It's been a fun-filled week! Thanks to a very kind professor from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, I learned to use the bus and got a transit card so I can travel around the Seoul area. Dr. Owen took me to Seongnam, which is a Seoul suburb of about 1 million people. There's lots of good shopping and ethnic foods. After being at HUFS for a week, even though it's a gorgeous campus, it was really nice to get into the city for a visit.
Here's a shot of Dr. Owen as we crossed the street to get to the shopping area "AK Plaza".
This is the restaurant where I got dinner, which was a Mexican restaurant with craft beers. This was one of about ten restaurants available in this food court (not attached to a mall).
In the bottom of a department store in AK Plaza, there was a fancy grocery store, which was fun to look around! This picture shows traditional tea ingredients (I don't think I could name any of these things, but they look interesting!).
The buildings in cities here are jam-packed full of stores on every floor. The signs litter the front of the buildings, and you can meander up the stairs and through the halls to find the store you're looking for. The view from the street is very colorful.
Some of the students in the natural sciences department at HUFS invited me to have pizza with them to celebrate one of the girls (second from the right) getting her PhD. Most of these students are studying wastewater treatment and soils science. The pizza was delicious ---it had a circle of sweet potato paste around the crust - different and tasty.
On Friday, the 20th, I used my new transit card to get to Seoul. Before leaving, I snapped this picture of a freight truck here --brilliant! It opens on the side, right onto the sidewalk. Why haven't we figured this out in the states...?
I only needed on bus and a short ride on a subway to get to Seoul National University, where a few of my friends from the Korea EAPSI program are studying this summer.
We went out to an area called Hongdae in Seoul, where we had Mexican food at a little shop called Taco Gusto, which is owned by a guy from New York. Here's a picture of Kelsey, who was my roomie during EAPSI orientation and let me stay with her on Friday night.
Kelsey was really sweet to let me stay with her, especially because her place is itty bitty! I think it's probably a total of 50 square feet. Here she is in her Seoul apartment.
The big destination for Saturday was Kyobo bookstore, which is in the center of Seoul. I wanted to go look at some books in English so I'd have something non-electronic to read while on Baengnyeong Island. It's huge!
The center of Seoul has a large statue of King Sejong, who invented Hangul (Korean). It's the only language for which we know the creator. Also beyond the statue are mountains, ripe for the climbing! I was hoping to get out and do some hiking this past weekend, but we had too much to do!
My Seoul trip concluded with a giant shoot veggie bibimbap at Seoul station. I met up with one of my lab mates, Seongweon, and headed out for Incheon, then Baengnyeong.
We stayed the night at a motel in Incheon so that we could get the 8:20 ferry to Baengnyeong. The ferry ride was about four hours, which I filled with reading my new copy of A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson and devouring this pink dino donut from Dunkin' Donuts. Yes, those are frosting covered poprocks!
There was already lots of fog around the islands (we stopped at two others before reaching Baengnyeong), and we almost had to skip the first island because the ferry drivers thought the fog was too thick.
The islands do have residents, but there is a large military presence. You can see the military bases up on top of the hill here (there was also a cow up there... they must keep them for food).
Once we reached our island, we loaded all our luggage and some scientific equipment into our rental car and the car of the travel agent, who offered to give us a ride, and headed to our motel (the Paradise Motel, spelled out in hangul characters). We got a tasty lunch with something like a shellfish fritatta and shellfish soup - probably the best meal I've tried here, and I don't usually like a lot of shellfish!
Then we drove across the island, which is actually about 30-40 min - it's a big island! The view from the atmospheric research center is great!
There are TONS of instruments at this site, including this set of 24-hour aerosol samplers across the parking lot from the building.
Behind the atmospheric research center is a meteorology center, with this radar up on top. Taehyoung says he can arrange a tour of that facility tomorrow or the day after.
...And here's the atmospheric research center! It's a very nice building inside, and includes chemical and physical measurements (the most exciting for me include a continuous gas/particle anion/cation ion chromatography instrument, and an x-ray fluorescence instrument that gives continuous concentrations of major metal species. There's also a full wet chemistry lab, and lots of space for our instruments to go!
Here's the AIM (ambient ion monitor) and the continuous metals instrument:
...there are SO many instruments in here!
After stopping at the research center, Taehyoung took us to a really gorgeous beach spread with smooth pebbles. There were lots of perfect skipping stones, so we all skipped and threw stones. Taehyoung told me in Korea they say something like "water bird" to mean skipping stones.
Taehyoung also took us to see this beach, which acts as a shortcut for vehicles coming from the city ---you can drive on it at about 30-40 miles per hour!
On day two, there was lots of haze over the island, but not much fog up at the station. The employees told us that the fog doesn't come up to the station as much as it occurs down lower along the coastline, but I'm still hopefully we'll get some good fog water!
The inner part of the island is also really beautiful - there's a lot of agriculture, both in rows on the ground and in large greenhouses.
We unfortunately didn't get our boxes with instruments and lab supplies delivered today as we expected, so I walked around the research station a bit, and wandered up to the meteorology facility Here's a closer view of the radar.
Looking back at the atmospheric research center, you can see the meteorology station that's next to our building as well. I think I'll have plenty of weather data to add to my research up here!
This is going to be a fun experience! I'm loving the island so far - went exploring this evening in the town for a little while after dinner, and everyone is so friendly! Also on the plus side, I have internet in my room so I can keep posting pictures (that is, if I'm not too busy collecting fog water samples!).
No comments:
Post a Comment