Marathon!!

We went to a street festival and were surprised to see two American Indians dressed in native wear playing some type of flute instrument along with drums, but it wasn’t native American music. It was some pop music. Ben ate bondeggi, bugs! I missed taking a picture of him eating the bugs the first time so I made him eat some more while posing for the camera. He did not like eating them but wants to try weird foods so he’s game for just about anything.

We attended the Gyeongju Branch conference and afterward ate with the members. The women carry their children around on their backs until they are big-these women are strong! They walk back and forth putting the food out and setting up the room that by the time it is time to eat it must be nap time-so this little guy fell asleep. The people all wait for Dad and I to get in line and dish our food up first. They have huge rice cookers full of rice, sometimes more than one rice cooker. There are interesting combinations of foods and the pile of “fruit” at the far end of the table is a stack of tomatoes which they eat like an apple at the end of a meal. One little boy took two and surprised us by eating them.

We hiked up our mountain for practice because we planned to have our MLCM (mission leadership council meeting) as we hiked up the mountain. When we hiked on Wednesday there were many purple flowers scattered throughout the mountain, along with the Cherry Blossom trees blooming. But then the weather turned and it rained Thursday all day and night and early Friday morning. By the time our missionaries gathered the trail was dry enough so we did have our hike with stops along the way for training and talks (think of the way the Savior would talk and teach as he walked the roads-like to Emmaus). It was great! The only sad part was that the flowers were not as full and beautiful since the rain knocked down the majority of their petals.

Last week shortly after our MLCM we traveled back to Gyeongju where we met Elder Min and the branch president there and ate dinner together. Then the branch president drove us to a resort hotel that he had arranged for us to spend the night, in this traditional Korean hotel room. We walked into this room that was a wide open space with a small closet that had yeos (thin pads to sleep on) and ebols (thin blanket to cover yourself with). No bed. It was one of the worst nights sleep we got since being here in Korea. I much prefer a bed to the hard floor. But it was very nice of President Lee to do that for us. It was nice not having to get up any earlier than 6:00 to get to the marathon-as the roads were closed because of the numbers of people/runners.  The buffet breakfast had these Chinese oranges which were not much larger than the grapes in the dish next to them. You are supposed to eat these oranges whole-unpeeled. But they were not good-bitter peel.

Such a fascinating building with the cut out shape of the traditional Korean building in its center. Across the street a ways is another building under contraction that looks like the cut out building shape so that if you were to stand behind the new building facing the cut out building you would think that you were viewing the cut out shape just cut from the first building (hard to explain). This is the Korean Cultural History Museum. Lots of tents were being put up on these grounds for the Cherry Blossom Marathon.

It was a beautiful spring day but quite chilly in the morning. We had to get up and go by 6:00AM in order to meet up with Elder Min (he’s now Brother Min but we still call him Elder) and over to the marathon in order to park and get the race bibs corrected and wait in the long lines for the bathrooms. With over 14,000 runners the lines and waits were long. Dad ran the marathon, and he was still smiling at the end! He finished in a shorter time than he had planned. They started the races with the marathon after a fun blast of fireworks. The rest of the runners stood behind signs indicating their race (Half, 10K, 5K) waiting their turns. I was surprised to see as many Americans as I did with a few individuals from Houston, even Sugar Land. Fireworks blasted off before each race. With so many runners I could not even see when Ben and Elder Min took off to run the half marathon. I was next in the pack of runners to run the 10K. There were so many that it took 7 minutes for me to even cross the starting line (pad with my race chip on my shoe). I had somebody from one of the wards recognize me and say hello while running, another woman spoke to me at the rest rooms, and then after the race I saw a few other members who I knew-fun! I tried to find out if anybody was selling any race shirts but couldn’t find any. There weren’t any t-shirts given in the race packets, either. That’s different from American running races. After the race they had hard boiled eggs and some sort of Korean soup that you could wait in line to receive, not bagels or granola bars or bananas and oranges.

I wish you could have seen the beautiful cherry blossoms. Years ago Dad and I ran around the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC that is surrounded by Cherry Tress/blossoms that were given to the US as a gift from the Japanese-beautiful. So the scenery here up against some mountainsides for backdrops was wonderful.

After running our races we quickly headed back to Gyeongju where we met the branch president and his wife for lunch at a Chinese restaurant they enjoy eating at. It was delicious food, interesting. The white things on the plate in the middle are roll types of bread thingys. We ate something like that at a Chinese restaurant months ago but they had something inside of them. At this restaurant they did not have anything inside of them. The texture is not quite bread like-maybe a little bit spongey. At this restaurant we were shown how they open them up to put the green pepper, onion, meat, and noodle dish inside and then roll it up before eating. I guess it’s similar to wrapping meat and veggies inside a tortilla or pita bread or whatever. It was fun to listen to the branch president and his wife talk about their courtship and marriage, their conversion stories, and when President Kimball came to Seoul(Dad was at that same meeting translating for President Kimball)wrapped up in big blankets because of the cold weather!