After the temple stay and a few extra stops, we arrived at our new hotel in Pohang. I moved in, and my room was bigger, and I was still living by myself with no roommate. I soon left with some friends to get some Korean fried chicken because I was starved for meat after the vegan temple stay.
With a good night’s rest, I was very excited for an eventful day, and it sure was at POSTECH, a Korean research college. POSTECH is a smaller new college in Pohang. It is 3 times the size of the University of Pittsburgh, and it only has around 6,000 students, but it is a very developed and great school. A graduate student who studied abroad at Pitt 4 times gave a presentation of his thoughts on Pittsburgh and how it differs from POSTECH. Another student at POSTECH is studying abroad at Pitt for her junior year fall semester. Because of these students, POSTECH went all out to welcome us and wanted to have a great connection to Pittsburgh.
After a few more presentations and walking around, we met up with some more students who were part of the international relations club, where we ate with them at an esports collesium. They spoke broken English, but it was so much fun talking to them and getting their opinions from school to sports, games to daily life.
After lunch, we were escorted to the electrical engineering building, where we had another presentation the ntour of some labs. We first toured some small labs, such as radio frequency and embedded circuits, but more interestingly, I got to see a work-in-progress quantum computer. I don’t know how a quantum computer works, but it was interesting to see them inform me since they cost around 3 million USD a piece.
After seeing the quantum computer, we were escorted to see their next big system, a particle accelerator. There are only a few particle accelerators in the world; it’s crazy that I was able to see one in person. Moreover, they are usually very hard to get into and are usually kept secret away from the public eye.
A particle accelerator, in short, accelerators a electron or a beam of electrons to around the speed of light. When electrons are moving this fast scientist and engineers can use them in different ways for a lot of different research.
The main reason for this tour was to spread awareness on studying abroad for a semester at POSTECH, and to be honest, it is a possibility that I would study in Korea my spring semester of the sophomore year. POSTECH was so welcoming, and I had a lot of fun and interest in the presentations in the labs.
After we went back to the hotel, I went out in a large group to the beach. I had a great dinner and then walked along the beach at night until curfew. The water and the city at night were so beautiful, and it was so peaceful and quiet. Korea is so beautiful, and I am a little sad I only have a few move days left until I leave.
