Katie's Visit

One of my best friends from high school, Katie, had a whirlwind trip to Seoul last week!

Last spring, she applied for and was chosen to get a grant from the Rotary Club.

Basically, she and five others have spent the last year preparing to spend a month in South Korea visiting the Jeonju area (about 2 hours south of Seoul).

She stayed in the homes of Koreans who volunteered to host her and teach about their culture. They also visited various businesses and did some "networking".

So, Katie arrived in Korea while I was in Indonesia and because we don't have a car and are (crazy) busy all the time, the only time I got to see her was the day and a half that she got to spend in Seoul before flying home.

She met me at school after I got out of a meeting and we walked through Itaewon. Then, Eric and the kids met us for dinner at one of our favorite Thai restaurants.

After dinner, Katie and I made our way down to the Banpodaegyo (daegyo means bridge in Korean) to see the world's longest rainbow bridge fountain--complete with a K-pop soundtrack.

There was a crew on-scene filming the bridge, so they had a bunch of bright lights shining all around us--not so ideal for my night photography practice!

The weather was beautiful Tuesday--a balmy 80 degrees F, making it a very pleasant evening at the bridge, but a very sticky walk home!

You can see the neon Han River tour boat about to go through the fountain and under the bridge.

I was not pleased that the fountains stopped in the seconds that this picture was taken!

On Wednesday, I was able to take the day off and show Katie around town a little bit. We took the Seoul City bus tour, but we spent the majority of our time in Dongdaemun and Namdaemun.

It poured down rain all day on Wednesday, making it very difficult to take pictures! The kids were troopers most of the day even though we dragged them through shop after shop after shop.

You can see that Kennedy is soaked through. We stopped for a break from the rain at Starbucks in Namdaemun and Kennedy and Katie played DrawSomething.

We were all pooped by the time the tour was over! In spite of it, we all made the trip back into town for dinner with friends. Umbrellas and all!

Tonight, Eric left to go back to Seattle for his grandma's funeral, so I finally have time to some blogging now that the kids are in bed. I came home from school this afternoon to discover that Kennedy has pink eye. It's going to be a long week and a half for us!

And now, I must eat some dinner and go to bed!