First weekend + Week 2's epic beginnings

OK!  This one is another "catch-up" blog of sorts.  In any case it's probably better to have fewer longer blog posts than multiple super short ones; I can't really promise that I'd have something worth reading every day so this way each post is worthy of anyone reading it!

The last blog post ended on a Friday afternoon -- a final post before the weekend.  The mission of the evening was to check out Seoul's purportedly epic nightlife -- and it was the right day to do it too.   On thelast Friday of every month a series of clubs in Hongdae have a special event called "club-night" where, for one cover fee, you can enter a truly extensive number of clubs.

Six EAPSI'ers met up at the Hongik University subway station at 9:30pm; we had some latecommers (Charlie's sad story for the day was that he had lost his wallet on the subway...  He had been busy making phone calls cancelling credit cards...) but promptly got started walking towards Hongdae.  We walked around for a while looking for the clubs; and eventually found them less than an hour later.  We got our wristbands and went inside to be greeted by strobe lights; lasers; and a pounding bass line...  However the crowd at 10pm is still not that large.  After a complimentary drink (comes with the wristband) we danced for a bit and then moved to an actual bar.

The bar was super chill -- the six of us split some bar food (nachos) as part of a Tequila set (which some of us were conviced was thoroughly watered down).  The Korean tradition for shots is to lift the class for cheers (which is ponounced "gaam-be") and someone screams "one shot!" at this point your task is to take the shot and drain it completely.  To prove that you've actually finished your drink you need to hold it over your head upside down and see if there are any drips!

The club scene was pretty intense -- they're super crowded which makes them kind of crazy.  Also, as someone pointed out to me later, in Korea there is a difference between a "club" and a "nightclub" -- people go to the former to just hang out and dance, and they to to the latter for a little romance.  Anyways, we roamed around Hongdae checking out several clubs (I think something like 8) and a couple bars and had a blast!  Here's a video from one of our favorite stops -- this one has a special appearance from Aurora, Charlie, Soshana, Kalon and Sue!  I would however suggest you turn down your speakers before pressing play...

When we exited the club to head back home (this was our last stop) there was something incredibly rare; at least from those of us from Delaware...  We caught the final stage of the sunrise!  It was a pretty amazing scene being part of the massive crows of twenty-somethings flowing towards and into the metro station.  You didn't even know where you were going at this point because the "crowd" had the same destination.  There was also an entire crew that had already begun to erase the remenants of the massive party that had just occured.

The subway ride was fairly calm; Aurora, Kalon and I were all going back to SNU and we quietly watched as the subway clientelle changed from young partiers to much older early risers.  It was an interesting combination of people that probably doesnt occur at many other times of day -- strikingly bi-modal. 

We got back (after leaving Auora at her stop) to the dorm around 6am when Kalon promptly passed out.  I stayed up for about half an hour checking e-mails and taking care of some things.  My roommate was still awake when I showed up!  For some reason he couldn't sleep that night -- but it made it really practical for me...  I slept until 1:30pm, when I woke up and got ready to go to a "Traditional Korean Performance."

The performance was pretty cool -- No cameras allowed of course, but here is a photo from the Gugak National Theter's tourism website:

We got to witness some traditional Korean music; a potetry session and some strange buddhist  dance among other things.  Most of them were a lot slower than I expected them to be, but enjoyable nonetheless.  It was however funny to see those of us that had spent the night clubbing trying to stay awake for the performance!

Afterwards Kalon and I went to go meet his sister Chryseis (who teaches english in Korea) and her boyfriend doo-hei for Pizza.  It was pretty good and we got to hang out for a while before heading back for more sleep.  Sunday we met up with Chryseis again for "American Breakfast" at a diner.  At first it was really good but...

It was actually terrible and morifying.  American food (it was genuine for sure, truly authentic...) is just super heavy in your stomach.  It's like my body was fighting a war to digest it.  My body did win eventually... But Kalon was not so lucky.  After "breakfast" (in quotations because we started around 2pm) we tried to go shopping for a bit, albeit unsucessfuly.  It was either because of the predicted Typhoon (which missed us) or because it was Sunday afternoon -- but most of the shops were closed.  In any case we got to take a nice stroll around Dondaemun and look at a bunch of closed shops.  We walked into a couple outfitters and my jaw dropped when I saw a 1,000,000\ price tag on a rain jacket...

