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Tuesday after settling into our hotel room, we had called our friend Ms. Cho, who was in Seoul visiting her father. Ms. Cho is a very pleasant and engaging young woman, a student at a university near our home. We met her through our involvement with Families For Children, an international adoption support group [LINK], and her involvement with a Korean church group [LINK] and a Korean drumming troupe [LINK] that both hold programs for the families of Korean adoptees. We had easily struck up a friendship with Ms. Cho and earlier in the year had invited her to our home for a dinner with friends [LINK]. We were thrilled, as was she, that we were able to visit her in Seoul, and she instantly invited us to dinner with her father on Wednesday evening.
Luckily, we had plenty of time after returning from meeting Ryan to let our jet lag, our lack of sleep, and the warm rainy weather get the best of us. Carla, Tom, and Joe took nice long naps before getting ready for dinner, but Deborah was more ambitious and braved the torrential downpour to explore the city while the rest of us slept. In the early evening on Wednesday, Ms. Cho came to our hotel to escort us to a very nice Korean restaurant where her father was waiting for us. We were delighted to meet Mr. Cho, who was much younger than we expected, and like his daughter was a very friendly, gregarious, and warm person [Image 23, Image 25]. Also like his daughter, he spoke perfect English, so the evening was filled not only with great food but also with great conversation. Unfortunately, Joe dropped off to sleep as soon as we got to the restaurant and slept through nearly the entire evening [Image 26]. Poor little guy...the jet lag hit him particularly hard!
We had such a wonderful time with the Chos and couldn't imagine a nicer couple of people to spend a few hours with. And that, indeed, is just about how long it took to eat dinner! We were reminded that evening that a traditional Korean dinner consists of a mind-bogglingly huge number of courses, involving everything from several different types of soup, to several different varieties of kimchi, to beef and vegetables and fish and salads and bean curd, with sesame leaves, seaweed, and delicious little pancakes rolled and stuffed with all of the above! The excellent food and company combined to make it a truly memorable evening.
We left the restaurant, which had a lovely little garden courtyard [Image 28], and found it raining again. We paused in the rain by the garden and Mr. Cho snapped a picture of Tom, Deborah, Ms. Cho, Joe, and Carla [Image 29]. Then, in a wonderful gesture of kindness and generosity, he gave us his umbrella. We still have it and it will always remind us of Mr. Cho and his daughter and that special night.
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