1st "Official" dinner party - South Korea

July 9/15 - Our 1st "official" dinner party at the home of the South Korean Military Attaché.

We weren't sure what to expect because our hosts were South Korean and English is their 2nd language - heavy with an accent, which makes communication more difficult. We were pleasantly surprised! The other guests included a couple from Spain and a couple from Japan. Again, English is their 2nd language. So try to imagine 8 people around a dinner table; people you have only met a few times at large receptions: Two Canadians, two Japanese, two Spaniards, and two South Koreans. Our hostess prepared all the food herself along with one other lady who served the meal. That must have been an incredible amount of work because the dinner was 6 courses! We started off with a salad with shrimp (forgive me, I have zero pictures and zero recollection of the names of these Korean dishes - next time I will do better) which had a home-made dressing that was incredibly flavorful. Next was a home made pumpkin/sweet potatoe soup. The third course was a beef stir-fry (my favorite), fourth was beef with pine nuts, fifth was a broth soup with noodles, beef and another vegetable. Our dessert was a cake/pie with cooked cherries on top. Guess what I did? I popped one of the cherries (get your minds out of the gutter my friends) and squirted cherry juice on the white table cloth AND also on the beige cloth chair! I did manage to miss my white/navy dress, but still, I felt bad. I guess it's better than red wine??? We had wine with dinner, but also we sipped on a shot of a plum wine that has gold in it (see picture above). It was sweet so I did manage to drink about 3/4's of it (I'm not good at drinking liquor straight - as it was 40% - more like liquor than wine). They have a new apartment, which was quite nice and nicely furnished.

After dinner, with dessert, a white lotus tea was served (although the picture below isn't the tea we had, it was served like this with a hollowed out gourd as the utensil we used to pour it in our little cups. It looked very similar to this in a large ceramic bowl.

The conversation flowed well and we enjoyed ourselves. I managed to get a few words in and Craig, of course, was making everyone laugh. After dinner the hostess presented the ladies with a gift - Korean masks in a little bag. That was so sweet! It was a great evening and we look forward to going to other dinner parties and to hosting them also.