Seoul Food

I just got back from Seoul, Korea last night.  Seoul Food is just awesome.  Time didn't permit this trip to go to a local Korean bbq house which was too bad.  They are great.  You sit on the floor, which is heated, and you bbq up tons of yummy meats and then eat them with rice and an onslaught of little side dishes like kimchi.  I was able to eat a meal of the short ribs with rice which is one of my favorites.  It's funny now because most of my favorite dishes or meals are from Japan, Korea, Thailand, Taiwan or China.  Interesting how food choices change.  Living overseas I think has really expanded our food horizons.  I didn't realize this until my sisters last trip here when we asked her what she wanted to eat (Thai, Greek, Indian, Japanese, Korean etc) and she replied that she hadn't eaten any of them.  We then made it our mission to expose her to all of our favorite foods and to our joy she liked most of them.

I didn't intend to talk all about food in the blog post but food is usually on my mind.  I love to eat!

This morning we had our branch Christmas party.  It was a big breakfast that had a Polar Express theme to it.  The kids loved it and there were a couple hundred people there.  (Our branch now has about 220+ every week!).  After the breakfast I went with the youth to do a service project.  They saved up their money to buy gifts that we were going to deliver to a local children's hospital.  It was previously arranged and when we got there we quickly realized that they weren't taking us to the area that we wanted to go to.  They had taken us to the VIP ward where there was only 4 kids that weren't even all locals.  This was not what we had intended.  So we left that ward and walked into the cardiac ward.  As I entered it was obvious that it was not the VIP section.  The staff didn't speak English, their uniforms weren't as nice, there were no private rooms but instead 3-4 kids per room and it just wasn't nearly as nice as the other area.  I went to the nurses desk and told them we had about 15 foreign youth that had prepared gifts for the kids and asked if we could come and distribute them.  She happily agreed so we brought the youth in and started delivering the gifts.  Christmas obviously doesn't mean anything to the people we visited but the spirit of Christmas was ever present as the families of these little kids just lit up with joy and appreciation.  The youngest kid I saw was 2 months old and the oldest was about ten.  All of the families I spoke with were from the country side all over China that had come to Shanghai for the better medical care.  These were kids with heart problems.  There was one boy that didn't have a family there with him.  He was so excited as we gave him a teddy bear that was bigger than he was.  It was hard knowing that he was alone.  The nurses said his parents had dropped him off and came in sometimes to see him.  They are probably working hard to pay the medical bills.

I was worried we wouldn't have enough gifts for the whole floor of 40 kids.  Turns out we did have enough and like the fish and the loaves there were still a lot of gifts left so we went to the next floor up and had just enough for the 40 kids on that floor.  We were one gift short so one of the leaders went down to the car to get an extra gift and brought it back up to the last little kid.

Shanghai is a city that is all about making money and getting ahead.  The people can be cold, short tempered, and selfish.  When people do something nice for someone else here they are often looked at as crazy.  Everyone is always in such a hurry.  Today for a few short minutes we were able to spend time with these humble families from the country side that were so thankful to have visitors and gifts.  They were parents that just wanted their kids to get better.  It was very refreshing to be around them.  It is true that when we give service we gain much more than we give.  We weren't able to tell the hospital that we were a church organization or discuss the true meaning of Christmas with any of them but I think that the spirit of Christ that surrounds the Christmas season was there and overcame any language or political/religious barriers.