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.