Grandma Pants and Dragon Boats

Hey everybody! I was assigned to do the guest blog today so here it goes.

     I woke up to the sound of rain so I was a little unsure about how the day would go at the Whale Festival which is all outside by the river, but then I remembered I would get to wear my new pants I got at the International Market and I instantly got excited again. We went to our fav (and only) breakfast spot Paris Baguette and started our day at 11.

     After our late breakfast DongHee drove us all to the Whale Festival in two trips. The festival was very large so it took awhile for the two groups to find each other, but we eventually did. The naval architecture and ocean engineering school at University of Ulsan made a racing team to compete in the Dragon Boat races at the Whale Festival. They didn't train though so it was all just for fun. It was really cool to watch! The range of teams was pretty funny, some teams only had a couple people and some appeared to have an army of olympic trained rowers.

The NAOE dragon boat! (4th place out of 4 teams)

     When we weren't watching the race we walked through all the tents at the festival and tried all the food they were selling. The foods and snacks ranged from chocolate to raw shrimp. We got to try a Korean style pancake which was delicious! The dough was made of just flour they said and it had a ton of chives in it. Sounds weird, but it worked. Beau got potato chips on a stick which was also very good. They even had face painting, or hand painting in my case. We were getting some pretty funny looks throughout the day because Mackenzie and I were wearing matching "grandma pants" and Jake was wearing these funny multicolored fisherman pants.

                                Our grandma pants                                                          Face painting fun

 

Penguin hand painting

Chive pancake?

     The Ulsan Naval Architecture team also thought our outfits were funny and laughed while we were getting introduced. It was funny because we thought by wearing these outfits we would blend in more, but they made us stick out even more, if thats possible! After the races we hung out with the team under their tent because it started pouring rain; we were bummed we didn't get to look around more, but we got to meet some of our roommates friends which was fun. One boy told Mackenzie and I we looked like movie stars so that was exciting! Apparently we looked like Jennifer Anniston and Mila Kunis... Another girl said she loved Beau after just looking at him so we were obviously a hit.

     After the long day of rain and cold all we wanted was a warm dinner so we went to a little mom-and-pop restaurant right next to University of Ulsan and got pork soup with rice, which is the traditional dish of Busan. It was pretty much chicken noodle soup in Korean form so it hit the spot! After the long weekend we finished off the day by relaxing in the dorm watching videos and attempting to do laundry.

     That's it for the day, but before I go I wanted to share with you a couple things I've noticed/ experienced in the past week.

1. Giggling is okay in most places in Korea including work, restaurants, and in the streets, but it is not welcome in public transportation at night in trains and buses. How I learned you ask? After our day in Busan, Mackenzie and I were looking through some pictures we took and laughing (I'm not sure how loud, sometimes I don't realize how loud my laugh is) and the woman in front of us turned around, gave us a look, shook her finger, and probably said something like, Be quiet you giggling Americans!

2. Instead of graffiti like we have in the states graffiti here is made up of pink rainbows butterflies, and cute little characters that remind me of the pillsbury dough boy.

                       Rainbow/ Butterfly Graffiti

3. Everyone squats!

4. Murse (man purse) life is real.                                              
                                                                                                                Even dinosaurs are happy!


5. You never know what kind of bathroom you are walking into. Will the seat be heated? Will there be no toilet paper option? Will you have to go into a hole in the ground? For this reason I suggest you always carry toilet paper/ napkins around with you at all times, especially in bathrooms near the beach.

6. We have seen many dogs as pets around and they seem to be as loved as much as they are back home, but don't joke about eating dog because they will actually ask if you want to eat some. Our response: Um no thanks.

Well that's it for now!

-Sam

Adventures in Busan!

     Today we got off on a slow start, but that was okay because it was our first full day that we weren't at the shipyard. The plan was to go south to Busan, which is a large port city. We grabbed some breakfast and we headed to Busan at 11. 

    Getting to, and traveling around Busan was quite the ordeal. Getting there were going to take route 415, but then last minute we took route 405. 20 minutes later we were at our stop, but a half-mile away from our other bus connection, instead of right next to it. Which would have happened if we took the 415 bus. Then we jumped on an hour long ride in a coach bus to Busan. This was a fairly boring ride, except for the times that the bus was jerking about because the busses here have manual transmissions. 