They really like hiking here -- especially in comfort.  So by supply and demand, hiking gear is super expensive.  I am currently very thankful that my last sucessful purchase in the U.S. was a pair of boots!

On the way back we decided to stop by a movie theater.  We called up a couple of the other SNU EAPSI'ers and ended up meeting up with Jeff.  We had some time to kill before the movie so we went bought some ice cream and chilled for a while.  A this time I made a mobile mini-blog post of Kalon holding up a Korean movie poster for X-Men:

Re-posted so that the micro-post can be delted!  Having more time to kill we strolled into the arcade that is adjacent to the movie theater.  The prices are actually not rediculous!  Apparently here you can play video games in an arcade for a good while and still pay less than you would in America for a latte!

This is a video from inside the arcade -- I thought it was pretty cool.  The game is based on a Manga called "Initial D" (which is actually pretty good but updates too slowly... I havent read it in over a year.)  What is unique is that on the console; the shifter is on the left!  It took me a few games to get used to most of the car being on the left (you cant actually see the car on the screen, so if you drive like its an american car you ram it into the wall constantly on the left side...  Not good for winning a race...)

The movie was pretty good (X-Men First Class) except that I couldnt understand most of the German or ANY of the Russian; so some of the dialog was just missing...  Luckily I could understand the French dialog and Kalon could understand the Spanish dialog!

After the movie, the Subways were closed so we decided to just walk back.  We walked from the SNU Subway station (which is not actually on campus) to Naksungdae where we left Jeff (he has an appartment there for the summer) and then we walked towards the SNU rear gate (which is closer to the dorms than the front gate by SNU station).  On the way we stopped by a Korean BBQ place and had some Bulgogi -- which was phenomenal; esspecially after the previous meal (American Diner Breakfast)...

I turned in around 1am after getting some computer work done and talking to some people back home (skype etc.)  Monday was a typical work day until dinner.  For dinner we got delivery fried chicken and went to buy some pig legs (front legs).  First of all; pigs legs are really good.  I didn't take any pictures unfortunatley!  While we were out shopping for food; 태헹 (rom: Taehyung) decided that there should be one bottle of 막걸리 (Mak kal li).  I respnded that I only ever do challenges if someone is gonna match me!  After that I just figured that it was over and the topic wouldn't come up again...

However I got my name on a bottle at dinner; and subsequnetly put his on another one.  After 45 minutes had passed (the food was really good) Kalon got a bottle with his name on it.  Shortly thereafter Kalon started trying to convince people to go to 노리방  (noribang).   45 minutes after that we were at a bar downtown chilling with some Beers waiting for 태헹's girlfriend to show up and then actually made it to 노리방 (noribang) to sing our lungs out -- of course Wonjin showed up (he can't resist Noribang) and we had an amazing time.  I actually got a pretty sick video of Wonjin and Kalon singing "Don't Speak" by "No Doubt" but I already told them I wouldn't post it, so you guys are outta luck!

Tuesday (today) I got a lot of work done, and am now writing a blog.  I got a working solution in COMSOL and made a hot pressed fiberglass part that [looks] like it's properly infused!

I also got a cool bit of history about the SNU campus --  the Korean universities used to all be in the same part of the city; but after some time there was a government mandate that moved them all appart (due to some kind of protest) and SNU ended up being located on a former golf course!  That actually explains the really large elevation gradients around here (we're in the thick of some mountains) and some of the amazing scenery (which I promise I will take more photos of...)

Anyways, hopefully tonight I will actually manage to get the Picasa web album updated!  Leave some comments!  I need motivation to take more pictures!

Korean movie poster

Start of Research

The last time we met our traveling protagonist he was sitting in a cafe on the campus of Korea University.  The taste of coffee seemed to compliment the sweet jazz kicks flowing through the speakers.

Anyways; I contemplated writing the whole post in the third person; but after getting to the third or fourth paragraph I realized that there's just no way I could keep it up.  Here's a picture of the street that the Cafe is on:

Also they have some really awesome [looking] forms of two wheeled transportation.  This one's called the "MAD ASS"  -- which is a hillarious name; but here we go:

Which is probably something like 125cc but still looks like it has some serious punch to it.  The next noteable example is this cafe racer.  I think it's pretty sweet because it does a really good job of staying true to the spirit of the cafe racer style bike; but has a nice modern touch to it; on top of what looks like a fairly small engine (250cc?)

