Homeward Bound

Away for a month, I’m more than ready to come home. Hotel laundry services don’t leave my clothes Downey fresh, and my wallet is overflowing with 4 types of currency. I have a pile of receipts which I dread making sense of for my expense report. (And those whacky Chinese don’t even give you receipts, only official government notes in the amount of the sale.)
The other day I had to head out to a town called Jeonju, about 2.5 hours outside of Seoul, where we had recently acquired a small company. The driver was at the hotel 7am sharp and whisked us confidently off to our destination… except that he took us to Cheongju, a town in a different providence and about 2 hours in the wrong direction. He showed me the destination on his dispatch sheet, but since it was written in Korean, it could of been a recipe for Kimchi for all I know. After raising someone on the phone that spoke both English and Korean, we were finally headed in the right direction. There’s several other cities that all sound phonetically similar to me in the area, but these people seem to keep it all straight. At least I got to see some of Korea by car — quite pleasant with it’s lush green hills with creepy fog hugging the tops.
I had a “Jeonju lunch” which culminated in a local favorite rice dish. Mr. SomethingOrAnother excitedly explained that I could make it at home by taking the rice left in the rice cooker and mixing it with water.
“So… I see. It’s burnt rice water?” I confirmed.
Yum. Indeed. It sports a lovely rusted-orange hue with chewey chunks of rice cooker scrapings. Note to self: before putting rice cooker in sink to soak, consider as gift to Jeonju.
In about 8 hours I’ll be over the Pacific hopefully fast asleep in Asiana’s sub-standard business class. And nothing could make me happier…
A view from my hotel room in Seoul: