Today was a long day- we left the hotel at 7:30 am and didn’t get back until 10:20 at night. And I thought the first day was packed. The first thing we did was go on a tour of an Eaton factory. Eaton is a company that manufactures car parts like fuel gauges, and the factory there is one of the safest and most efficient of the worldwide Eaton company. We wore safety googles and steel-toed shoe covers to tour the factory floor. The factory consists of lots of small, almost entirely automated assembly stations and a supply warehouse. The assembly lines are encased in safety plexiglass and often have robotic arms called co-bots doing parts of the assembly like transferring pieces from one station to another. Everything was incredibly safe- even the forklifts had warning lights and alarms if they were lifted too high.

After the tour, we ate lunch at a Korean barbecue place, which was delicious. In Korea, the water served at meals isn’t pure water but cold barley tea, which gives it a light grainy aftertaste. When we were done with lunch, we went a live fish market and saw the many live fish available for purchase, from sea worms to whole tuna! We even ate live octopus, which squirmed in my mouth as I chewed it. It didn’t taste like anything, though.

At that point it was about 3, and we went to the Hyundai department store, which is a very fancy 8 floor mall (including two floors of basement). There’s even an indoor garden on the top. We all had two hours to explore the mall, and I think we collectively covered almost every store.

Finally, we arrived at the baseball stadium to watch a game between two of Seoul’s baseball teams, the Bears and the Heroes. The Heroes were the home team, and we were sat in their section, so we cheered for them for the game. The fans and the cheerleaders for both sides were very enthusiastic, and there wasn’t a single moment in the game where a cheer wasn’t going on. I’m surprised the batters and pitchers can even concentrate on the game when there’s a new cheer every 2 minutes. The Heroes were beaten badly, sadly, but it was still a fun game to watch.

Until next time!