Day 10: Mon 11 Sep - Seoul

An early breakfast to be at the COEX for the First-timers meeting.  Steve and I were there on time and had difficulty finding our buddies.  FIP were trying a new First-timer program this year; each new person (a buddy) is teamed up with a mentor (a Buddy).  However, what they failed to do was buddy-up section mentors with section first-timers.  So, both Steve and I had people from other than MEPS and it was difficult as we did not know who they should talk to in the other sections.  When we volunteered to be the Buddy, we assumed we would be buddy’d with a MEPS first-timer; perhaps it makes too much sense to do it this way? Anyway, we had a lot more enquiries about MEPS this year than we did last year and only one of them was a buddy! We shall be providing our constructive feedback soon.

After the meeting, I returned to the hotel to prepare information/communications for the Meet and Greet.  I planned on doing a lot of other stuff as well, however, was tied down for most of the day answering nebulous questions about the evening to come. Lunch was at Maccas again with Sylvain who was off to the COEX for the other half of the Council meeting. 

We left the hotel at 6pm for the Army Club where the Meet and Greet was held.  There were 12 people leaving from the Ibis and I had organised a number of taxis to transport us there.  We had a Jumbo taxi that took six, but we couldn’t get another. So, we had to take two normal taxis between the leftovers.  Although the Jumbo taxi left first, it arrived last!  Directions must have gotten lost in translation, even though they were in Korean?!  We were ushered into the Army Club, which we could only equate to the Officers Mess, by Lt Park, a pharmacist with the Korean Air Force, and he just happened to be the only military person present and was dressed in t-shirt and track pants, whilst we were in smart casual!!  It was also more of a dinner than a meet and greet with finger food and mingling to meet and greet.  Anyway, we all had a good night and were soon on our way back to the hotel.  It was a late night.

Régis, Annie, Edgar, Piotr, Steve, Ina, Nicole, Laurence, Mel

Angie, Silke, Arne, Frederik, Peter, Bill

Ulf, Tom, Pat, Nita, Sam, Richard, Sylvain, Judith

Petra, Ann, John, Jane, Matthias, Mohammed







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