picked up by the Korean GSE Teamleader Kim SonTae in pouring rain. We drove to his hometown where we exchanged vehicle and joined 10 other happy trekkers on a bright yellow bus. After 2 hours we reached Jinan and the bottom of the mountain ....
The light rain stopped after 5 min of walking as we crossed the stream on a big bridge. Next started the climb, short steady steps, not too fast but also always making progress. Short breaks each 15-30 min, some of them including Makgeolli service - others just Tomato, paprika or Korean pizza ( kind of vegetable omelette). The weather was cool and the clouds hung low.

After 2 hours of walking we reached the top at 863 m. After the group photos by the peakstone the group started to open up picnic from the backpacks. We had a real feast: fermented raw rayfish, sushi and kimchies just to mention some of it. Washed down by herb teas, water or Makgeolli. The sky cleared and the sun came out. The view was magnificent. There was an extension to the trail to the highest local mountain which rose to about 1050 m. The head of the trekking group told me it would take another 5-8 h to reach it and its very hard. The trail went down quite a bit several times in between.

Next we walked down. First over a few side peaks and then down a rock scree for a very long time. There were some irrigation pipes that they said was for the trees. At the bottom of the slope we found a set of beehives.

For dinner it was agreed on sashimi.... Restaurant 소도횟집 should be renamed "Seafood Heaven". 4 of the 6 different sashimi's simply melted in the mouth after the first bite. The others two gave a nice chewing resistance especially with the skin which had been cut to make it easier.
Next came Monke (a sea squirt) and Sea cucumber - the first soft as sea urchine on sushi and the second chewier than octopus but real tasty. All of the fish tasted extremely fresh and I ended up using soy sauce and wasabi for most, to avoid covering the delicious but refined tastes with Korean redsauce + wasabi which was the locally preferred choise.
The owner of the restaurant came out after I had sang 2 or 3 snaps songs to get the mood going. My host Kim SonTae kept telling me not to worry, his wife will drive me back to the university as he had drunk a little too much.
Next came mussels that were again very soft in taste. The owner was taken by my honest appreciation for the food. He a told me he had come a cross some abalone and asked me if I had ever tried them raw. When he was told no he offered two as a gift from the restaurant.
Heavenly!

The day ended with a 60 min ride back to the university together with JoonHwan, SonTae and his wife. Back home at 2130 in time to give short accounts of the days happenings to the rest of the team.