Thursday/Friday

Morning came way too early besides the fact that I had been awake most of the night so it really didn’t matter.  Time to tackle the shower…the showers in Korea are open into the entire bathroom, not enclosed like back at home.  Needless to say, it was an experience.  My friend and I had been together in the master bedroom, it was nice of her sister and husband to give up their room for us.

I spent most of the morning texting my hubby, it’s a crazy feeling not being instantly connected and it makes it harder with the whole day difference and night and day difference.  I can get very confused.  I don’t like spending money on global cell phone usage but there was no way I was going to go without communicating with my hubby! 

After everyone had showered and were ready to go, Omma came with breakfast, a milk/yogurt drink.  Being polite, I took it and started drinking it…ugh, it was milk in the first place, then it was banana flavored, what was I going to do??  Two things I didn’t like and both in one drink!!  As my friend finished her packing, I had her dump my drink down the drain, I know, I know, that was bad of me, but seriously, I didn’t want to be rude and not drink it and they had no idea that I didn’t like milk or bananas.  My friend put her drink down the drain too, she’s lactose intolerant!  These ‘I must be polite and take what is given to me’ rules, they’re killing me!

As we were about to leave, my friend’s family looks at our overnight bags and asks if those were what we were taking…uh yeah, those were overnight bags to us.  They each had a tiny bag with hardly anything in them so we borrowed a smaller bag for our stuff.  I felt like this was the start to the Amazing Race for us…little did I know…

One cab, subway, and bullet train ride later, we arrived at our destination.  As we looked at our accommodations, I had to laugh as it was a little traditional Korean style hut, maybe 10x20 feet.  I called it a paper mache hut.  Me, my friend, and her Omma would be sharing this hut.  We laid out the blankets on the floor and my friend and I decided we needed a nap, it was 1:00 and we were tired already!

After our nap, we walked around the famous king’s burial grounds which were these giant mounds, the higher the mounds, the more power and status the person had, they were the size of small hills.  Walking around, it dawned on me that I had been there twice already!!  Duh!

My friend was so tired of Korean food, when her family asked her what she wanted for dinner, I looked at her, smiled and I said out loud, she wants friend chicken and she got the biggest smile on her face and nodded.  So that’s what we had, even delivered to our little hut area and had a wonderful dinner.  It was a very quaint area with these huts all around a common ground with picnic tables and a fire pot. 

Bedtime…a bathroom was actually attached inside the hut, a toilet and open shower, no sink, the whole room the size of a shower!  Needless to say, my friend and I determined we would not be taking a shower the next day.  We didn’t brush our teeth that night either.

Friday:

I had slept quite well for about five hours so ended up waking up around 5:15am so decided to chit chat via text to hubby.  Well that was going to be short lived since my battery was going dead!  I hated not having my cell phone available, I’ve been feeling so out of touch with everyone and everything!  Then my friend’s mother passed away last weekend so I was missing being able to text with her to give her comfort and support.  At least I felt in touch with the world being able to read emails too, but it was killing me that I was doing it all from my blackberry and was costing a fortune!

Breakfast was make your own in the communal kitchen.  Turned out to be pretty nice and was fun seeing all the different people that were staying at the same place, the whole place had filled up with guests!  I was even able to get on the guest computer, sign into Facebook and write up a status update!  I can’t believe I have only been on fb that one time this whole week!!

After breakfast, we walked around some more and saw more tourist attractions.  We have sure done a lot of walking this week!  After touring, it was time to eat again!  But this time we were going to have my favorite Korean dish, the whole chicken in soup!!  And this time, I was finally able to pay for all of us since my friend’s family kept paying for ev-erything!!   The older gentleman at the table near us thought we were funny fighting over who was going to pay.

Time to head back to the subway and bullet train to head back home.  As my friend was sleeping, I talked to the birth sister to translate to her mom regarding how this week has been for them.  They still felt like they were in a dream but were very happy to have met.  I wanted to relay to the birth mother that it was ok to forgive herself and that once she did, she would experience even more happiness that is to come for her future.  I made the mom cry…wow, did I feel bad!  Then I started to cry...I told her she should be so proud to be with her two beautiful daughters and how happy I was for all of them that this meeting was able to occur.  I also told the sister that she should in no way feel guilty for any of this because she was just a little girl when all this happened and she should not feel guilty for being the one that stayed with her mom.  She thanked me for saying that.  I just hope all of what I said wasn’t lost in translation.  The sister had been studying English for the past few months and was really pretty good at her ability to translate all the conversations this week.

We had to head back to the sister’s apartment to get the rest of our luggage so weren’t able to stay there to eat dinner or we would be too late to get back into Ilsan, so they ordered pizza for us to take with us.  They put us in a cab, wrote down the address in Hangul for the cab driver and then the mom paid ahead of time and the cab driver would not give the money back!

Once we finally got into Ilsan, the driver was unsure of where exactly Holt Ilsan was, we were of no help and especially at night when everything looks different.  Luckily, we had Molly’s phone number written down so the driver called Molly and she told him where to go…come to find out, we were right around the corner.  We had made it with nine minutes to spare before the gate would be closed!!

Was so nice to be back in my room, turn on the air and plug in my blackberry…I felt so lost without it!!  Caught up with hubby and went to bed…all. by. myself.  And with the air conditioner ON FULL BLAST!!