Anyways; shortly after the cafe, Charlie and I met back up with Andrea and Kalon -- who had by this point been hanging out with Tim (an alumni of the program who is pretty knowledgeable about the area.)  We talked to him for a while and he gave us suggestions for where to go to get some shopping done.  


The next stop was Dongdaemon (the shopping district) which was filled with little street shops like:

After this we headed back to KU (Korea University) land.  Kalon and Charlie went to the "Dollar Store" and in the meantime Andrea and went to get her passport and bought her a cell phone at the same little shop that we got Charlie's at.  The last part of the evening was the first reunion of the Seoulites -- the EAPSI'ers who live and near Seoul for the summer:

I know it's a terrible picture but it's all I've got -- the food ordering experience was pretty fun because no-one knew what anything meant :)  A lot of guessing happened; and for the most part we were pretty sucessful.  As you can tell by the picture -- I ate more fish!

For the rest of the evening we walked around for a while; stopped at an icecream shop and eventually ended up chilling at another bar for an hour and a half or so.  The bar food was some kind of cereal on the side; with a giant bowl filled with shaved ice, some kind of milky liquid and a ton of fruit.  After this we all headed back.

The next morning the first thing we did was meet up for more food:

We didn't really know what we were getting -- or how to read the menu...  It worked out great for the three of us; but Andrea (vegetarian) ended up just eating rice...  After lunch we went to go visit Charlie's future workplace and spent a lot of time just walking around the KU campus.  This went on until it was time for Kalon and I to pack up to head to our new dorm -- or so we thought.

After wheeling down our massive bags from the top of the hill (delawareans would call it a mountain) and carting them into the underground via several flights of stairs; just before getting on the metro we got a call that said we couldn't move into the dorms that night due to some kind of weird reason.  So naturally we had to take our stuff all the way back up to Charlie's.

The next morning we took a taxi to SNU from KU -- the fare ended up being about $20 -- super reasonable being that we had over 150 pounds of luggage and it was the middle of rush our.  And that's how our first day in lab began.

POSCO, Millenium Park, Gyunju Natl Museum

After the becoming typical hotel breakfast we went to go visit POSCO -- Pohang Steel Company.  POSCO is the third largest company in Korea; which is only natural because they supply all of the steel needed for everything else.  Unfortunately I can upload any photos, BUT I can tell a cool story.

POSCO like Hyundai is basically a small city just for itself.  There arent a whole lot of places that do the entire process of making steel -- starting with Iron Ore and Coke.  A lot of the steel used is actually recycled with the "mini mill" process -- used steel is melted down and reformed.  POCSCO however does the former!

Rather than going through the whole process I'll just talk about the parts of the tour that were the coolest.  We got to actually witness the steel going from a molten state to a giant coil ready for shipping.  The first time we went through the plant not much was going on -- at least... To the untrained eye.  To those who have studied the process however you could tell that they were changing out the rollers (anyone who took Dr. Fagerstrom's course will be able to talk about it).  The rollers that make the steel are actually under super-tight tolerances and need to be changed out every once and a while so that the produced steel doesn't have any defects.  So seeing them do the changeover was a rare event (for a tour) but very appreciated.

However, what the tourguide really wanted to show us was the molten hot steel being rolled into a coil -- just before the roll change process was finished we left the building and got back on the bus.  The tourguide announced that we'd be going to another part of the plant where they did the same process (even though this one was about to be put back online) -- however, we ended up just going full circle!

It's amazing how  much heat comes off of a slab of hot steel.  You can feel the burn on your face as it rolls by and the entire atmosphere because super heated and thick -- next large rolling spurts of water which "float" over a the steel billow out -- floating on a layer of steam.  The steel then goes through many many rollers; reducing many times in thickness and becoming much longer until it can be put into a coil, and later onto a truck or boat for transport.

After POSCO we grabbed a quick lunch and then went to the "Millennium Park" -- which is a amusement park for kids with a focus on learning about the Silla period (the first unified Korea)   At the park we got to see two performances -- one was a play about a hero that saved the kingdom a few times; and one was a demonstration of martial arts and training.  Here are some videos of the first performance -- you might want to mute your speakers before pressing play; there's a lot of "noise" (static)

Next we saw the martial artist demonstration which included sword fighting and horseback acrobatitcs, including things like firing a bow and arrow from a horse at a target or throwing a spear, vaulting, quick dissmount; cut off a guys head and remount.  It was pretty cool:

After the millennium park we went to the Gyungju National Museum -- which also exhibits some of the artifacts from the Silla period.  At this point, we were "all toured out" and super tired of museum...  Though I'm sure next week when we're all trapped in our labs we'll regret feeling that way...

