Springville World Folkfest - Day 1

We had the unique and wonderful opportunity to host foreigners for the Springville World Folkfest for the week of July 27 - Aug 2. It was an amazing experience. I have heard about the Folkfest from advertising for years, but never attended. Earlier this summer Alisha told me that she was going to be a host for Belgium. She had heard about the opportunity from Trudy whom she sits next to in a choral group she belongs to in Payson. She chose Belgium because her sister in law Caryn served a mission to the area several years ago, and spoke the language, and so if there was a language barrier Alisha would have someone to help translate. Alisha hosted Annalynne (not sure of the spelling)and her boyfriend David. I decided it would be a fun experience and signed up to host Koreans. Of the countries I could choose from: Korea, Poland, Hungary, Belgium, Mexico and China, I chose Korea because I did not know anyone that spoke any of the other languages except Mexico and Korea. I figured there would be tons of people who spoke Spanish that would want to host Mexico and since I have a friend that is from Korea (Yeong-mi) I knew she would help me through any language barriers.

Monday, July 27
5:45 pm pick up 3 Korean 13 year olds: Se Hyun Go(pronounced Say Hyun Go), Hey ui Kim (pronounced Hay Chi Kim), and Hye Jin Lee (prounced Hay ghin Lee).

I have to admit at first I was terrified. I spoke no Korean and I was in my car with 3 girls that spoke no English. Yeong-mi had suggested I take them to the Korean market and let them pick out some food they would like to eat. I took them to First Oriental Market in Orem and spoke with the cashier there and told her what I wanted to do and asked her to translate to the girls. After she spoke to them they all stared at each other without speaking, looking dumbfounded, so I called Yeong-mi and asked for HELP!!!!! She spoke to the cashier and the cashier went around the store picking out things for the girls: Korean ramen, Kimchi, and Korean type potato chips. A HUGE THANK YOU TO YEONG-MI FOR HELPING DURING THE FIRST 2 DAYS!

When I got home Dennis helped bring in their luggage and then we showed them around the house and where they would sleep. Dennis is so much better than I at these sort of things. I clam up when I am in an unfamiliar settings and this was no difference. I didn't know how to communicate so I spoke very little. Thank goodness Dennis is not like that. I asked them if they were hungry and they said no. It was 7:30 at night by this time and I really thought they should be hungry as they had been on airplanes for the past 16 hours. Again, I called Yeong-mi and asked for her to talk to the girls. She said they usually eat around 8:30 pm so to ask them again later. For me the first night was so scary, but it didn't bother Dennis at all. Finally around 8:30 I asked again, and this time they were hungry. I did not know what to fix them so I put a variety of food out and let them choose. I had stew, tortillas, lettuce salad, cut up veggies, watermelon, plums and orange soda. They ate stew, tortillas, watermelon, plums and drank the soda. Se Hyun ate a little lettuce salad, but would not eat ranch dressing (I put out every bottle of dressing I had), she had lemon, herb vinaigrette. After dishes we took pictures and off to bed for everyone.

Hye Jin Lee, Se Hyun Go, Hye ui Kim

Really bummed.....lesson learned, I hope!?!

Our external hard drive and wireless router crashed last week. We had a few power surges go through our house (not sure why, probably power related, as it was cloudy and rainy) and that is the only thing we can figure caused both items to fail. I just want to cry. I did take the hard drive to our computer repair shop and they got about 1/2 of it copied before it totally died on them. I should be grateful they were able to recover that much, because it was the really important stuff. But they were not able to recover our pictures (and yes, they are very important, just not as much so as my budget). We had gotten really complacent the last few years, and just a few months ago we talked to a friend about what is the best way to back up our stuff so this sort of thing didn't happen. He said to get another hard drive and just copy everything once a week. He actually has 3 hard drives and alternates saving to 2 of them. We thought that was a great idea, and had an extra hard drive sitting around, so we started backing up our "main" hard drive, but somehow we got lax, and didn't get much backed up. SO STUPID OF US:(

I need to apologize that these next few posts are out of order. I explain in a later post why.

This cool tree thing was in the picnic area and we had to pass it every time we left or camp. We all wanted a picture of it, so on the last day we stopped and got some.

 

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On top of the world

It must have been easier to run up a mountain than carry a child in a pack up a trail...notice the smiles on their faces. Or maybe that is just exhilaration from completing the 4.5 miles up before the 4.5 miles back down.

 

 

 

 

Running to the top of Navajo Knobs

Amanda, Steve and Dennis decide to RUN a 9 mile strenuous hike in Capital Reef.

 

 

 

 

I apologize ahead of time that there will be separate posts of this run, but it is the only way I know to get the pictures out of Picasa (Dennis had is camera on a weird setting and the pictures wouldn't download normal and Picasa was the only format they would download into).