Home Stay Two

I haven't even written about our second host family and we leave today. Not only are we busy all day with our events, but this family is more social than our last one, and there have been visitors every night. Last night was a bit of a 'celebration' in the wife's terms, of our being there, and probably also of our leaving-having 5 foreign women descent on your household must be stressful, especially since we all had laundry and I think she must have spent half of yesterday washing it all. Koreans don't use clothes dryers, everything hangs to dry. It ends up smelling really good, (but that may be mostly the laundry detergent--I haven't used laundry detergent with a frangrance in years, with the exception of Italy where it does not aggrivate my skin. So far the Korean detergent is giving me no problems, and it's sort of nice to have pretty smelling clothes.) Two rotary couples came last night, bringing some kind of Korean chicken-spicy with dipping sauces and some covered in cheese, cookies and grapes that were added to an already full coffee table, and we drank some beer and soju and talked. It was really wonderful to feel so welcomed into someone's home.
Tuesday was a visit to the nuclear power plant-as far as we can tell we do not glow--yet. The plant is government owned, as are all of the energy sources in Korea. We watched a very enthusastic video about nuclear power, then were thermo-scanned, metal detected, and possibly scanned in some other secret ways before going on a tour that included a peek into the control center. After the tour we were able to tour the plant owned and operated aquarium, no deformed fishes there, just a great collection of fish that are found in the waters surrounding Korea.
Lunch was in a famous seafood resturant-I think they are famous for the insane amount of food they serve. We think there were 12 kinds of fish on the table at one point, plus the kimchee and side dishes and rice and soup-ack!
We really are movie starts now-we were asked to be interviewed for a commercial for the resturant as we were leaving. We obliged, and we'll have to see if it ends up on tv before we leave.
In the afternoon we visited a beautiful Buddhist shrine, then drove along the coast road. We stopped for tea in the afternoon, a nice rest in a day full of walking and looking. Dinner was Shabu Shabu-food cooked in a hot pot of broth at the table. It was yummy, and followed by iced passion fruit tea in the office of a Rotary memeber who had joined us for dinner. His law pratice was right above the resturant we ate at. We came home and visited with our host's guests for a bit before bed.
We also learned how connected and caring the Rotary members are yesterday in an easy to illustrate story. Sometime on Monday, between the switching of cars and luggage and changing after the sauna, I managed to leave my sunglasses in a car I was no longer in. (sorry Tim). I didn't realize it until the next morning, and once I had mentally traced my steps, I narrowed it down to one car that it could potentially be in. I asked our translator to inquire about them, and two text messages later, they were located and in the district office. Knowing where they were, I was content, and sure they'd find me somehow. I did not expect to have them handed to me by the waitress as she showed me to our table for dinner-some one had dropped them off at the resturant so I'd have them that night. This kind of thoughtfullness had been evident through out our stay. I had been so worried about the glasses, and then so happy that they were located, I didn't even realize I had left my notebook in a completely different car until Mr Moon came to the apartment we were stayng in, to drop it off and visit for a bit. He said it was an excuse to come see us, and I really appreciated his finding it. After he handed me the book, he joked with me and said he told me he wouldn't accept money for his delivery of my book, but would accept from me a slice of the orange that was laid out on the table. I happily obliged him.
Breakfast is almost ready, so I will have to talk about yesterdays events later, they probably deserve their own post as it is. Pictures as soon as I can get my own computer online, I only have 621 so far-good thing Tim got me the big SD card :D