North Korean Hunger Banquet

I had 3 classes of speaking tests with the 4th graders and one class of writing with 5th graders. Not to hard. I guess for the month of November there are a lot of school clubs/activities for 5th and 6th periods (after lunch). All of my COTs mentioned how they have to do them. I could hear drums banging somewhere in school, so I feel sorry for the teacher who is teaching traditional drumming.

After school I headed to Hongdae and stopped at Billy Angel. I wanted to buy a piece of cake to have for tomorrow for Dad's anniversary. Actually, I really wanted to get a piece of the oreo cheesecake that I had last week, but Itaewon is too far out of the way. Nothing stood out to me there, nothing that seemed like Dad would say, "let's try a piece of that!". So I walked around a little bit more. I found a new cafe and they had an oreo cheesecake on display! So I got a piece-I hope it's as good as the one in Itaewon! Then I went to get jap chae hoddeok (a fried pancake filled with noodles and vegetables) for Jacob and me. We figured a snack would be a good thing before the banquet. We met up after I bought the snacks and walked to the subway.

We traveled to Jongro area and found the North Korean restaurant it was being held at. I would be interested to go there again and order a meal off their menu. Anyway, we saw one of our mentee friends, Randy, at the event as well. When we arrived, we drew a story card. Both Jacob and I picked "hostile". There were three classes: Elite, Wavering and Hostile--to show their relationship with the regime. It also denoted what meal we would get. After drawing our story cards, we went to go sit down. There were about 10-12 tables, with 6 people at each table. There was one from elite, two people from wavering and 3 from hostile. We shared our story cards with each other. The event started and they introduced the program, Citizen's Alliance for North Korean Human Rights. They also talked about their hope for the evening. We were then served our meals. The hostile group got 2 potato mandu (dumplings), the wavering got a bowl of bibimbap (North Koreans eat it with soy sauce and not gochujang, the spicy red pepper paste), and the top class got a bowl of soup with vegetables and meat and a bowl of rice. After we ate, they had a young woman speak. She defected with her Mom when she was 15 years old and is currently studying at a university in Seoul. It was an interesting event.

I headed home afterwards. Jacob went with his roommate Troy to go visit their new living situation. One of Jacob's Korean friends offered to rent a room in their family apartment so he and Troy will stay in a big room and split the rent.

From the banquet