Taegu

We're in Taegu (or is it spelled Daegu?), South Korea right now visitng our good friends Paul and Amy. We finally got to meet their new daughter, Caroline, for whom we are godparents. She was baptized tonight at Mass, and we followed that up with a delicious meal at a French (Freedom) restaurant.

Flying in to Busan last night was sort of strange. Normally, when we get on an international flight, it's 10 hours before we get off. Last night, just one and a half hours later, we were landing and exiting the aircraft in another country. Nice not to have jet lag going on...

We've just kicked around town today, and spent time catching up with Paul and Amy. We share a lot of the same interests together, namely travel, and had a good time comparing notes on some of the places we'd been in the past couple of years. Of course, their traveling is somewhat curtailed now that they have the little girl, but they're planning to start back out on the road in a half a year or so.

Korea feels a lot like Japan, with narrow streets and lots of people, but we don't understand any Korean at all, as opposed to the little bit we know in Japan. Otherwise, it really doesn't feel much different.

Last weekend, we went out with some friends (Toshi, Hiroko, Akiko, Takashi, Mike and Melody and I) to eat at a Yakiniku place and sing some karaoke. We'd spent the day walking around Kamakura with Mike and Takashi, and then headed up on the train to meet the others. The meal was great, and at less than 40 bucks a person, a bargain. Yakiniku restaurants have a little grill at your table on which you grill meat. One strange thing was that half of the meat was offal. Why do people eat intestines and stomach? It's something that I just will never understand...some of the meat was great; some, not so great. The intestines were like chewing meat flavored gum...grill it for a while, then dunk it in soy sauce, and chew, chew, chew. Finally, I just had to get it down with a big swig of beer. Not bad tasting, just difficult to eat! But, in spite of eating pig colon, we had a great time.

After the offal experience, we walked up the street to a karaoke place, and spend a couple of hours singing. What a fun passtime....we really had a great day.