Being selected to travel to South Korea was one of the greatest opportunities I have had in life so far. I learned a lot academically and culturally. I also met some amazing people, who I hope to call lifelong friends. The memories made certainly are. As an electrical engineer, visiting places like Samsung and Hyundai…

Today was the longest day of my life, quite literally. Since we were flying from Korea back to the United States, the thirteen-hour time change undoes the thirteen-hour flight, making the total amount of time of May 18th to be around 30 hours. However, my day of travel became much longer, with multiple delays and…

              Today was our last day in Busan, and our last day in South Korea. Our agenda for the day was nothing, we had complete freedom to do what we wanted until our farewell dinner. My friends and I decided we were going to go back to the first beach we were at in Busan,…

Another company visit day here in Busan. Our first destination was at the United States Consulate. Here we meet with the United States ambassador in charge of the consulate. He told us about what he does on a day to day basis, which was a cool job. He attended many events in the area to…

Today was a very company intensive day. Our first visit was to Trainor, a company focused on educating safety precautions for electrical equipment. They are contacted by factories to train and certify the plant employees in the usage of dangerous equipment. The manager was most excited about implementing more online certification class. While this seems…

              We started the day with a company visit to Hyundai Motor Industries. This is Hyundai’s largest car manufacturing plant in the world. We were given a tour of the facilities and got to see the assembly process of a car. On average, it takes about twenty hours for a single car to be created….

              Another 6:00am start here in South Korea. We checked out of our hotel in Gyeongju and set out to Ulsan. Here we are to see three companies, two of which are today. We will only be spending 24 hours in Ulsan, our third city so far. Our first stop was at Jinsan Marine Management…

Today was another cultural day. Gyeongju is know as the golden city of Korea, as it has many temples and tombs from the Silla dynasty. Our first stop was the location of ancient Silla tombs, specifically the kings tomb. The kings tomb is the largest of the 30,0000 tombs located in the city. A tomb…

Today, was another cultural excursion day. We started off the day by traveling up north to the Demilitarized Zone, the boarder between North and South Korea. This area was nothing like I expected it to be. For an area of cease fire, you would expect a bunch of barbed wire and a devastated barren landscape….

Today was a very relaxing day. The only thing on our agenda was a company visit to Naver. Naver is a company very similar to that of Google. They work with search engines and other innovation in technology. They have designed programs that can mute all voices in a video except for one and another…

              Another early start to the day at 6:00am. By 7:00 we were on the bus heading to Samsung Biologics, a sub company of Samsung focused on the creation of bio drugs. This company was fascinating to me. While they have only existed for a few years, they have already shot up to be one…

Today started with a visit to Hanyang University. Hanyang is know for its engineering college and is considered in the top three universities in the country. When we arrived, we attended a presentation about the history of Korea and its culture. I found this lecture quite entertaining. The Koreans as a people have experienced a…

The day started off bright and early. I naturally woke up at 6:00am from jet lag, a whole three hours before we had anything planned. I grabbed breakfast with some friends and got ready for the day. Today was a cultural day, so we visited many famous locations around Seoul. We started with Gyeongbokgong Palace….

              When we landed in Korea, it was around 3:00pm. Once out of the airport we meet up with local students from the Asia Institute and Rob, our tour guide. We took an hour bus ride from the Seoul International Airport to Seoul. The first thing that stood out to me was the lack of…

I decided to pull an all-nighter with some other people, so it would be easier to sleep on the flight. We watched stand up comedy routines on Netflix until 3:00 in the morning. At that point the students traveling to Vietnam were heading to the airport, so I said good by to some of my…

Hi there, my name is Jordan Athas. I am a rising sophomore at the University of Pittsburgh: Swanson School of Engineering, participating in the Plus3 study abroad, Korea, program. I was born and raised in Lisle IL, right outside Chicago. I am pursing a degree in electrical engineering, as I am very interested in electronic…