I have to admit that I've been quite content planting roots in Athens (as opposed to travelling all over the place). Still, I can't deny that, after staying in North America for the past two years, I was quite eager to pay a little visit to Asia again. To counteract jetlag, I stayed up late the two night before I flew out. This gave me a chance to spend some late night time with friends and even play some Ultimate frisbee.
Drew, John, and I met at Tim Hortons around midnight to do some studying and hang out. It turned out that wasn't a natural mix so we rigified the structure a bit with a 15 minute social break in-between every 30 minutes of working.
The next morning at 6am, Mom and Dad drove me to the airport and then it was a glorious 24 hours of flying and layovers. All three of my flights (Columbus, Chicago, and Tokyo) were right on time, and I even had an empty seat next to me on the Chicago-Tokyo leg of the trip to spread out and enjoy some movies. The food was delicious, and I made good use of the leftovers basket in the back of the plane (if you don't already know about this, make sure you go to the back of the plane when you fly internationally!) I only slept for 2 hours of the trip, but somehow it was so invigorating that I was wide awake when I arrived in Seoul. My mother, father, aunt (in-laws) and JooYeon were waiting with arms open wide. However, after an hour of driving, their eyes weren't quite open as wide so I drove the last two hours to get us home. This was actually a first for me despite having lived in Korea for two and a half years.
We arrived around 2 am at JooYeon's Mom's hotel in Eastern Korea (Gangneung). The next morning, I opened up the hotel shutters and inhaled a deep breath of the misty Korean air.
The hotel is seven stories tall, with the first story dedicated to cleaning/laundry/dining (for staff), and the second story reserved for our family. After coming here so many times over the past five years, our hotel room feels like a home now despite its lack of personal decorations.
It was almost euphoric to dive headlong into explosions of Korean chatter. For the first time ever, I understand a fair portion of what everyone was talking about (since leaving Korean, my vocabulary has decreased, but my fluency has increased; in other words, I recognize less words, but I can speak/listen to those words much better than when I lived here). This opens up a whole new world of understanding everyone's personalities. For example, now I know that the backseat conversation between my mother-in-law and father-in-law which sounded like a fierce argument, was actually just a debate about the name to a particular highway with a $1,000 bet at stake.
That's not to say I understand everything perfectly - especially among those who use strong dialect like Joo's grandparents. While the countryside has followed suit with many of the Westernized patterns of the cities like Seoul, it has also resisted in areas like eating boshintang (dogs shown below).
Joo's grandpa, 87, had just had foot surgery before we arrived (he had been trying to assemble a large four-person swing by himself when it fell apart and landed on his foot) and so her grandma was maintaining the farm all by herself.
Their grandparents' farm looks like an Indian ashram with all the random buildings scattered throughout (I didn't get pictures of them here; maybe on our next visit). They used to run a min-bak which is kind of like a Korean hostel for travellers and also still host all the extended family ceremonies in a special building.
We harvested some potatoes with Joo persistently trying to convince her grandparents to sell some of their vegetables at the market.
After finishing up with the potatoes, we went out for some 물냉면 which a type of soup. The broth is beef-based, together with white kim-chi juice, potato noodles, vinegar, egg, and a tomato (at least this version was). This is one of my favorite Korean foods and one that I had missed while living in the United States.
The second night back in Gangneung we went to a festival where thousands of Koreans were eagerly awaiting the results of the host city competition for the 2018 Olympics. The top three contenders were cities in France, Germany, and Korea. The Korean city, Pyeongchang, was making its third bid for the Olympics and so people were trying not to get their hopes up.
The event was an assortment of talent performances and motivational speakers (for example, one economist talked about how a successful bid would make an economic impact on the area that would last for approximately 100 years).
At one point, I felt a tap on my back and turned around to a Korean man asking me, "How are you?" This was the jist of the conversation:
Man: How are you?
Me: Fine, thank you. And you?
Man: How are you?
Me: Still good. What's your name?
Man: How are you?
Me: Do you speak English?
Man: How are you?
As you can see, it was quite a deep conversation where one really had to read between the lines. Just after midnight, the results were announced with Pyeongchang emerging victorious. The crowd erupted just as you might expect an ethnically homogenous (except me), financially weary crowd to react if you just told them they would have a positive economic outlook for the next century.
장모님 (Mother-in-law) has been going out of her way to prepare my favorite dishes, such as bibimbap (shown below), a mixture of rice, egg, and fresh vegetables.
One of my highlights so far has been hanging out at Kiwi's cafe near the seaside, but I want to reserve an entire blog entry for that (perhaps the next one).
When I heard last year that Kiwi was planning to open a café in Gangneung, I was impressed, but assumed it would be a typical Korean café (which assumes a fairly uniform appearance modeled after Hollywood movie cafés). Not so. Kiwi has gone out of his way to transform every inch of the café into an expression of his own artistic taste. 
The name ilot, which apparently means a "small, cozy space" in French, was chosen by his sister Jusu. Kiwi used one of her self-portraits (shown above on the exterior café sign to decorate the café napkins, mugs, business cards, and a few other things. Just like I learned a lot about DIY home repairs when we bought our house in Athens, Kiwi has taught himself lots of basic carpentry, masonry, and electric work in order to transfer his ideas from his head to the café .
My sole contribution so far has been to rewrite the menu. Apparently having the mind of a 33-year-old and the physical writing skills of a 7-year-old gives my Korean a distinct look that Koreans think is quite comical.
The café is open from 11 am to 11 pm seven days a week which makes it all-encompassing for Kiwi, especially since he just had to let half of his staff go (now he has one helper). The upside of this consistency is that he is started to lure in a few regulars. I'm becoming a regular myself as I spend most of my time away from the hotel here reading, journaling, studying, or in conversation with someone. 
I'm excited to see Jusu's reaction when she comes to the coffeehouse for the first time here in the next few months. So far, she has only had a couple public exhibitions of her artwork and so she will be pleased to see that her paintings are everywhere. 
Kiwi has redone everything in the place, even the floor. I'm not sure how he managed this combo of wood and marble, but it looks amazing.
Some of the featured drinks of the menu are the 12 Grain Latte, the Sea Salt Latte and the Pat Bing Su (a traditional Korean drink/food with shaved ice, sweet red beans, rice cake, and milk).
Of course, I have to admit that I'm highly attracted to the new part-time employee.
So I have found the coffeehouse satisfying both in terms of personal reflection time and for socializing with Kiwi's friends.
To top it all off, this is the view from right outside the cafe (shown both at day and at night)...
Even though I've visited Joo's hometown many times before, I rarely have had the opportunity to just sit and enjoy the rhythmic waves of the ocean.
So, as long as one remembers to "be saf" near the water, ilot is truly a coffeehouse of dreams.
The reception was held in a nearby barn with a delicious spread beginning with some whole grain bread and dipping oil on the tables. Before we left for the wedding, I was impressed with Mom's snazzy dress and predicted that she would get at least seven comments on it...
At one point during the reception dance, the DJ called all married couples onto the floor and then slowly kicked them off based on how long they had been married. For example, he said that all couples married less than 2 hours had to leave (Matt and Kathleen), then two years, five years, ten years, etc. Mom and Dad made it to the next-to-last bracket, but couldn't surpass the couple who had been married 66 years. After the dance, Dad asked me if I had taken a picture; when I said no, he told me that that was the first time he and Mom had ever danced. My apologies to blog readers for failing to capture that special moment for you. As a consolation prize, I did take a picture of their second ever dance, magnified by the romantic outhouse in the background.
