Thing are Looking Up!

It is 1:30 a.m. and I am home from a very long day with my hosts' daughter, "Judy." She drove me to Seoul --- about 90 minutes away --- with another house guest, the Korean 23-year-old family friend who is now a Canadian resident and will be going to school in "Flor-EE-dah," as he says. The young people were good company.

We went to the marvelous national museum for history, art and archaeology, a tourist shopping street with tschotckes (and the first white people I've seen since stepping off the plane three days ago), a traditional area of shopping, a department store for shopping --- some of you know that shopping is not my favorite sport --- and a night market where we bought food in a typical Korean street vendor "cafe."

Our dining area was more like the sidewalk stalls at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, but this is Korea and I asked if the food was safe. At least it wasn't "dogh" of last night's dinner fame, and I decided the cultural experience was worth potential digestive upset. The stalls are like a Korean workingman's fast-food delivery by competent ladies who ladle up soups, deep-fried veggie platters and highly spiced and savory meats. The marginally sheltered three or four tables with each stall are set off from the traffic by a metal railing. Our entrepreneurial ladies erected a set of wooden block stairs on each side of the fence so diners could climb to their stall in the middle, rather than walking around and perhaps getting strong-armed to stop at the first stall. It worked.

I, with my full tummy, was ready to slump down in the back seat of the minivan and sleep my way home from Seoul, but bright-eyed, thin and energetic guide and youngster Judy announced she had one more surprise for my day. And a surprise it was; no slumping for me! Instead of heading homeward, she drove to the nearby Seoul Namsan Tower, a 777-foot-high communications tower with observation deck, the third-highest in the world.

"Only one kilometer!," she chirped at 9:15 at night. Yeah, only one K in distance, I thought, but those are stairs and I'm tired. I remembered another lesson of last year's travel: "Whatever is suggested, do." My Rotarian hosts had gone to a lot of planning a memorable time for me and I ought not be grumpy.

One K later (and after Judy and I saw that a cable car ran up the other side!), we were very pleased with our efforts and rewarded with a marvelously breathtaking nighttime view. Judy lamented only that we saw mostly couples walking up the hill, and her young heart yearned for some fellow of her own. The mom in me soothed "All in good time."

So good times is the theme of tonight's thought: Good times are where we make them, in spite of ---- or embracing --- physical effort (walking up steep hills) or mental challenges (overcoming personal cultural bias). My wise friend Larry Berenato once said "Gratitude is an attitude," so again I am very grateful to be welcomed by new friends through Rotary and simply to be alive and seeing all of these unknown things with my own eyes.