The two weeks I spent in South Korea were some of the busiest, most overwhelming and exciting weeks of my life. In addition to touring companies in a wide range of areas, I learned a lot about South Korean history and culture and how these directly impact the workplace environment. I gained a greater understanding…
Tag: Summer 2019
Starbucks Reserve Roastery SLAPS!
Before I get into the first full day in Shanghai, let me just briefly talk about the river cruise the night before. Shanghai is so cool! It’s basically like New York on steroids. The skyline at night is is like nowhere else I’ve seen with all of the lights. There are even two buildings next…
Day 4: Lost at the Temple
Today was the day we got to visit the infamous Tiananmen Square as well as the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven. Inside Tiananmen Square we saw a hella long line forming to see the body of Chairman Mao, but it was about 4 hours at like 9 in the morning, so we weren’t…
Day 3: Blown Away at Huawei
This was the day we had all been waiting for since before we left for China. Our visit to Huawei, one of largest telecommunications companies in the world, the phone brand second in world sales after Samsung and beating out Apple, and also a central player in the trade war and U.S.-China relations. Because our…
Day 2: CUFE
Today we spent the whole day at CUFE, the Central University of Finance and Economics. When we first arrived, we were greeted by Aurora, our hostess for the day. She escorted us to our lecture room where Kai Long, a professor at CUFE, gave us a lecture on big data, e-commerce, marketing, and smart phone…
33 Hours of Traveling Later
I could not sleep Friday night into Saturday; not because I was excited for the full day of traveling that awaited us, but because I had started to become sick. All day Friday I was coughing but never thought anything of it until I woke up miserable on Saturday. I really felt miserable and could…
Final Reflection
My two weeks in South Korea was a once in a life time amazing experience. I learned so much and had so many great experiences. When I first applied for the Plus3 program I did not know what to expect; and even the day that we left Pittsburgh, I still had no clue what would…
Chilling at Haeundae
Our last full day in Korea had unfortunately arrived so quickly. With the full day free, naturally we went back to the beautiful beach we first went to when we arrived in Busan. The weather was perfect for a beach day. Haeundae beach was about a thirty minute taxi ride from the hotel. There are…
Final Takeaways
My trip to South Korea has been a great professional experience for me. I learned a lot about business during the site visits that I otherwise would not have experienced within the engineering school. This post is a reflection on some of the things that I took away from the trip that pertain to my…
Live Octopus? Yes, Please!
Thursday, our last day of official visits, finally came. Today’s agenda only consisted of the US Consulate in Busan and Pusan National University. The consulate felt more like a cultural visit; we learned about the history of Busan and its relation to the United States and also Japan. Many of us were curious about the…
Goodbye China
My time in China was enriching both personally and professionally. I learned a lot about China and business in China but I also got a better understanding of business and what I can do as a part of the industry. For one thing, I realized how important integrity is. From everything I saw with the…
5/16 Yu Garden
This is already our last morning in China! We drove the bus into Shanghai and got out to walk down a street that looked a lot like a mix of the Hutong district in Beijing and Muslim Street in Xi’an, the street even had some street vendors cranking out the usual octopus on a stick….
5/15 Yangshan Port
Today was our first company visit where we had to take a bus to see the different parts of the facility. Yangshan port is humongous, and we had to take one of the longest bridges I have ever been on to get there. Between endpoints, the bridge was a thirty minute drive and for a…
5/14 AmCham and Horiba
Today we visited the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) office in Shanghai, an organization that monitors and reports on business and trade between China and America. Despite how official the name sounds, the office isn’t actually related to other American Chamber of Commerce offices in different countries. I absolutely loved the presentation at AmCham. The…
Final Blog
Writing this last blog reminds me of all the wonderful experiences our Plus3 group had in China. I would like to share my highlights from each city. I was nervous to be in another country not knowing the native language, but Beijing changed my feelings quickly. Visiting the Great Wall of China was by far…
5/13 ECUST and Urban Planning Museum
Today we visited the East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai. When we got off the bus at the university I immediately noticed how different the university felt compared to the Central University of Finance and Economics, where we visited in Beijing, and the University of Pittsburgh. there was by far more greenery…
5/12 Terracotta Warriors
When we left the hotel in the morning the sky was clear and I was eager to see the Terracotta warriors I had been hearing about since elementary school. When we arrived we walked through the museum portion that explained the history of the warriors and their excavation process. I did not know that the…
5/11 Children’s Village and Pagoda
We started our first full day in Xian with a visit to the Children’s Village, an organization that shelters and takes care of children while their parents are in jail. Since the village was opened in 1996, it has helped over 2,000 children return to their families who would have been homeless otherwise. After a…
5/9 Forbidden City
I thought we did a lot on the day we visited the Great Wall, but today we bounced around what felt like all of Beijing visiting cultural sites. We started our day at Tienanmen Square, and it was an interesting time to be there. The day we visited was about one month before the thirty…
Yu Garden and Presentations
Today, we visited the Yu Garden and learned many interesting facts about the history of it from our tour guide. The garden was made by a Ming Dynasty government officer, named Pan Yunduan. He made it for his parents and named it the Yu garden because “Yu” means peace and satisfaction. There were many ponds,…