An Old Friend in South Korea

In 1996, a friend of DW's and mine (she's practically a family member and I often think of her as a sister from another mister) learned of our plans to travel to Korea to teach English, and she was intrigued. She had recently divorced from her first husband and was at loose ends, and thought this would be a good experience.

She researched various cities and institutes from which to teach, and having found one that was much more organized than the one that DW and I chose, found herself in Korea two months before DW and I left, at the end of February in 1997.

Our friend was living in the small town of Ichon, about an hour and a half or so southeast of Seoul. The town is famous for its unique ceramics. In 1997, it was one of those small, obscure towns where if you blinked, you'd miss it. From Google satellite imagery today, it looks much bigger than I remembered it.

Shortly after DW and I arrived in Chŏnju, we reached out to our friend and met up with her in Seoul. It was our first time exploring the capital city and our first time getting away from the Chŏnju area, but wouldn't be our last. We would meet up with our friend in her town during the Ichon Ceramics Festival, she spent a weekend with us in Chŏnju, and we had a great vacation together in Gyeongju, on Korea's southeastern coast, and the temple of Popchusa, where a wonderful monk with perfect English gave us a private tour, treated us to lunch, and gave us bread to feed the koi fish.

And, of course, we met several times in Seoul, where we introduced her to our friend from the Canadian Embassy, and they became friends as well.

On her visit to Chŏnju, we treated our friend to the surrounding sights of our province. Because our hagwon (language institute) had a car that the teachers could use, we drove to the top of Chiri Mountain (Chirisan), the tallest mountain on peninsular South Korea. It was a challenge for our little Daewoo Tico to get up, but we managed it.

When our friend finished her contract at the end of 1997, we were sad to see her go. We already lost our dear friend, Brad, who we met a couple of weeks after arriving in Chŏnju and have been close to ever since. We knew that in 1998, we'd have to find new friends.

But in our first year, it was certainly nice to have someone from home.

Happy Throwback Thursday!