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.)
