Chusok: Best Weekend of All Time

This weekend was Chusok, the Korean harvest holiday. Though the members of the Christian community here dread this day because they are forced to tell family members that they will not be offering sacrifices to the ancestors, Amie and I had a great time not working on Friday. We went shopping for all the things the apartment still needed, took a nap, went out for Italian food (Amie needed pizza after a week with Peter), and cleaned the apartment.

Saturday, the actual day of Chusok, our friends from church came and took us to Olympic Park in Seoul. It is about 45 min. from Bundang on a normal day, but twice that with holiday traffic. The park was built for the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. It has a very beautiful garden walkway, a river, and is the fifth largest sculpture park. We had ice cream and saw a flame burning for peace that was lit for the games.

After the park we went to dinner at a friend’s house. His family provided quite a feast! The time with the family was great, and the food was terrific! They had beef, pork, fish, and stingray as well as three types of kimchi, noodles, rice, and vegetable cakes. For dessert they had rice cakes (the family owns a rice cake business), cheesecake, apples, and pears the size of cantaloupes. We had coffee and ginseng candies after dinner, and a great time hanging out. The family gave us each a pair of socks, and then we went for a walk in the park. We feel very blessed.

Daniel knows it's going to be good.

After dinner Scott made us bomb coffee.

The generous Lee family.

We are now back in our apartment resting up from the long first weekend together. We went to church this morning and then had lunch at the leader’s house. We took a nap and had a nice dinner. Now we wanted to get the first blog out. Thank you all for your prayers. We have a lot of work ahead of us in our lives and jobs, but we feel secure in God’s love and yours! Thanks!