After the museum we we're rejoined by the guy in charge of our program -- Mr. Kim.  He's currently writing his thesis in International Relations at Korea University while simultaneously working a full-time position at the NRF.  I'm sure he'll be a super-mega big-shot soon. We went to a park that is known as the "Resting Place" of the nobles of the Silla Kingdom.  Not to be confused with "Final Resting Place"  -- there we're no dead bodies.  We had gone there (us Americans...) expecting it to be a tomb...  Instead it was really quite nice:

Next we went to a Restaurant for our firs "Traditional Korean" meal -- which meant we'd be sitting on the floor with our shoes off at the table which was slightly elevated.  In super ancient Korea they actually used to use western-like chairs and tables, but as time progressed the moved to the floors to cope with the cold winter -- the stone floors were fire heated and especially with the paper walls the floor was a very warm place to be.  As such the beds and dinner table were all very close to the ground.

Anyways the dinner was absolutely delicious -- hopefully you can get some of the remenant taste off of these pictures:

 

When we got back to the hotel we were determined to go swimming in the pool (which closes at 9pm) but it was 8:30.  The back story is that the previous night we went down early to find out that it closed at 6:15pm because of some kind of vacation the recreational staff was taking -- and the night before we went down at 10pm to find out that it closed at 9pm.

Now this time - we should have had enough time for a 15 minute swim -- I went down to check and make sure it was open first and the woman at the desk told me that it was open for the next 20 minutes.  We went and got changed, and came back down but the woman at the desk bluntly refused to let us.  In the end she said we could spend 15 minutes swimming if we each gave her 8,000 won (bullcrap).  Later our friend Hui went in and she told him that he could only use the Sauna (said nothing about a price...)  When we tried to follow him she asked us for 6,000 won a head for the 5 remaining minutes.  Later we'd find out that our friend Misha had gone to the Sauna every day so far and paid nothing.  Racism?

In any case, the four of us that were super determined to not let our swim trunks travel dry decided to make our way to the lake behind the hotel.  It was Charlie, Aurora, Hui and myself -- walking out of the hotel in bathing suits and slipper -- I was even wearing the hotel bathrobe over my suit!  It was a pretty interesting sight.  We found a way to get down to the side of the lake where there were these large blue buoy's and a strange looking diving board type thing; we then had a discussion with ourselves asking whether or not swimming in the lake was actually legal (we had seem some Korean's swimming a bit earlier).

Just in time to ask that question we heard the siren go off.

We turned around almost all of us saying some variation of "Let's get the **** outta here!!"  and then...

We heard some Korean men laughing really hard -- and looked up to see a couple buisness men who were laughing and pointing to their cell phone (which had sounded the siren) and telling us that swimming was ok!

And man was it a good swim.

When we got back to the rooms; the evening partying had already begun -- I had enough time take a shower and swap clothes before busting out some soju and snacks, some intense chilling and then another trip to club Havana!

The next; and last day consisted of getting on the bus and driving back to seoul.

This photo is actually from a different day; but it tells the same story.  Just pretend that we have already loaded all our massive pieces of luggage into the bus and that we all have decent sized back-packs.

Anyways, on the way to Seoul we got to watch a Bollywood movie that was in Hindi with Hangul subtitles -- every once and a while there'd be a phrase in English; but the acting was so good you didn't even need to understand.  The film was called "My name is Khan" and was absolutely phenomenal -- if you can get an English subbed version you should watch it!

Just before getting off the bus it was decided that we'd head over to Charlie's place for the night (our dorm isn't ready until Sunday evening) and since Andrea was going the same way we figured we'd just take a pair of cabs.  It took longer than expected for the cabs to arrive and Andrea and Kalon got in the first one -- so Charlie and I decided to venture underground and take the metro.

We managed to buy rechargeable RFID metro passes and put 10,000 won on it each; the first metro was quite crowded; but we managed to get on without getting in anyones way and slid into the corner so we could wait out the 16 stops the metro had to wait before our changeover.  The line 2 (the metro we were on) is one of the main lines in Seoul and goes in a giant circle around the city.  As we approached our changeover the car we were in became more and more comfortable and we made the changeover with relative ease -- it's pretty cool because every stop has a number associated with it; which makes it super easy to make sure you get where you want to be.

