Last Friday and Saturday (May 22 & 23)

My friend Young Il Kim took Friday afternoon off work so we could "play." We ate lunch at a wonderful place called "Mad for Garlic" that had a delicious pizza with both fried and roasted garlic. Since almost everything on the menu had garlic, the restaurant provided mouthwash in the rest room!


We then briefly visited Yeouiudo Park which was nearby. It's not a huge park, but was in my Parks of Seoul booklet so I'd wanted to visit. The park is a nice space in the midst of office buildings, although apparently there are apartment buildings nearby which provided some of the park users. There was an impressive statue of King Sejong, the one who created hangul, the Korean form of writing.Young Il suggested going to the National Museum of Korea, a relatively new building and location in Yongsan. It is an amazingly huge and impressive building with a wide-ranging collection of Korean artifacts. The museum was also hosting a special exhibit on Egypt which we didn't see but enjoyed the painting on the steps advertising the exhibit.

Having spent more time at the museum than originally planned, we rushed to the Fulbright Building for the Fulbright Forum lecture entitled "The Drumming of Dissent during South Korea's Democratization Movement" presented by Katherine Lee. Katherine is an American who worked for Kim Duk Soo's organization for four years and was responsible for recommending my Korean drumming group Shinparam be invited to the festival in Buyeo, Korea, in 2005 and worked closely with those of the group who came to the festival in 2008. I met her last week, and she mentioned the upcoming lecture which sounded interesting -- which it was.


Saturday morning I went to my last drumming class. I'll miss the final class and the performance which happens next week. Did a little shopping at the huge, and confusing, underground mall at the Express Bus Terminal and then met InSook and InAe for our last get-together. We ate at an Indian curry restaurant -- which was still quite Korean. Had coffee at a nearby coffee shop, something we do frequently when together. And then we separated -- until my next visit to Korea.