Today, we headed back over to Postech to do a tour of their campus. They have a bunch of students who work with a lot of foreign exchange students and help them out, so we split up into a couple of different groups with different students and got to walk all around campus. My group’s…
Category: Plus3 Korea
Postech
Today was Monday, so officially we have had a full week of our trip! Today we went to visit the campus of one of the universities in Korea, POSTECH. Postech recently partnered with Pitt, so we were kind of acting as ambassadors at Pitt. We listened to a presentation all about Postech, met a grad…
Golgusa Day 2 & Tombs
Today was an early day to wake up! yay. Our wake-up time was 5 am, which might’ve been the earliest time that I’ve ever woken up. We first had morning chanting with the monks, which involved standing up and kneeling down while the monks were saying something in Korean. I found it very interesting that…
Golgusa Temple
Today we had a little more traveling, and this time we are headed out of Seoul and into a new city! We started the day off by getting to the train station, and got on the train to Busan. We weren’t going to Busan, but getting off at an earlier stop at Gyeongju. One thing…
DMZ day!
Hi again, everybody! Today, we are headed over to the DMZ (demilitarized zone), the border between North and South Korea. In order to get into this area, you need to have a tour scheduled, and you go through lots of security to get in. The tour bus has to stop at military checkpoints, and a…
열둘 – Returning Home
I spent my final moments in Korea packing up my stuff and doing some last minute shopping. Some notable places I visited include Muji, a Japanese department store, and SW19, a small Korean fragrance brand. After buying a few things and spending all my remaining cash, I hurried back to the hotel to leave for…
열하나 – TOPIS and Cooking Class
Today our group started the day by visiting Seoul’s City Hall to learn about TOPIS (Transport Operation and Information Service). TOPIS is a high-tech traffic monitoring system used by Seoul to automate traffic patterns, public transportation, and monitor citizens violating driving laws. Our class was able to visit the TOPIS facility, which was located in…
Day 11: Gimbap and Goodbyes
Day 11 was our final full day in Korea. We were back in Seoul for our last day, where it all began. Our first activity was a visit to TOPIS, Seoul’s Transportation Operation and Information Center. We were back at Seoul City Hall, which we had visited on the third day. It felt like a…
열 – Hyundai and Seoul Tower
Today’s plan was to tour Hyundai Motors in the middle of the day and take a train to Seoul in the evening. To start, I packed all my bags to be sent to Seoul, and then took a bus to Hyundai’s Ulsan factory. The tour at Hyundai consisted of a product showcase and a factory…
아홉 – POSTECH and Steel Factory
By now, I was starting to a feel a lot better, so I decided to resume my usual participation with the class. We started our day off by touring POSTECH, a small STEM university in Korea. Apparently, this is a location where Pitt students can study abroad, so I made sure to ask the tour…
Day 10: Return to Seoul
Thursday morning, we officially left Pohang for the last time. Our visit was short, but I really enjoyed it. Although Pohang is not very touristy and doesn’t have as much to do as Seoul, in a certain way I think that really made me enjoy it. It somehow has a much more authentic, “small town”…
Day 11: Final Full Day in Korea!
Today was so packed that it is hard to believe we did everything in under 24 hours, especially considering how distinct each event was. First things first, I got the chance to see the beautiful vertical gardens in Seoul City Hall again because we were visiting TOPIS this time! As opposed to being led on…
Day 10: Hyundai Production Facility and Back to Seoul
This day was less packed than normal considering how much travel we needed to do to move back into our hotel in Seoul, but our visit to the Hyundai plant was interesting enough to make up for the time consumed by travel. Before we went on the tour of the assembly line of their Ulsan…
Day 9: Revisiting Postech and the Great Posco Visit
We spent less time at postech today, unfortunately not visiting PAL a second time. This was okay though, because we split off into groups and received a tour of postech campus by a student guide and got to see the interior of most of the buildings. They were all impressively modern with beautiful decorations and…
Day 8: PAL at Postech- The Coolest Place I Have Been In My Entire Life
Travel to Postech early in the morning by bus and see presentations about the school from a professor and the computer science dept. in the general presentation we learned about the school and why we are joining, and they were very kind. In the comp sci/engr dept we learned about their research and a newer…
Day 7: Temple Goodbyes
This morning was an interesting one because the first thing I hear when I wake up is that activities for the day started 2 hours ago. I get up and cross the room to check the time and sure enough, it’s 7:00 am and we were supposed to be up and with the group for…
Day 6: The Long Trek to Gulgosa Temple
First thing in the morning today, we all needed to grab our bags and head down to a coach bus, belongings in hand, because this was the last we’d be seeing of the hotel for most of our time in Korea. Today was the day of the temple visit! I needed to stay up late…
Last Day!
Today we kept it simple and sweet. We started off with another tour of City Hall, but this time instead of learning about the history of the city and its fun facts, we got to go into the basement and see their situation room. While we were there, we learned all about Seoul’s traffic and…
Kars in Korea
Today, we got to tour the facilities at Hyundai. We started the journey in their museum, where we learned about the company’s history and its future aspirations. It was interesting to see how Hyundai has grown over time, from its earlier models to the more advanced cars they are producing today. We saw both old…