Noteworthy Observations on A Korean Experience

I've been in Korea for over a week now! While I'm surprised by how similar it is to live here as compared to the United States, the language and food are sometimes tough to get used to, and there are little curiosities I come across every day. For example, there are amazing gardens with vegetables and flowers in backyards and empty lots, like this expanse of veggies just outside our campus: 

And this patch of onions in a lot that's about a block from the center of town:

And in general, the plants are just amazing! Here's a wysteria vine (I think) growing on our campus:

The public transportation system and biking seems to be very good here --we took a bullet train to Gyeongju, and it was very fast and clean. Most places in the country seem to be accessible via train or bus. I've also seen some bikers in this area, and noticed this bike lane on the sidewalk into town from our campus.

In the town the HUFS campus is near, Yongin, you can see that the paint on the road is different and the signs are in Hangul, but the general appearance of the town is familiar.

Maybe the biggest difference in this little city is how compact it is: you can see in this image that there are lots of shops within each of these buildings. Please excuse the selfie!

While I was on my orientation trip with the other EAPSI fellows, we ate mainly at buffets where we could choose items that were daring to whatever degree we felt obliged to eat: gooey aloe plant and cow knuckles for those feeling adventurous, or salad and California rolls for those who wanting the taste of home. Now that I'm at HUFS, we eat at the cafeteria quite a bit, which encourages me to try more Korean foods. This is a (blurry) example of a dinner: a tomato-base soup with a section of fish, bones intact, and lots of veggies and tofu, and sides of kimchi, bok choi, and something like aloe vera. They don't often drink anything with their meals, but they sometimes offer a drink like this --it's a vitamin juice. There are also metal cups and a water dispenser on the way out of the cafeteria. 

We'll be sending our boxes with lab supplies and instruments to Baengnyeong Island tomorrow, and will leave on Sunday with all other supplies. This past weekend, I cleaned the collimator lens in the particulate volume monitor in an attempt to decrease the background signal for the instrument. Since it was just me in the lab, I got a chance to take some photos. 

The lens had a purple sheen to it --very pretty!

Tonight, Choeng Min (a grad student in Taehyoung's lab) and I made a reagent we'll use in our hydrogen peroxide analysis at Baengnyeong --quite an adventure in an unfamiliar lab that's still collecting equipment. Between Choeng Min's effort and Taehyoung's generous help in gathering the right equipment, we got the job done with minimal scarring. I'm not a big fan of working with concentrated acids and bases, as my past chemistry students know, but we made 10 M NaOH. When we finally finished up, I snapped a picture of the message the hood gave me when I tried to turn it off, which I felt was appropriate.

In anticipation of our trip to Baengnyeong, I woke up this morning to find fog shading the mountains around our campus. It's a good sign! Fingers crossed that we'll be able to collect lots of interesting fog water!