I’ll keep this post more brief than the others (or not). I woke up super late, sleeping through all my alarms. We went to Seoul TOPIS to learn about the smart systems. I got made fun of for looking like a bum because I wore my business shorts. Like I told everyone there, I was wearing business on top and casual on the bottom. TOPIS was really cool to see how everything is integrated and all the data is analyzed and used to make Seoul truly smart. I personally did the TOPIS slide for the presentation, so getting that explanation made a world of difference for what I presented. Also, because it was fresh in everyone’s mind, I could reference everything we had just learned. We then went to the market to get some hotteok. Lowkey, I liked the hotteok at the rich person’s street market in the Shinsegae better, but really only because it had better flavors. Not the biggest fan of just seeds and stuff. Still really good, of course. Then, we made our way to Myeongdong market to get some bingsu at Sulbing. Our group got the strawberry bingsu along with the chocolate monster bingsu. Only 4 of us ate, as Jacque couldn’t eat the condensed milk and Jake is Jake.

We headed back and rested for a little while before going to try to practice. When Jacque and I went down to get a spot in the meeting room in the basement, there was a random guy in there taking over the room, so we had to wait for the rest of our team to get there before taking over for ourselves. It seemed that Jake beat us to the punch there, as when we got down, he was already in here. I swear there was definitely a man there, so he must’ve left earlier. Unless it was a ghost, though… We finished, then ran through our presentation right before the real thing. During the final practice run-through, everyone was trying to disrupt the other members, while the entire room was extra chaotic with basically every member of the trip being in that damn room. We then got to present first, showing our video first. I thought our video was ok, but it really wasn’t ADHD enough for me. I needed more random bullcrap added in, maybe some Subway Surfers in the corner or doing the DVD screensaver. Our presentation did take a while, more than 20 minutes, so we went way over time. Luckily, the rest of the groups followed suit. Their presentations were completely mid, some might say the definition of mid. GROUP C ON TOP. Best group on the trip for sure.

We then left for the cooking class, which was in Ewha, a college street area. I teamed up with Ben to make some gimbap. Ben had some experience in making sushi, so I wasn’t completely lost. All the cooking I’ve done has either been guided or followed a recipe as closely as possible, like a complete bot. Our teacher had an Australian accent, which was fun. First, we cut all the veggies and such. The theme is Ben was better than me at everything (except washing dishes). The worst moment was when I burned myself on Rohit’s stove and dropped a ton of carrots. Also, we didn’t put nearly enough salt and soy sauce into the noodles. But, I’m still proud of the final product, even if I did need help rolling up the gimbap (I did it so wrong she had to do it for me; mine was oblong…). The food was really good, but it was super cold as Ben took forever to wash the dishes. He was probably trying to clean it down to the atom with how slow he was going. Jokes aside, we both did work well together as he made most of the food, and I didn’t ruin it. At the end, we ate our final product as our reward.

After the cooking class, we split up into groups. Torn between two groups, I ultimately chose to go for some ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. First, I had to refill my Tmoney card, which quite literally had ₩0 in its balance. Unfortunately, they only accept won notes to refill the card, so I had to pay Kali back as she loaned me ₩3,000 for it. We made our way just around the block to get to the Baskin-Robbins there. They had a Pokémon collab going on, so I ordered a double regular scoop with the Eevee and Pikachu. The eevee was a mix of something good, but I actually don’t remember what was in it. Custard, maybe? Then, the pikachu was banana, which might be my very favorite ice cream flavor. I used to eat banana ice cream all the time at my local family-owned farm and mini-golf course combo. We then walked around a bit before settling down at the local Korean delicacy, Mom’s Touch. Ben got touched first. V ordered her food there, and we all waited. Some Invincible discussion later (can you believe the show doesn’t even pass the Bechdel test??), we finally left and waited for the bus. V ran out into the road, but nothing else of note happened.

We travelled all the way back, and now I’m here in my hotel room on the last night of the trip. I can’t believe how much fun this trip was. I’m so glad I got into this program and t. Thank you, Dr. Yun and Chris, for wrangling all of us college students and keeping everyone safe. Thank you, Esther and Aakash, for guiding us and planning out this trip. Thank you, Emily Bennet, for letting us SCI students be able to even come on this trip with the dirty engineers. Thank everyone who made this trip possible. Peace