question:

how do you say no to an invitation from your host "dad" to go on a day trip with him to a city you think you've already visited a couple of days before, for a "meeting" that you assume will consist of older Korean men, without a clear sense of what the other activities will be, and knowing that you are going to miss out on the opportunity to meet a bunch of young people that the rest of your group will be hanging out with on a Saturday night? 

answer: you don't.

in an effort to manipulate what activities i'd be participating in yesterday (because of a fear of awkward social interaction with people whose language i do not speak, but more so because i didn't want to miss out on something fun or be separated from the group), i created an even more uncomfortable situation for myself and others.

Freshly picked strawberries (G&G Paju)

part of the problem was that i didn't want to go with my host (mostly because i could not get any clear info about what the day trip would entail and we had already been near Paju to visit the DMZ), but i  didn't think it would be culturally appropriate to say that directly.  English and Korean speakers were going back and forth about what the heck was planned and whether or not i was required to be at the Rotary club meeting that night, and the longer the conversation lasted, the more people poked their noses into it, and the worse it became.  in the end i just said what i should have said from the start which was that i would skip the rotary meeting (and all the fun and games that represented in my head) and go with my host to Paju, crossing my fingers that everything would be okay, WHICH IT WAS.

bottom line: this trip seems to be a remedial lesson for me in the subjects of: "accept that you have no control over anything, but things will still turn out fine" and "don't automatically expect or assume the worst of the unknown."

me eating a7-year ginseng root which, i was told is worth >$1k
(assuming nothing got lost in translation)

the day trip resembled one with family that you're not particularly excited about at first, but that ends up having some redeeming qualities. there was no one who spoke English enough to have a full conversation with me, so there was a fair bit of time when i was either zoning out or listening to everyone speaking Korean in the hopes that I might catch the gist of the topic from a randomly recognized word or two. BUT the "meeting" was for a "friends club" that the group was starting (not a business meeting with a bunch of dudes in suits as i had feared) and i was pleasantly surprised that the group had as many women as men (including one woman who, impressively, wore spike heels while walking through the woods looking for ginseng, and another who is the leading voiceover actress in korea, no joke).

I'd never actually seen an entire
eel, let alone two!

beyond that, the day included some pretty cool stuff that i never expected, like a boat ride on the Imjin River (which belongs in part to North Korea and in part to South Korea), strawberry picking, a visit to a mountain ginseng farm, and wandering around the Heyri Artist's Village, which is a development for studios, residences, and galleries of artists, musicians, architects, etc. for dinner i ate some of the best eel i have ever tasted, not to mention the fact that everyone was incredibly generous (true to Korean hospitality as far as all of us have experienced so far), not letting me shell out a fraction of a Won, even for some souvenirs I picked out at the artists' village.

i have to say that i still felt a pang of jealousy when i heard that two of the GSE cohort might have had the chance to do Norebang (literally "song room" = karaoke) after the Rotary meeting, but then i reminded myself that our experiences here will have some shared components and some individual ones, so each of our trips overall will be unique and that's okay (plus i have three more weeks to get some singing in).

even though when it started, spending 7 days with the same host family seemed like it would be an eternity, it's actually gone by very quickly. at dinner tonight, i noticed a bit of sadness, despite the language barrier when we talked about my departure tomorrow. weirdly, it also seemed to me that we were just getting to know each other, and i'm  already moving on to a different homestay, and into week 2 of the trip! time flies, as they say...