Pictures

By the way, pictures are up on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2135385&id=3114116&l=e9adedad87

June 2nd & 3rd

So today's theme for lectures and tours was hydrogen fuel cells. This morning, we received 3 talks from 3 different Yonsei professors on 3 types of fuel cells and the challenges each faces. After that, we got to test drive the experimental fuel cell vehicle Yonsei has. It's surprisingly silent, and runs 100% on hydrogen fuel (in gas form). There is a filling station on campus that they use. I actually had the chance to drive it, and it was a heck of a lot of fun - too bad I don't have $500k to blow on a car.

Yesterday, Dr. Biswas and Dr. Chen gave their talks on aerosols and environmental health, respectively. We also took a couple lab tours and had lunch with a number of Yonsei students. One of them recommended his favorite bar to me, which is right near Yonsei, and so that night when everyone else went to the casino, I decided to check it out. The bar itself was a single, small room, probably about 350 square feet, with old wood floors and walls. I initially sat down in a corner booth, but two of the guys (who were regulars) in the bar invited me to their table. One of them was a Yonsei professor, Dr. Sue, who spoke excellent English and has apparently been to the States a number of times. The other man there, who was a classmate of the professor, was Mr. Park. As we talked about where I was from and what I was doing in Korea, 4 Yonsei students came into the bar, a couple of whom were apparently students of Dr. Sue. Subsequently, Dr. Sue invited them over to join us, which they did, and I ended up spending the rest of the night talking with them and a couple other students who came in later. Definitely one of the best, if not THE best, nights I've had in a long time.

May 29 to June 1

So the last 2 days we’ve spent doing all day tours, 9am to 9pm (which explains my lack of communication). On Friday, we had a half day tour to the Unification Observation Tower and, before that, lunch with the professors at Yonsei we will be working with. The observation tower we visited sat on top of a hill overlooking the The drive was about an hour long, and for 95% of the drive, a forest of 15-25 story buildings, mostly apartments, stood at either side of the road. It’s similar to driving out of a city in the USA and going through tons of suburbs full of individual houses, except replace all those houses with apartments. We also drove along a river that flows through North Korea, which was lined with barbed-wire fence on either side in case of an amphibious attack from North Korea. At the observation tower itself, we watched a couple videos there and walked through a couple rooms that show cased North Korean art, goods, people, etc, but the most astounding part I thought was looking directly south to SK and seeing a continuous sea of apartments, and then looking north and seeing nothing but rice paddies. The exhibits and videos in the museum definitely advocated for unification, although whether this is the national sentiment I’m not quite sure.

From the observation tower, we headed to a theme parks of sorts. We weren’t there for very long, and I’m not quite sure why exactly we went there, but it was fun nonetheless. From there, we headed to dinner, where I had the blandest vegetable porridge ever as everyone else ate a famous chicken stew that the President of South Korea apparently loves, as does everyone else. On the way, we passed a TON of police buses and riot police – the memorial service for the president was that Friday, and a bunch of protests apparently occurred that day. That night, we went out near Sinchon Station, which is a popular street near Yonsei full of restaurants, bars, clubs, and computer stores. All in all, the area was great.

On Saturday, we started out the day by visiting a reconstructed folk village about 45 minutes outside of Seoul that showcased the types of housing and lifestyles of Koreans in the North and South, from peasants to kings. It appeared and felt very authentic, which was awesome. Koreans apparently used rice straw in everything, including their roofs – to overcome water leakage, they simply use layer upon layer of them… the roofs were about 2 feet thick. The vegetation was also stunning, and they had some nice gardens there. Lunch was bibimbap… yeah, it was awesome. From the folk village, we headed to Ewha Women’s University, which is right across from Yonsei. Like Yonsei, the campus was absolutely huge with tons of trees and green space. The buildings are also similar – some extremely new buildings mixed with older buildings (Charlie, who came with us, even found the building he was stationed in during the Korean War!). After Ewha was a boat tour on the Han River, which runs right through Seoul. This ride provided us with some great views of the city, and it was a nice, relaxing hour. After the boat came dinner at a traditional place (no shoes!), which was excellent, especially the kimchi. Last, but not least, we headed to Seoul Tower, which sits on top of a hill in Seoul and provides a view of the entire city. From that high, Seoul just looks like a sea of lights – it really puts things into perspective just how big the city is. There also seem to be about 5 downtowns – each time I thought I found the biggest cluster of buildings, I spotted another area. The coolest part of the tower, though, was the restroom. The urinals and sink look out over the city… if I wrote a bathroom book, this would be a top 5.

Sunday featured a tour of the National Museum and National War Memorial, both of which were extremely well done. The national museum had a lot of really cool historical tidbits from various eras, from Buddhas to Paleolithic drawings. After the museums, we went to a huge market that’s housed in a new, fancy building that looks like a giant Macy’s, but each floor is actually divided into separate stores where you can haggle prices. After the market, we caught a showing of Nanta, which was essentially the Korean remix of Blue Man Group – very entertaining. Lunch was a restaurant where you get a pot of boiling water (or fish stock) and you dip fresh vegetables in it to cook them, them dip them in sauces and eat them. Korean fondue, I guess… great veggies! Dinner was a buffet, which was packed but had some great options.

Finally, lectures began today. This morning, we saw some presentations from other Yonsei students on projects we’ve been working with and got to speak with them. The girl I talked to was great… she had a slight British accent which, according to her, was due to her love for Harry Potter movies. After the presentations, we got two talks from Yonsei professors on 1) nanowires and 2) a consortium of universities studying nanotechnology applied to biological systems/processes. In the afternoon, we took a campus tour, which was neat, and then got a tour of their new library, which was amazing. Apparently, all the students here have RFID badges which they use to swipe in and out of the library, check out books, reserve seats, and leave messages for each other on giant touchscreen TVs in the library lobby. The library was also full of windows and vegetation, and had lots of area for single study, group meetings, multimedia viewing (a whole floor for watching DVDs!), etc.