Last full day in Korea!
We started the day off with a visit to Seoul’s TOPIS (Transport Operation and Information Service) after breakfast. It is located around the City Hall, and was very neat,
On the way there, we did pass by Seoul’s mayor (we believe) giving some sort of speech. Not too sure what he was discussing, but there were quite a few people there to see it. Going down to TOPIS, we were able to see the navigation systems being used and such. It was so cool! They have a giant map and use CCTV, sensors, and so forth to track public transportation in order to attain accurate arrival times, to track accidents in the event traffic may get worse, and to submit traffic fines digitally (not needing consistent oversight) by using such cameras, sensors, and so forth to see if a car is doing something illegal and determine make, model, license plate, and more in order to accurately charge fines. Afterwards, we got hotteok.
Something that was pretty cool was that Seoul has a bunch of umbrella’s around the city. It’s gotten warmer (about 85 degrees at highest today), and the umbrella’s have sensors to determine high heats and deploy themselves, so we were able to stand in the shade while waiting to cross the street at a couple of areas. Was really neat, and nice to have—because it really was WARM today.
After we did our final presentations in our groups, we went out to dinner—a cooking class! While one could argue it was a neat experience, I was STARVING, and having to cook for myself sounded terrible, so I was kind of in a funk. I ended up kind of taking over the cooking from Emma, who was my partner for it (sorry, Emma!), and we ended up finishing the cooking pretty fast and getting to eat a little earlier and aid our intense hunger, ha; it was easier for me because we were cooking japchae and kimbap, and I’m vaguely familiar with cooking both.
Afterwards, we grabbed some boba and froyo, and our last day was spent gazing the streets of Myeongdong one last time—tomorrow we hope to visit Ikseondong on a walk in the morning to grab salt bread before we leave!
No fancy title! Couldn’t think of a good tie back.
