Annyeonghi gyeseyo, Baengnyeongdo!

Well --we had to run to get on the ferry in time, but we made it! I left Baengnyeongdo on the ferry, and I won't be returning this time. This field campaign has been a learning experience for me as a scientist, the travel to such a different place has been a growing experience for me as a person, and I got to try some great food and take in some beautiful views via car and running shoes. And the trip isn't over yet! I still have a few weeks to enjoy in Korea. I took lots of pictures during my last few days on the island since we did a little sight-seeing when the other students arrived at the island to help me pack up. The weather cleared up and there was much less fog as soon as the other students arrived, so I didn't feel as bad about not checking the PVM (liquid water monitor) every hour at night! We explored some parts of the island I hadn't spent much time at, like this town that's only about 5 min from the research station (Dumujin).

Just a note --as I started to write this post, I had about five hours until arriving in Incheon, and I was hoping that writing these captions would help me to keep from getting sick on this choppy ocean (I forgot to put my kimite, or under-ear sea sickness patch, on before we left)... Unfortunately, I didn't get all of the post written because the ride was SO choppy! I never actually got sick, but many of the passengers did, and I think I blacked out a few times because I was so dizzy. What a ride! Taking the bus or train now is a breeze because I know I can handle much worse.

All three of the students who came to help pack up have excellent English, which made their company even more calming and fun after a week of a crazy schedule by myself. I spent a few hours this week with my Magic Korean book, learning some new phrases and vocabulary (I think I've almost got all the numbers down, although slowly), but I have a long way to go to understand what people are saying to me in Hangul. There's more English in Yongin and Seoul, so I may not get as many opportunities from now on to attempt conversation. Maybe I'll find a Korean class when I get home! There are similarities between Hangul, Japanese, Mandarin, and possibly other Asian languages, and since there are great places to study air quality, aerosol, fog, and clouds in Asia, it might be good to get a little familiar with one of those languages.

One experience that I didn't think I would have when I applied for this fellowship is driving in a foreign country. I got an international driver's license (it's easy ---just go to your local AAA office) and have been driving a rental Hyundai on Baengnyeong. It was necessary since I was going between the station and town for sampling, and there are buses, but only infrequently. The rules of the road are similar, but you depend much more on the responses of other drivers ---it's sort of like driving on the bayfront in Newport, with trucks in the road and people crossing between shops. 

 

One thing I've learned about fog: even if it's present within half a mile or within the same town as your sampling site, it may not be at your sampling site. There were many nights when I looked out my motel room window to see dense fog, drove across town (about 3 min), seeing fog the whole way, and found almost no fog at all at my in-town site. If I go on another field campaign like this, I plan to set up some webcams. Looking out to the east side of the island here beyond the IMPROVE measurement site (Dr. Lee said this may be the first outside of the U.S. ---did I mention that?), it looks foggy, but very clear right at the station.

Another reflection on the campaign design: the fog often came in to the town from the beach to the east and southeast, so a site located closer to those coasts would have been more active. Here are a few images I took as I ran along the beach one afternoon. The fog was so dense that I couldn't see more than ten feet in any direction around me along one stretch.

 

Running in the afternoon was probably my favorite part of this past week --seeing the island at a slower pace than while driving, and sometimes smiling and bowing to locals as I passed by. The inner valleys of the island had many rice fields, like these, which are bright green this time of year (being from Oregon, I love green!). This was probably the most common crop I saw, although I also recognized many pepper plants, grown mostly in greenhouses.

I passed by this spider --another crazy critter! I'm getting a little less creeped out by the big spiders now, but I will be thankful to be back to more familiar bugs soon.

On the last day by myself (Sunday), I drove to the south part of the island to see what the towns looked like there. These two pictures show a small town with a port that I passed through. The green in the top picture is a large fishing net, I think.

There is a lake on the interior of the island, which looks from maps like it is man-made - possibly for agricultural use. On a clear day, it's visible from the research station. 

Everything looks different in the fog: here's the kongdol (smooth stone) beach that we went to on the first day I arrived at the island.

There was dense fog surrounding the island on Sunday, so the boys arrived from Incheon about three and a half hours later than expected, but they made it! Here's the ferry, which is a catamaran that can carry several trucks. There's a smaller ferry as well, that's a little bumpier of a ride.

Two of the boys, Kyunghoon and Taehyeon, hadn't been to Baengnyeong before, so we stopped at the major sights that Taehyoung showed us. This is the diatomaceous sand beach, where you can drive around, and there are some beautiful shells and starfish.

We also went to the kongdol beach again --here's the sign at the entrance to the beach, which is partially in English. It's good for your feet to walk on the stones!

After enjoying some pajeon (Korean green onion pancake) and dotorimuk (acorn jelly) at the kongdol beach, we stopped at the station to drop some things off, then went to the town of Dumujin for some dinner. The town is built around a port, so there's lots of good seafood.

The boats and fishing equipment make the town a colorful place, with the beautiful sandstone and quartzite cliffs, some algae, and the hills of North Korea in the background.