    We got to Busan and we went straight to the beach. We didn't go swimming but it was nice to be at a beach. We walked around a small island that had a couple of pretty cool views, and then we headed to the international market. This required yet another bus ride. This one was about 50 minutes long. And apparently everybody wants to go to this market and the bus was PACKED!!! We had to stand the entire time! We were so glad to get off of that bus and into the market!

View of the beach in Busan

    The market was really cool! It was full of all of these shops and food vendors! If you wanted something super cheap, it was there for ya! Sunglasses and hats seemed to be around every single corner. We Sam, Mackenzie and I bought some Korean style pants, they are great! So look out for some pictures of those in the near future! There was also a TON of food at the market! Some of it looked a little sketchy, but most of it looked really good. I got some ice cream, but it comes in this J shaped cone, it was good though! 

Food vendors in the market. Each of the umbrellas sold something different. 

A shop for fans. Nothing else, just fans. If you wanted ANYTHING, they had it here. 

    We had some dinner and then headed over to the fish market. It wasn't as smelly as I thought it was going to be. But that was probably because most of the fish were either kept live in tanks, or were dried out like jerky. One of the guys was standing there, slicing the skin off of some live eels. So we stopped to watch him for a couple of minutes. He then gave us a scare as he suddenly threw an eel at our feet!!! We all jumped ten feet high! At that point we decided it was time to leave. 

A vendor in the Fish Market. 

The funny eel guy with the eel that he threw at us!!

    So that meant yet another bus ride. This time it was a little shorter, only 40 minutes so we could go see this really cool bridge. We stood on the beach and watched as the lights on the bridge were timed with the music they were playing on the beach. It was so cool to see that. So time to go home, so this was a 10 minute subway ride followed by another hour long bus ride back to Ulsan. 

The bridge with lights. The blue in the sky is the reflection of the lights on the clouds, which looked pretty cool. 

    I am sitting on the bus writing this now, preparing to hit post after I add some pictures when I get back to the dorms,  so that's what I know for today! We are going to crash when we get back. The plan is to go to the whale festival tomorrow so that should be fun! 

- Jake

Blue Sky Day 1 - Not So Rainy Season

Hey everyone!

     My day at the shipyard was really boring, although we saw some blue sky today! Its the first time since we have been here. At the yard we were split up into two teams, A and B. I was on A team with Sam. We saw where the steel comes in and the whole process of treating it and doing basic welds to make plates, then moving up to make small blocks, and putting small blocks together to make big blocks. Super exciting stuff I know. 

     Since my day was so boring, and team B had some really cool experiences, Mackenzie gracefully volunteered (since Beau was too stubborn) to share her thoughts and experiences from her day even though she guest blogged yesterday.

     So first we started in a different conference room with a powerpoint completely in Korean so we weren't really sure what to expect from our day, and then we got a quick translation at the end that we were going to go up onto the Goliath crane and then he said that we were going to jump off the top, but thankful they were kidding about that. 

     Lunch was in a new building and definitely not the best one we have experienced at the shipyard. It was a cold cucumber soup with huge chunks of ice, cucumbers, and "a weird type of clear gelatin noodle that was vegetable flavored but was actually acorn" as Sam describes it. It also came with something that appeared to be green beans but turned out to be garlic stems with anchovies mixed in...lets just say we all ate a lot of rice for lunch. 

      We went to get full body harnesses, and new safety equipment and went out to the base of the Goliath crane. We took an elevator to the control room and then climbed to the top (100m above the ground!) where we could see almost the entire shipyard. 

In our new safety equipment.

On top of the goliath crane!

      After that there was a ship ready to be launched so we went over to see the dry dock flood, which was a very cool experience as well but we are not able to upload any pictures of that unfortunately. We actually watched it for over an hour and then went down into the adjacent dry dock where there was a ship that was almost finished and we walked underneath it. Standing with 30,000 tons right above you is kind of scary!

We all met up and rode our bus to old downtown where we ate Bulgolgi which we all really enjoyed! We then walked around an old ancient Korean temple, played Korean games and watched part of a traditional Korean concert.

-Mackenzie

P.S We love it when you guys comment so keep them coming!

Also, I took a lot of pictures, so I figured I should post some of them!

The table covered as usual!

