Thursday May 29

We started today at the Bohae Brewing company where Soju and various other liquors are made. We had a tour of the factory and the informational area that gave the history of the Bohae Brewing company. There soju is made from water that is gathered from 253 meters deep, a fact mentioned a few times. The water is used to make the alcohol, which is then flavored with organic maple syrup. They also make a variety of wines, but I'm not sure if they are traditionally made wines from a variety of fruit, or juice infused liquor. Either way, the black raspberry wine is delicious, and worth my carrying a few bottles around Korea and then home :D. I'm enjoying our trips to factories, because I like watching the machines do their thing. We got to see bottles being inspected, labeled, filled and packed this time. They produce (and sell!) about 1,000,000 bottles a day. We also saw the wine holding tanks-each tank holds 140,000 bottles, and is worth about 12,000,000,000 won, or 1.2 million dollars. There was a whole airplane hanger's worth of these tanks, so I can assume the brewery is financially stable.
After lunch (which was Korean food, unfortunately I can't remember much more about it right now) we went to a Nature School. This combination retreat and Kindergarten was built using only natural materials, so that when it is no longer in use, it will return fully to the earth. After a tour of the building and some shopping (naturally) we got to make our own clay pots. These will be fired and glazed, and returned to us in 15 days, plenty of time to figure out how to pack them and get them home.
Dinner was an emotional experience. We ate at an orphanage, with the children there. I sat at a table with some 1st and 2nd year High School students. They were shy about speaking english, and my Korean hasn't improved all that much in the past week, so we both pulled out phrase books and did the best we could. Dinner was pork cooked on a hot plate right on the table-the girls did the cooking, deftly turning and removing the meat with chopsticks. They showed me how to make lettuce wraps with a piece of the meat, some soybean paste and rice, they even made me some. They made sure I ate enough, pushing salad and fruit on me even after I said I was full. After dinner they took me on a tour, and showed me their room, their closets, and their musical instruments. The orphanage had been the recipient of a grant from Rotary, which enabled them to buy musical instruments for all of the children, as well as hire music teachers for them. At 7pm there was a rush of activity as the children went to the music room to get their instruments then dispersed throughout the building to their lessons and practice. We heard them play a bit before we left, and many of the children came to the front door to say good bye to us. The experience was really hard hitting for me, because the girls I sat with were so similar in some ways to the teens I work with at the library. The giggled when they were nervous, they had too much school work, they launched into mile a minute conversations that I couldn't understand, at least this time because they spoke another language. Though I couldn't ask their story, I'm pretty sure they've been living in this same place for years, and may continue to until they complete University. Though the employees of the orphanage were kind and caring, and everything was well taken care of, there is still the unfortunate fact that these children don't have parents or other family to care for them.
It was our last night at this host family, and there was a bit of a celebration, including Korean fried chicken--with cheese! and some drinking and chatting. We then packed our lives up into luggage that mysteriously gets heavier with every move, and slept soundly, if shortly.