I arrived at Hae Jin's home last night. Had a wonderful breakfast including my favorite, seaweed soup, which Hae Jin’s mom knows I enjoy. Hae Jin and I spent the first part of the morning organizing our materials and presentations for our meetings today. Hae Jin has worked for our admissions office the past two summers and in fact when Yuna was calling to confirm our appointments earlier in the week everyone wanted to know if Hae Jin would be joining us because they enjoyed her so much. Virtually every consultant with whom we meet sang Hae Jin’s praises for doing such a wonderful job in her role as my translator and scheduler.We finished our day around 5:00 p.m. after visiting 3 agencies. We continue to hear from agency to agency how currency valuation has hurt the Korean economy significantly having a devastating impact on businesses, employment rate and in our case the number of families who can afford to send their student abroad. One agency which sent 200 students to private boarding students in 2008 will only send a total of 5 students to America in the coming year. This story is being told over and over again.
In the evening I had dinner with the families of one of current students. The meal was a 4.5 hour event of traditional Korean foods as well as traditional Korean music and dance. I arrived home at 10:30 p.m. Hae Jin and her parents had waited up for me and we enjoyed some brownies that Hae Jin had made and then we all talked to Dottie by way of Skype. We headed to bed at 1:00 a.m..