Bulgogi is on the left, with rice on the right. Sauces and other things are on the top left

A game with white and black rocks being played by some old men.

Our dumbed down version.... (which I was not very good at... oh well...)

One of the Korean Students took the time and wrote this out with the stones! So cool!

Our whole group!!

Traditional Korean music at the park.

Pictures with the band. 

Look who we found! Kim was back!

Rainy Season - Day 1

     So today wasn't too interesting.... We woke up to rain, (rainy season officially starts today) which was nice because it cooled down our rooms so we weren't sweating when we woke up. The Korean students are letting us borrow some of their umbrellas that they got at the Naval Architecture Celebration day. So here is a picture of us with our umbrellas, I think we might look a little like tourists.....

     Our morning in the yard was spent at the material research and quality control lab. There they look at the micro-structure of the welds and see how they can improve the weld. The afternoon was spent in the painting and corrosion resistance lab. We learned about the importance of paint and all the different types and applications of paints. We then went to the lab and got to preform some tests on sample pieces of painted steel. It was neat to see how those processes happen.

    Dinner tonight was Bi-Bim-Bab, which was a bowl of rice mixed with a ton of vegetables. It was complemented with some spicy sauce and some other goodies. They also brought out some pork cutlet which was stuffed with cheese. It was really good! We then headed back to the dorms and now we are just hanging out.

So this was dinner, we put the rice into the large bowl of goodies, and then added the sauce. The soup was made from bean sprouts and white raddish. The orange looking stuff was a version of Kimchi, and the bowl right above the kimchi was potatos and two quail eggs, which tasted just like a normal chicken egg. Below is a panorama of our table. This is not uncommon for the table to be this crowded, it happens almost every meal!

   Since this was so short, I asked Mackenzie to be our guest blogger. So from here down today is all her!

     Over the past couple days we have tried to put together a list of things that surprised us about things we saw and experienced, and also some cultural differences. So here is a list of 19 things (it was supposed to be 20 but I came up one short) that we found very interesting so far on our trip:

1. Everyone giggles a lot and often, in pretty much all situation.

2. They wear "house slippers" and they gifted us each a pair and we can never exactly figure out the correct rules and sometimes sneak around with shoes on shhhh!

3. While they eat lunch, they don't have anything to drink and then there is a water station by the exit door where they each line up, have a small drink of water, and then put the cup away and leave.

4. Some of the cars have little chunks of blue foam on the edge of the doors, we think it is to pad them from hitting walls/other cars.

5. Most of the girls wear wedges or heels at all times.

6. They eat pizza for breakfast, and not normal pizza either as we quickly found out. 

7. They don't use bottom sheets on their beds, they use a blanket that isn't even long enough and then safety pin the sides.

8. The Korean students who we are staying with almost always shower morning and night, and they use tiny towels.

9. Also the shower is the entire bathroom, you just push a button on the sink and it reroutes the water to the shower head which is conveniently mounted on the wall in a way which forces you to hold it the whole time with one hand.

10. They do age differently here, when you are born you are in your "first age" so we are all one year older here than in the US. 

11. Everyone uses umbrellas and rarely wears sunglasses, they didn't really know what rain jackets were even though rainy season started last night and it has been raining ever since.

12. Almost everyone at the company wears the same jacket as we were given as our uniform, from the shop workers all the way up to the higher positions.

13. There are fire extinguishers sitting on the ground in almost every single room or right outside in the hallways.

14. The driving laws are more like suggestions, they are very crazy drivers doing U-turns and honking everywhere and we haven't seen any police either.

15. They use metal chopsticks and hold them differently than we have all been taught back home, which makes it very challenging but we are trying very hard and getting much better!

16. It is very hard to find trash cans, inside buildings and especially outside. I thought I finally found one and it was actually an umbrella bucket.

17. Most doors open both ways.

18. The elevator buttons can be unselected by pushing it again, which is very convenient.

19. They eat kimchi for almost every meal, and some times in multiple forms in one meal. Lets just say it is not our favorite Korean food, and even if it sometimes looks like lasagna it definitely doesn't taste like it. 

Tomorrow should be more exciting because we are finally touring around the dry docks and ships under construction at the shipyards instead of inside through the labs. Sam is working on a guest blog too, coming soon!