After the changeover we boarded another metro and got off at Korea University.  After this we walked in a direction that we thought might be good for trying to find Charlies place (CJ house) and I stopped and asked some students for a pointer -- they said "Go up the hill and ask another man"; so we did.  Up the hill we ran into two "foreigners" who pointed us in another direction -- they said to go through the buildings and then walk up the painfully steep looking hill.  It wasn't until we made it up to the top of that hill that we found out that it was the wrong hill.  We talked to a Korean student with perfect English who walked us down the hill and then pointed us up another (not as steep; but still steep) hill.  Then we followed an older Korean man up that hill until he pointed out the building to us.

Charlie talked to the woman at the front desk who had no idea where he was supposed to stay -- she said to wait for the guys in his lab group to arrive.  When they did there was another 15 minutes of discussion before it was decided that we were supposed to be in an adjacent building!!  After that the rest was pretty easy.  We got to Charlie's apartment, and then he handed me his card and key and went off to have the "Welcome Dinner" with his future lab-mates and advisor.  I on the other hand walked over to the G25 convenience store to buy a sandwich and ramen, sat on Charlie's balcony and wrote the blog post that I posted last night.

Re-uniting with Andrea and Kalon turned out to be fairly hopeless; and still has yet to happen -- when Charlie got back we just passed out.  This morning we got breakfast at a small shop and Charlie bought a cell phone -- the cell phone buying was a fairly painless process with the quick invention of a working pidgin and usage of math (universal language) and a brief stint of google translate -- Korean's actually use qwerty keyboards that have a button which toggle between latin script and hangul.

Next we went to a cafe (which plays some awesome jazz kicks) and got some coffee -- they don't have de-caf so I'll be really wired in a bit.  Charlie's phone had a password on it so he had to run back to get another one while leaving all his "devices" here to charge.  He just got back and that's about it!

Alright; well I hope these blog posts aren't tooooo long winded!  But there's a lot to write about!  I'm sure they'll get shorter come Monday or so when I spend most of my time working in the lab and less of my time on these random micro-adventure excursions through the thick wilderness of urban seoul.  The next mission is to track down Kalon and Andrea and hope that they're both the way we left them.  (Unless of course they've leveled up...)

Hyundai, Nuclear Power, Buddhist Temple

When we last met I was staring at a very strange toilet in a new hotel...  Now I am about 30 minutes from leaving this hotel so I will try to quickly describe some of the things that have happened since then.

The first thing I must attempt to illustrate is that this country is magnificently beautiful.  The mountains go on forever into the horizon or until they meet up with the ocean and and they are scattered with both the traditional and modern buildings. 

The Hyundai hotel is pretty nice; but I'll get back to that later.  The first thing on the agenda for Wednesday

 was a visit to "Hydunai Heavy industries."  Below you can see a photo that I took before we we're told that we were no longer allowed to take photos:

 

Also in right by the plant you can something else quite interesting:

Then food:

Next, we visited one of Korea's many Nuclear Power Stations.  After getting the low-down on everything we wanted to know about the power station, we got taken to a nuclear power plant simulation control room:

 

The design of the nuclear power plant uses a three stage system where the rods have a separate heating loop and a heat exchanger is used before transporting energy out of the containment facility.  After this there is another heat exchanger that uses ocean water as a heat sink.  This makes the design a little less efficient; however, it makes it a lot safer because everything can be really well contained -- especially in case of emergencies.

Now -- in America nuclear power stations are characterized by large cooling towers.  This is because they use evaporative cooling in order to achieve high enough cooling rates to produce energy.  The Korean engineers wanted to prove that raising the temperature of the sea water before re injection by a few degrees was NOT damaging to the wildlife and so they built this:

Which uses the discharge water for a fish farm -- and simultaneously proving that the discharge does not harm the fish.  (I'm not saying I agree with them -- there are a lot more variables in the mix than just the fish...  But that is what I saw.)  There are (will be) some photos of the fish on the Picasa Web Album.

Next, we once again spent a great deal of time bussing -- enough to thorogouly enjoy some more beautiful country side scenery.  Picasa has the full set but here's a prime example:

The next stop was another Buddhist temple.  This one is in the mountains and was quite serene (aside from all the tourists)  We also got a chance to meet some monks!  Someone (not me) has a photo of me with the monks, but I have yet to attempt the tracking down of the photo.  Instead, here is a good snapshot of the inner court and main temple:

And of within the main temple -- taken from outside of course (no photography is allowed from within.)