The streets are very narrow here, and obviously there aren't many people driving on them ---you can see the circle of Koreans enjoying dinner in the middle of the street here (and one man who was curious about the foreigner taking pictures).

Ok. So I'm a vegetarian (cho nun chae shik chuija), but since the biggest reason for my diet is concerning energy usage, I eat seafoods. Especially here, where most of the fish and shellfish were harvested very close by, it makes sense to take advantage of the protein sources that are most local. I love the squid and I can even do the mini purple octopuses with giant heads, but I had a lot of trouble with Korean sashimi. This urchin is a delicacy here --you are served a shell cracked in half, and you use a little spoon to scrape out the orange eggs inside the shell. Not only is it sad to eat the eggs from out of an animal, but it's still moving. The meal continued with sea snails (cooked) and fish that was cut while still alive, served atop cornstarch noodles to keep it fresh.

As soon as the boys arrived, the weather cleared up and we had gorgeous, sunny skies with lots of fluffy cumulus clouds. We got a little rain from them on Tuesday (the day we traveled back from the island). In the top two pictures below, taken from the station, you can see the mountains of North Korea in the background. There weren't many days while I was here on the island when it was clear enough to see them.

This image shows the weather station, just up the road from our atmospheric research station. The large white ball is a radar unit.

This is the view looking to the west (most of the rest of the island is in this direction), taken from the roof of the research station where our instruments were deployed.

We returned to Dumujin during the day on Monday to see the famous rocks just outside the town.

It's possible to walk around the harbor to the rocks, along a nicely kept trail. As we walked along the first part of the trail, we saw some kelp laid out on the rocks, drying in the sun before being served for dinner.

The harbor was very picturesque, especially in the sunshine ---so I have lots of pictures of it! You'll notice a little kudzu in the foreground, which was just starting to bloom when we left Baengnyeong.

There were also other types of wildflowers, including these yellow flowers with a sweet smell, which I think might have been freesias.

As promised by the signs pointing to these rocks all over the island and the notes on the Baengyeongdo website, the rocks in Dumujin were also very beautiful.

There were several coves to walk to, with pebble or solid sandstone beaches to walk out onto. I'm not much of a climber, and not sure how sturdy these rocks are being sedimentary, but they sure looked like they'd be exciting to climb up. Looking out into the Yellow Sea, you could see a distinct line around the island where the water was much choppier. The sound of the waves hitting the rocks was very unlike that on a sandy beach, and instead more like the sound on a river bank.

There was a small cave on one of the coves with pebbles, which was full of equipment for fishing and other seafood harvesting.

Here's a description of the Dumujin rocks and city (in English!). I'm not sure I really saw the resemblance between the general's head and any of the rocks, but maybe they meant the small piece on top of the rock in the picture just below the one of the description.

On the way back from Dumujin, we stopped at the spot with the lotus flowers again to get some patbingsu (ice flake with sweet red beans). There was a little orange and white kitten hanging around, biting anyone who wanted to play with it. Very cute, but also very painful!

And, of course, I had to take some more pictures of the lotus plants! The sun was getting close to setting this time, so it gave a nice back-lighting for the leaves and flowers.

While there weren't really any freshly blooming flowers as there were on my last visit, there were lots of lotus pods, which have very interesting patterns.

And there were more frogs! Here's one for you, Vickie! ( ;

There was also a jindogae, which is a breed of dog that Misha (who studied on this island through this program before me) recently told me is from Korea. They're very sweet dogs, and this one was really hungry for attention! All of us were happy to indulge her!

We settled our bill with the motel and rental car owner, who also booked our ferry tickets (she's on the right in this picture) with a combination of Excel and a calculator right here at the table... yet another difference, since I doubt it would have happened like this in most places in the States! It worked out just fine, of course. I feel bad that I can't remember her name, but the owner was very friendly and helpful while I stayed there. I think I mentioned before that she let me use her clothes washer so that I didn't have to re-wear my clothes more than once!

Even outside of the motel, there were some really nice wildflowers on the island! There were tiger lilies almost everywhere, day lilies, the purple flowers that are on the bottom right in this picture, and also the white flowers.

I think these yellow flowers are related to primroses?

And, finally, here are some images and a video of the instruments in the NIER lab at the Atmospheric Research Center. They have a lot of fun equipment! Most of the data isn't available for us to use because it's owned by the Korean government, but I got to see some of it as it was recorded in the data system and appeared on a monitor in the lab.

This instrument, which is downstairs in a different lab, is a hydrogen generator for one of the gas chromatographs (measures the concentrations of gases in the atmosphere). The blue light on the right hand side is where water is being split to generate hydrogen and oxygen gases... a pretty nice thing to have when you don't want to be transported hydrogen gas cylinders back and forth on a ferry!

The downstairs lab also had several gas chromatographs set up for chlorofluorocarbons, SF6, and various volatile organic compounds ---a nice suite of instruments at a site that's perfect for measuring regional sources of pollutants.

I've got lots more to talk about after our trip to Jeju Island this past weekend, so there will be more pictures and info coming soon!