-Mackenzie

     Before I hit post, I wanted to upload this picture first. So, right outside of the restaurant was this huge gorilla, We have this running joke now that Mackenzie has an imaginary boyfriend named Kim. So when we saw this gorilla, we jumped on the chance to mate her up with a physical man. So as you can see, there below is Mackenzie, with Kim the gorilla, and Sam third-wheeling.   (which we then had to explain the concept of a third wheel to the Koreans, because that is not something that happens here.)

Uniforms and Children's chopsticks

      Today was not the most exciting day at the shipyard. In the morning we were with the environmental research division and we learned about water and air pollution. There was a lot of chemical engineering going on in those labs, so we were a little out of our comfort zones, but it was cool to see how those two divisions aid in the production of a ship.
     The water division actually did a lot more than just watch out for the water pollution. They design desalinization plants, filter the ballast water, and they create potable water on ship vessels. They encompass a lot more that I would have thought going into their lab. At the end of their lecture we had some hot citron tea that came from a jelly type thing, it was strange that it didn't come from a tea bag, but it was still quite yummy.
    For lunch we had ramen noodles! Just like the kind that us college kids are used to! But I think the ramen that we had for lunch was much higher quality. Well, as much quality as you can add to ramen. It was a tad spicy, but it was still a good lunch.
     The afternoon was not too exciting, we got lectured for 2 hours or so about all the different types of welding equipment and how they are used. We then learned about how they are trying to improve the welding process, which was very interesting to hear. We got all dressed up in our full uniform and we headed to the welding research center. This is where they find new ways to weld and do quality control checks on the welds. It was a pretty cool place.

Our full uniforms! 

     We headed home and went to get some dinner. Tonight it was going to be Gim-bab. But we had to make a stop at the dollar store first so the Korean students could give us a gift. We had no idea what it was going to be.... But we followed them in. we all started dying of laughter when they stopped in front of our gifts. 

Beginner Chopsticks!!!!!

   We were having trouble learning the Korean way to use chopsticks. Apparently there are different ways to use them, and we were not using them the way the Koreans do.... so new chopsticks it was! 

     So we got to eat the gim-bab with our new chopsticks. The gim-bab was really good! It is kinda like a sushi roll, but the meat inside of it is all cooked. The standard fillings are carrots, eggs, rice, crab meat, and a pickle type thing. These were all accompanied by different meats, such as fried shrimp, pork, or tuna salad. It was really good! 

    After we got back to the dorms, we played a traditional Korean game with wood dice. It was cool to see the different types of games they play around the world. And then like any good student from the U of M, we started to teach them euchre. It was a little tough to explain it through the language barrier, but after about a half hour or so, they were starting to get the hang of it. I'm sure by the end of our three weeks here, they will be euchre champions!

Teaching euchre!

     It is getting late now, and after game night, I am super tired, so I am going to head to sleep! I will check in again tomorrow!

-  Jake 

Experiments and Pork Belly!

     Today was the second day at the yard, but the first day of actually getting into some cool stuff. We started off the morning in the Ocean Research Division and we got to see their wave flume. We learned about the differences between a regular wave, and the more realistic irregular wave. They put a scale model of a ship in the tank and we saw how the ship reacted to the oncoming waves.

     Lunch today was much better than yesterday, at least I thought so. It was a Korean take on spaghetti with a couple of Korean burgers on the side. The burgers were just burger patties that were absolutely drenched in barbecue sauce. There was also rice, as there is in almost every other meal here.

      After we finished our lunch, we still had about 40 minutes before we had to be back to our conference room, that has become our staging area and local headquarters when we are at the shipyard. So we took a short walk up a large, winding hill to the guest house. This house is used by ship owners when they come to the yard to check on the ship or to sign contracts. It is a very impressive, traditional Korean house that is built completely from wood and mud. There is not a single piece of steel or other types of fasteners! That is some solid engineering!

Here we are in the center of the guest house.

A small group shot of the Wolverines along with Dong-Hee in the back! Also, in this picture, we are wearing the top shirt of our uniform, along with our name tags. 

     We then went back to the wave generator, and set up for a contest. We split up into two teams and we had to change the ballast around on the ship to change the draft as well as the trim, which is how deep the ship is, and then how high the bow is in relation to the stern. The goal was to find a magic combination of draft and trim to achieve the smallest average response to the waves! I was on the team that won and we got a Korean fan for our efforts.

