The Patterson Visit - A Summary

Paul is suffering from a bad cold and expects to die from it at any moment. While he is busy making outlandish requests for his burial, it falls to me to write a summary of his parent’s visit.

The Pattersons have been visiting for about two and a half weeks. They arrived on March 27^th, spent a quiet weekend with us in Yongin, and left on the 31^st for a week in China. After trekking up the Great Wall and wandering through the Terra Cotta Warriors, they returned to Seoul on the 4^th. We met them in town that night, and spent the weekend there as the rest of the World Vision-ites gathered. That Saturday we toured Gyeongbukgung, one of the main palaces of Korea’s Golden Age. Though most Koreans favor Gyeongbukgung because of its place in Korea’s history, the current palace is a reconstruction of the original, which was destroyed in 1592 and again in 1910, both times by the Japanese. I think we all preferred Changdeokgung, the best-preserved palace of Seoul, which we visited the next day. There’s something far more magical about a place when it feels old. Changdeokgung is known for its garden, which was only a few days away from full bloom.

After Gyeongbukgung, we went to Korea’s War Museum, which tells the history of all wars in Korea. This was a helpful visit for two reasons; first, it was beginning to feel rather warm outside, and we were all grateful to get out of the sun, and second, we were able to ‘refresh’ our knowledge of the Korean War. This came in handy the following Saturday on our visit to the Demilitarized Zone.

Sunday night (the 6^th), we put the Pattersons on the subway out to their World Vision meetings, and we returned to Yongin, until Wednesday, when they joined us. The following Friday (the 11th), we returned to Seoul yet again to spend the night before our big trip to the DMZ early Saturday morning. There, we went down one of the tunnels built by the North Koreans in the 1970s, took pictures of “Propaganda Village” - a fake, movie-set-like village built by the North Koreans to intimidate their brothers in the South (the buildings are empty, though they do bus people there to look busy during the day) - and we got to stand on the border between the two warring countries in the room where many of the ‘talks’ take place.

Other highlights of the trip include many, many meals at Western restaurants (a big treat for Paul and me), and many games of ‘Blackout’ (and one of ‘Hearts’) to pass the time in lonely Yongin. All in all, a good trip for everyone involved. I’m sure Paul will post pictures later this week - that is, if he lives, if not, I'll be looking for someone to hike with me up Mount Kilimanjaro.