It was a good day in Pohang. I slept horribly last night, clearly feeling the drain from constant activities. I love this trip, but there is basically no time to just chill and rest a little. I feel I constantly need to do something during free time rather than just rest. My sleep schedule here has gradually gotten worse and worse, until now, I barely get 6 hours, which is very little for me, who usually gets upwards of 9 hours. But I can’t complain because I got to go to Korea. I woke up late for breakfast, but luckily, I was given rice cakes to finish, and breakfast was also packed up late, so I was able to grab some sausages in a napkin.

Also, I’ve become aware of some slander from a certain someone who also happens to be our dear leader of group C. This person has accused me of lying about the circumstances of the 2 quarters I owe them after they bought me Ponix. Of course, I want to be even with everyone. People like another certain person in my group, who has a last name that is the same as a letter (maybe the one in our group name), owe a lot of money and may have their kneecaps broken by the debt collectors. I would rather pay all my debts, so these 2 quarters really affect me personally, academically, professionally, and more. Ultimately, they hate me because they ain’t me.

We checked out of the hotel and headed out to Hyundai. We took the bus over to Ulsan (saw the gorilla in the way) and got to the Hyundai Heritage Center to start. For lunch, we were given a lunchbox by Authentica, which had both spicy pork and bulgogi along with a lot more food, which ended up being very filling. We went over to a cafe to eat our lunchbox, and I ordered a mango smoobella, which is an iced smoothie, after finishing (most of) my food.

As the girls started going to the bathroom, ready to go to the meetup spot, we became aware of a certain creep who was chasing the girls around. The guy was in a tan shirt with some sunglasses on. I walked over to the bathroom with Emma, looking for Jacque. Outside the bathroom, we learned from Anshi, Emily, and Maddie about the creep and how he chased them until they went to the bathroom. Apparently, he also followed Emma until she made it back to the others in the cafe. We formed a big group and quickly ran into Chris. Chris chaperoned us outside, but unfortunately, the creep was outside there talking with Dr. Yun. Despite being in a large group with 2 dudes, the guy still walked up to us and continued following us. We all packed into the bus to keep everyone safe. This whole experience was insane, and we really should’ve jumped him when we saw him outside the bus, trying to follow another woman.

After the terrible experience with the man, we all packed into the exhibit at the Hyundai Heritage Center to begin our tour. We watched a video about the overview of the plant, and then walked through the history of Hyundai. I enjoyed this museum-type tour a lot as it didn’t overstay its welcome. We learned about how Hyundai first had a partnership with Ford and developed their own model, the PONY, which had the rear-view mirrors on the hood. They also made an EV prototype as early as 1991, which had the battery under the hood rather than under the car or in the back.

We boarded the bus again to get to the plant. We did a walking tour above the plant. This time around, we were given earpieces as the plant had way too much noise. While there wasn’t much in the way of photos, I did thoroughly enjoy the tour, but I feel that the heat from the steel made the Posco tour much more interesting. I have experience with car assembly lines from background experience, but I’ve never seen such a huge blast furnace before in my life. We ended the tour with a look at the port, where these huge freighters were docked, and workers loaded cars by driving them up. When done, they took a bus back out and repeated the process.

When done, we headed towards the Ulsan station to take the KTX train. We stopped by a Starbucks and a doughnut place to wait for the train tickets. I headed over to the doughnut place with Kali, Ben, and Emily, along with Chris^2 and Victor, with Rohit coming in a little later. I bought a Nutella-filled glazed doughnut, and it was phenomenal. I ate it very quickly before heading to a park area with Rohit. The area was slightly in disrepair, but was supposed to be a green area that would also help absorb rainwater with a bunch of dirt and plants rather than concrete, which wouldn’t help much. Rohit stayed there while I went over to the convenience store to meet up with the others. I bought an ice cream that was recommended by Ben. It was a cookies & cream flavor (I think), but tasted a bit more like coffee. Still good ice cream, though. We mosied on down back to the park to eat our ice cream and use the bathroom. There, Ben encountered the legendary “fun soap,” which Dr. Yun warned us about ahead of time in the States. There was also an exercise station in the park that had a sit-up machine and a stepper, which worked more like a swing. I enjoyed using it, but I still doubt its utility. After doing it for a little bit (Ben gave me a split while I was on it), it felt odd to walk. I needed to walk like I was still on the machine, which was jarring. I eventually recovered. After some confusion, we managed to get earlier train tickets. I fully fell asleep on the train and didn’t do anything productive at all whatsoever. After the long train ride, we finally set foot back in Seoul.

When I was back in Seoul, instead of working on the final presentation, I went back to Namsan Seoul Tower with a massive group. The group was basically half the entire program. It had (in no particular order) Mike, Kali, Maddie, Rohit, Dom, Noah, Jacque, V, Will, Nick, Emily, Anshi, and hopefully nobody else (Anshi and Emily didn’t show up for the group photo towards the end. We started the trip by walking up to the cable car station, which was pretty close to the hotel in the Myeongdong area. We quickly split up into multiple groups. To start, we split into the fast pace and the slow pace. I was in the fast pace group with people like Dom. The slow group was half a block behind the fast pacers. The group split even further into the fast, normal, and slow pace, where I found myself in the middle pack. I still feel I didn’t even slow down much, just that the fast pacers kept their pace the entire time and didn’t stop for anything. So, the gap just grew. Of course, by the end, I caught up once we got to the stairs to get up to the ticket booth. The cost was ₩15,000 for a round trip (surely we’ll take it back down too, right). I skipped the cable car the first time, so I’m glad I could get to experience it at least once. The line was very long, though nothing compared to what we would see later.

Once we got to the tower, we bought our tickets for ₩20,000, which is not actually listed on the booth, confusing some members of our group. We found ourselves speedrunning through the tower, which especially worked well for me as I’ve already been there. Once at the top, I splurged on souvenirs. I spent basically all my won, spending ₩50,000+ at once, which is likely the most I’ve spent at one time. I was left with only ₩7,000 in notes and maybe ₩1,000 or so in coins. So, I bought some things for myself and for my family. Then, as per Big 70s Chris’s recommendation, we checked out the urinals, which had a great view when doing number 2 (really number 1, but it rhymed so…). As said, we quickly went through the tower, bought everything, and then just left. Once down, the tower immediately closed a lot of the facilities, showing just how much of a close call it was. Luckily, I managed to enjoy my time there. The only problem was trying to get back down. Some people left immediately after. I went with the rest to check out the cable car, but the line was absolutely huge. It looked like it would take the entire rest of the night. So, I went with Mike, Nick, and V to run down the hill and take a bus. We got all the way down to the hotel and split up with Mike to go to the market.

We went through the market to get some food. I ate a lamb skewer along with Nick while V got a chicken skewer. We continued to walk through the market to find some dessert. Then, we found the perfect place: a crepe stand. The crepe I got had a Nutella base with strawberry and banana as toppings. Again, like almost everything I got, it was absolutely delicious. I actually can’t think of any bad food I’ve had while here. I really don’t remember if I didn’t like anything I ate, but I do remember all the good food I had here (crab and Korean BBQ come to mind). We wrapped up there and headed back to the hotel for the day.

Another eventful day had passed. It’s great to be back in Seoul.