     Then we moved over to the vibration and noise reduction area. We got to see them perform 5 or 6 experiments that showed off all of their equipment that they use to test everything in order to perfect a vessel before it sails. We finished off the day at the yard by playing some euchre and writing in our training diaries, which we got issued today. We are required to write in the diary everyday about what we did and then what suggestions we have.

     We got back from the yard and went straight to dinner. Dinner was another interesting food experience here in Korea. The Korean students had explained to us earlier in the day that we were going to get 'pork belly' for dinner. This gave us a little anxiety during the day not knowing if we were going to be eating an actual stomach lining, or some pig intestine. We were totally unsure, but when we got to the restaurant, our pork belly turned out to be super thick strips of bacon! I was so excited! There was a little grill in the center of the table, so we got to cook our own food as well! It was so good!

     After dinner we took a short break and then headed down to the track and soccer field to get a little work out in. We ran, played a little bit of soccer and football, and just got some good exercise to end the day with. Now I am back up in my room writing this blog. I am looking forward to tomorrow as we are all getting more accustomed to the Korean culture and the time zone too!

- Jake

First Day at the Yard

Hi Everyone!

     So today was our first full day in South Korea. My day started out much earlier than it should have thanks to jet lag and the heat (the air conditioning turns itself off at night), but I'm hoping that I will get used to the time and the heat soon enough.

     We got up and out of the dorms by 8 and we headed over to a little bakery/ cafe place right off of campus called Paris Baguette, which did not sell anything french, which I thought was weird. But what was weirder was some of the food that we ate for breakfast, I had a pizza thing that had cheese, marinara sauce, slices of what looked to be a hotdog, and then there was some cooked corn sprinkled in between it all. It was quite a way to start the day.

     We then caught the bus which takes us the 45 minutes from the University of Ulsan over to HHI. HHI was a really cool place, we received our badges and headed to the cultural center to learn about HHI and its founder, Asan, who was a very accomplished man. Not only did he found Hyundai, but he organized the Olympics in 1988, and he ran for presidency, among other crazy, impressive things. After that, we got on another bus to get a quick tour of the shipyard, we saw where all of the shops were, a couple of the dry-docks and the work that was going on in them, and we got a gist of how the yard operates.

     After that we had lunch, and spent the rest of the time going through paperwork, getting some safety briefs, and getting issued our uniforms. Our uniforms are gray outfits; pants and shirt, with black, steel toed sneakers, along with a white hard hat. Hopefully I will be able to get some pictures up of that. But taking photos anywhere inside the yard is strictly prohibited. So I apologize if you were looking forward to seeing some of those. But I am going to see if I can get a picture of us in our uniforms.

    We left HHI and headed back to the dorms, we took an hour or so to relax, and then we headed out to get a micro tour of the campus, and then head out to dinner, which was amazing! I am just going to put some pictures below of dinner because I don't think I have the vocabulary to quite explain what we ate tonight. All I know is that I am not going to go hungry ever, and that food was really good!














Here are a couple of pictures of the NAME building at the UoU.

Above are a couple of pictures of the area just outside of the university. The top left is main intersection with the school and the main road. The picture on the right is just a street view of the many shops and other things that we saw as we walked to dinner. Bottom left is a picture of a bus that somebody converted into a Levis store. Just thought it was an interesting sight. 

             

Now this was dinner. We got to the place and we had to take off our shoes, as is custom for many places here, but we really needed to take them off because we were eating from the floor. Well, almost, we were sitting on the floor and the table was barely a foot high. This dinner place was a fondue type thing. But it wasn't fondue. Instead they heated up beef broth in this bowl in front of us which we then preceded to fill with lettuce and beef until it was cooked. Once the beef was cooked, we took it out and put it on top of our little rice paper thing. Then we put some veggies alongside the beef and folded it up like a mini burrito, which we then dipped in different sauces. After the mini burrito things were finished, we had these huge potsticker things, along with noodles. We finished off the dinner with some rice soup. Which was really good and I wish that I could have eaten more, but I was just too stuffed from all of the goodness eaten right before. 

Tomorrow we start our first day of tours and learning in the actual shops at HHI. I will let you know all about that when we get back tomorrow night!

-  Jake