Tuesday In Seoul

(For those keeping track, I apologize for being a day late with this post.  Pretend I posted it Tuesday night and you read it Tuesday morning to get the full effect of the story and timing!)

Tuesday morning started out pretty relaxed.  I woke up early and decided to grab some coffee, this time trying the Dunkin Donuts I had sworn off in the previous post (I should have stuck with my gut as the coffee was terrible- but the caffeine was still appreciated).  Afterwards I went to the kitchen on our floor in the guest house to listen to music and catch up on some emails.  There I met a couple from St. Paul, MN who had just flown in the night before and were to meet their little boy a few hours later.  I had a nice visit and ironically we might go out with them (and another couple Tiff met weeks ago on an adoption board) Thursday for a "food tour"- should be fun.

Later in the morning we headed to the Samsung District in Seoul, which is close to where Donaldson Korea is located.  It is also the location of the Seoul World Trade Center and you can tell it is a very busy business district with many nice sites:

Under this area is a huge mall called the COEX, convention and exhibition center.  It is a very impressive maze of shops, restaurants, and even a large movie theater.  Below you will see we found a group of young children on a field trip- the little girls reminded us of Liv!

After wandering around a bit and grabbing some coffee and a snack, we headed back outside and over toward the Hyundai department store where we would meet TJ, a fellow Donaldson colleague.

You can tell it was fairly bright as we squinted to take this "self portrait" in front of a fountain near the WTC.

We met up with TJ and we went by taxi to the Donaldson office...someplace I would never be able to find otherwise.

I had arranged to meet with the team over here to catch the up on what is going on with my business unit and provide some insights as to how they might use our product line to grow their business here.  I also got to meet a few new people and put faces to names, which is always great.  Tiff was a trooper through the whole thing, and spent our meeting time reading a book she had brought with her.  Thanks go out to Terry Lee, the Managing Director of Korea, for Tiff's use of his office!  (And thanks Tiff for being so patient!)

The highlight of the day was heading to dinner with some of the Donaldson team.  We had a traditional Korean meal and everything we tried was excellent (especially the makgeolli!).  Thank you to Lisa, Christine, and TJ for being such great hosts and spending your personal time with us!

After a long subway ride home we were back in bed and anxiously awaiting our next meeting with Louis, which was at 9am Wednesday morning. 

Good morning to you all as we say good night and turn out the lights!