Now at these temples, one of the ways that they fundraise is by getting tourists to sign roof-tiles.  These are stone tiles that will (one day) be used to make repairs around the temple.  Our group (of 20 NSF/NRF EAPSI students) made the donation to sign one:

And next:  Korean BBQ.  It's super delicious -- it's very rare to get meat that tender and juicy.  Basically you grab some of the lettuce and add the cooked beef to it and sprinkle with other ingredients in a taco-like fashion, then roll it up and eat!

On the way back to the hotel we stopped by a convenience store to get some party snacks; and then had a little party in the hotel room.  Then we headed down to "Club Havana" (which was IN the hotel) and danced for a few hours.  Now here's the thing; the club was really really dead -- but when you're in a group of 20 people; you basically have a portable party that you can bring anywhere you want!  And the hotel DJ was actually pretty good!

For archival's sake I will post the next day in a separate post.  This one is long enough already!

Seoul; and then Gyungju

So it's been longer than typical since I've updated, so I have a bit of catching up to do...

The first day of orientation was probably fairly similar to any first day of orientation for any program.  We ate breakfast, tracked down an ironing board and iron (always necessary unfortunately).  We then had a bit of free time before departing for lunch.  We boarded our tour bus -- which would be our method of transportation for all the days to come:

The lunch was a Korean buffet, I'm still getting used to not knowing what anything I'm eating is called; but hopefully I'll gain the ability to do that soon. 

After lunch buffet we went to the NRF office for orientation; which consisted of a talk from the head of the NRF, and then a talk from some alumni of the program who had managed to find themselves back in Korea.  After this we had a several hour long language training program in order to get a jump start on learning Hangul and Korean.

The business day came to a close with dinner at a place called "Bugagi Brothers" -- which served bulgagi.  It's a sort of steamed beef, and it's delicious.  I have a terrible picture from dinner which was taken to showcase the abnormally large size of the beer bottles they gave us:

After dinner we returned to the hotel for just long enough to catch our breaths.  Turning on the TV, there are couple things you can be surpised about.  The first:

And then perhaps even more interesting:

Afterwards I finally got to meet up with Kalon again -- just in time to head out for Nori Bang.  Nori means "song" and bang means "room"; and song-room means karaoke in a private rented room -- which is a big deal in Korea.  It was a lot of fun -- there are pictures and videos floating around; but I'm not sure I'll be posting those!

After Nori-bang a few of us hit up the batting cages again before turning in for the night.  This time I've got a picture:

Today was the first day of touring; we got up fairly early so that we could be on the bus by 8:30am so we could check out of the hotel and get on the mystical tour bus.  The first stop was Seoul N-Tower which is on a mountain on the south side of old-seoul making the observatory an effective 400m about the city floor.  The view was really amazing; however because of the fog I couldn't see as far as I had hoped:

We had lunch in the observatory -- another buffet with a main dish served.  Mine was a sort of grilled chicken; very good, but very spicy.  They also had whole shrimp, jellyfish soup and amazing rice cakes.  At the base of the tower you see something fairly unique to it.  The surrounding area is filled with locks attached to notes -- "lovers" will write a note, attach it to a lock, hook it up and throw away the key.  So you get areas like these:

Our next stop was the Korean National Museum; where we were able to spend an hour cruising through a couple thousand years of Korean history.  For brevity, I wont upload any pictures here; but they will be on the picasa album.  We got back on the bus to head towards Gyungju.  For dinner we stopped by a roadside restraunt by the river.  The veiw was amazing:

Dinner was also pretty good; I got the fish, below is a picture of it in it's semi-devoured glory:

Lastly, an awkward angle shot of the super fancy toilet in the hotel:

Hopefully there will be more tomorrow!

Travel Time + First real night in Seoul

After waking up fairly late, I spent some time reading some manhwa (Korean manga) and after that ironing some dress clothes (which later I found out I wouldn't need until tomorrow) but all of that "hard work" managed to get me pretty hungry; so before catching the train Lauren and I headed out for my first taste of the delicacy that is "Korean McDonalds"  -- Think double decker cheeseburger, but the beef is teryaki.  I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty good; granted, the meat still seemed kind of fake and cardboard-like in texture, but -- it tasted better.  The second distinct advantage was that it did NOT make me feel sick afterwards like it does back home. 

