How blessed we are when we open our homes to receive others in! My husband and I agreed to host two cadets from the Korea Military Academy (KMA) for dinner. At first we thought we should take them to a restaurant on post, but I decided that really wasn't the point. They should be invited into our American home for some real conversation and real cooking. So that led to the whole decision of what to serve. I finally chose to go traditional southern style. After all, I am from the deep south. We had spinach salad, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, honey-curry chicken (not so southern I know), and for dessert - pumpkin pie. I was worried they might not like it, it's very different than Korean food, but they seemed to enjoy it and complimented it, so I trust they did. They were wonderful guests to have and fortunately spoke very good English so we were able to converse without difficulty. It also helps to have two adorable little girls; Koreans of all ages and genders love children so they are always good ice breakers. Our youngest performed a couple of 'dance shows' for them so we were able to provide some excellent entertainment!
Like southern culture, but with much more diligence, a host/hostess gift is a requisite mannerism. Our guests brought my husband a KMA coin. (For those of you with no military experience, coins bear a unique meaning to the receiver.) They brought me a beautiful mirror designed in a traditional Korean inlay style.
Wine is apparently a traditional gift of sorts; we got numerous Korean alcohols when my husband was in command. We don't actually drink, so it's almost kind of sad. While all the others were beautifully packaged gift sets, the cadets brought us one with an interesting casing. It is a bottle within a bottle. It came with a whole explanatory paper. It's called pug-toki, or eastern vessel. It is a "scientifically manufactured storage ceramic pottery". You break it inside the netting with the provided mallet. I'm not sure we'll ever open it, just keep the cool packaging on display, but one day my curiosity to see the inside bottle may get the better of me. (The company won an international contest for this packaging.)
We immensely enjoyed their visit and will definitely be hosting cadets the next time around!
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