There it is!

After this I took a taxi cab to "Busan Yuk" (Yuk = Station) and bought a ticket for the KTX to Seoul.  Unfortunatley for me, there were no more economy seats left, so all that was left was standing room.  (I later found out that first class -- which was available -- was only $10 more :(   )

That was fine though; whatever.  I got to witness the awesomness that is ultra-mini gatorade cans:

 

After the train ride I hopped onto the Seoul metro and within a l few stops made it to "Seoul National University of Educaation" which was close enough to the Provista Hotel where I was headed.  There, I met up with a few of the other EAPSI members and had some dinner after dropping my bags off at the room.   Ken (friend from EAPSI Alumni event), Steve and I went out to see if we could get a power adapter (Ken really needed one) and in the meantime realized that they had a $1 batting cage!  Now, up until today I've never used a batting cage, and I didn't today either -- until after we had enjoyed a couple beers at a local bar.  Ken went home and we went to a Family mart to get som Soju (Korean Drink, quite tasty) and then headed across the street from the hotel to the batting cages.  We had a good time and then headed back to the hotel for a peaceful evening.

Also, while admitting it is fairly embarrassing; the car in the previous post was a Ferrari, not a Lamborghini.

Japanese noodle

Last night we went to a ramen place, it was the first time I went to a
restaurant and didn't know what I was ordering because the entire menu was in hangul.

So the solution was to just pick something and hope it worked!  And it did!

Turned out to be rice with a fried egg on top, surrounded by japanese curry and some breaded and fried shrimp.

Unfortunately, I neglected to take pictures...   So instead, here's another (I presume) boy-band k-pop picture for my sisters :)  for some reason on the mobile app the picture comes out horizontal though.... 

The Beach; Korean Barbecue; Buddhist Water Temple; and more Beach!

Ok, so a lot has happened since the last post (yesterday morning?)  So I will attempt to make it short, sweet, and to the point with lots of pictures!

Yesterday evening began with a trip to get some Korean BBQ; which included both beef and chicken, with some onions, noodles and lettuce all with amazing seasoning.  A couple other English teachers from Lauren's school joined us -- in the photo you can see Dylan and Sakura.

After this Dylan left, because he had an early train to catch the next evening for a Ultimate Frisbee game somewhere and we walked off to the beach.  On the way we stopped by an Irish pub that has a predominantly foriegner clientele and had some cider.  The beach was pretty cool at night; we got to see some along the boardwalk with some terrifying engrish and take a couple neat photos:

After which we agreed to meet up in the morning, and went home.  The morning was a trip to the Buddhist Water temple.  It's the only Buddhist temple in Korea which is by the ocean so it's really unique and beautiful.  I'll not post too many photos for brevity, but they'll be view-able on the Picasa Album.

First off, the view was amazing; above is a panorama of the temple before you got to it -- if you look at the statue on the top point of the hill, that is where the second panorama (below) is taken from.

There were some really cool things at the temple; like a giant gold Buddah statue:

The hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil dolls:

The lucky pigs:

A strange statue of a dragon, surrounded by little porcelain dolls (there was even one in it's mouth sitting on it's tongue):

And of course; the main prayer temple itself:

It was a pretty neat experience.  After the water temple we went to a nearby beach.  Since I happened to have my suit in my book bag I got to do a bit of swimming.  The water was probably as cold as it was a few weeks ago in long beach; but I suppose that's to be expected -- you know, since it's the same ocean and all (just kidding)

Above is the water side and below is the boardwalk side.  You can see a bunch of people wearing wet suits and riding surfboards (I say riding because for the most part no-one was actually surfing...)  Below all you see is a couple ghosts due to the nature of making a panoramic photograph without a fisheye or wide-angle lens.  

During the taxi ride back from the beach I saw something pretty interesting:
 

Yep.   A Lambo in Busan!  Now for a quick word about the Taxi's.  There very quick, relatively cheap and every driver is unique.  I have to admit it is a bit discomforting when you're driver is watching a Korean drama on his little LCD screen, however -- he was still an excellent driver (last night).  The taxi driver with a retro steering wheel spinner knob was pretty cool and this guy (above) was really quick.  In any case, they have the whole "transportation without needing a car" thing pretty down pack here.

Next, i'll upload some photos to Picasa, and then try to study some Hangul before going for another walk around town.  Till next time!