Weekly Report 3

1. What did you learn about Korea this week?

I have learned of Admiral Yi Sun-sin, whose statue I saw outside of City Hall in Seoul.  He is famous and beloved in Korea for staving off Japanese invasion for seven years.  He never lost a battle.  

2. Summarize your project status.

This week, I wrote up my research report, or literature review, on emotions attributed to specific body motions in order to create emotional expressions in the mobile platform robot in KAIST lab.  

3. Take photos and select one to be the photo of the week. Describe it and why you shot and selected it.

 This is a picture of the Gyeonghoe-ru Pavillion in Gyeongbok Palace in Seoul.  I went sightseeing with Liz, Peter, Sara, and Danielle this past Saturday, and it was simply awesome.  I felt like such a tourist, but I was awed by every perspective of the palace grounds.  I must have taken about 200 pictures, but I chose this one for my photo of the week because it has not only the architecture that I find so fun and colorful, but also the nature that gave the palace such a serene feel and the mountains that gave a backdrop to the whole scene.  The first thing I ever heard about Seoul was that it is set in one giant valley ringed by mountains, so it was exciting to really be there and see the mountains surrounding us at a distance.

4. What did you learn about yourself this week?

I learned that I really love sightseeing, but only when I do it for myself.  I have gone sightseeing with family on vacations before and ended up miserable and hating the experience, but now I believe that that was because I wasn't discovering things for myself.  I enjoyed just being in the place when I visited Gyeongbok Palace, and that was possible because I went (more or less) at my own pace and for my own benefit.  

5. Who are the new people (Koreans not affiliated with the Hubo Lab) that you met this week?

When I went shopping at Myeong-dong market in Seoul (also on Saturday), I spent a long time at one of the wallet displays.  A Korean man came over and started talking to me in English, but I switched to Korean to introduce myself.  He kindly stuck to elementary Korean, and I was able to understand and answer a few of his questions about myself.  It was my longest conversation in Korean with a citizen, and I'll admit that I was proud of myself.

Photo Journal 3

This sweet little building is Mr. Kim's Friends Guest House, a hostel in Seoul where travelers "come as a guest, leave as a friend."  It's true- the staff and guests were the nicest and warmest group of people I've met in a long time.  The hostel itself was great, but Saturday was an awful night for me.

These pictures are not my own- they're from the hostel's website; on Saturday night, I went out with Peter, Liz, Danielle, Danielle's friend Loanne (I don't know how it's spelled), and a couple of her guy friends visiting from Singapore.  I took nothing but my money and ID so that I wouldn't have to worry about losing anything; this ended up being a terrible decision, in part because I didn't have a camera with me to document the night.  We went out drinking (Soju is deadly), then to dinner (meat and cheese is delicious always), and finally (at about 2am), we went to a club where foreigners get in for free.  I enjoyed the club for about three minutes, then decided it wasn't for me.  

Peter did what he could to make sure I knew my way back to the hostel, and I was pretty confident that I understood.  I was just really ready to get out of there.  I was fine getting from the club to Hongik Station (the first landmark on my route to the hostel), despite not knowing where the club even was.  It involved asking several strangers and a couple of taxi drivers for directions ("Hongik University Station odi-iitsoyo?"-  "Where is Hongik University Station?")  From the station, I followed Peter's directions within a block of the hostel- but then I just could not find it.

For a while, I retraced my steps and tried to think of anywhere along my short route I might have strayed.  It was 2:30 in the morning at this point, and the area was very quiet.  I started asking people if they knew of the hostel ("Mr. Kims Friends Guest House arrayo?") so that I could ask for directions, but no one did.  And passersby were becoming fewer and farther between.  Seoul becomes less and less bilingual at night.

Finally, I wandered through a nearby hostel (hotel-style with an elevator and bleak white hallways) until I heard English or found the check-in room.  I ended up waking and getting directions from Ann of Anne's Guest House at three in the morning.  Mercifully, she spoke English.  With a printed map, I had no trouble getting to my hostel a few blocks away, where I gathered my things, curled up in a bunk bed, and slept in.

That night shook me up.  For the first time, I was alone in Korea.  I had no phone, no directions, and no adaptive knowledge of Korean language.  For the first time, I felt far from home.  

I don't think I ever felt unsafe, but I did panic a little.  It seems silly and tame to look back on it now; I was unprepared, exhausted, overstimulated from the night, and lost just across the street from my hostel.  But without the security blanket of another English speaker or my electronic device, I felt completely in that moment, as scary as it was.  

Next time, I'll make sure I'm prepared for inner city adventures, no matter who is leading the expedition. But maybe I can go without quite so many safety nets in the future.

Photo Journal 2

This is my view of Myeong-dong market in Seoul, taken from a third-floor shop window.  It's exactly what I had hoped to find and experience when I imagined my trip to Korea not too many weeks ago.  It is almost bizarre to come to a foreign country and actually have my expectations met.  Of course, Seoul isn't quite as crowded as it was made out to be, and the customs aren't as different as I thought they would be (or at least not around me.  I can only see how people choose to act around a foreigner).

Anyway, when I was packing for this trip and imagining what it would be like, I'll admit, I had a very romanticized idea of travel.  I've heard about all the great writers being inspired by Parisian fountains or Grecian ruins, and some part of me anticipated that kind of artistic inspiration.  And drastic change within myself as a result of being in a completely different place.  But what I have found instead is even less time to reflect in solitude here than at home for a summer.  I think the Greats had such transformations as a result of complete immersion in a new place with no communication with home.

It's obvious that technology in the world today makes cutting all ties impractical, and damn near impossible.  If I was taking this trip only for me, I would forego the blog in favor of my leather-bound journal, and try out paper mail for a while.  It's hard to be completely in a new place when I'm so thoroughly grounded in my support system at home.  Of course, there are advantages.  I'm never in danger of losing myself, and I'm never homesick.  I have the world at my fingertips as long as I have internet.

Then of course there is globalization.  While I love the security of falling back on English in this practically bilingual country, it doesn't feel like a complete language immersion.  People recognize my home state when I tell them where I'm from, and they know more about American politics than I do.  It means that I don't feel like I'm away from my world at home- the world is so much smaller than I imagined.

I'm sorry not to have the life-shifting, self-reforming adventure that I had romanticized, but I can't say I've been too willing to give up my language or internet connections either.

Daily Log 4

Tuesday (6/15)

Workworkworkworkwork.  In lab all day.  We also got to see a few of the graduate students work on a point-light display recording for one of the quadruped robots.  I was thrilled to see the setup because I have seen a few recordings in my psychology classes focused on body movements involved in behavior and recognition.  We also got to see the autonomous mobile platform in action with a foam head attached, and everyone agreed that it had a lot of personality.  That was inspiring, because my research is meant to define the specifics of body language in order to construct specific personalities for the mobile platform robot.

~*~

Wednesday (6/16)

A lot of time spent on blogging and Korean homework before class, then class where we learned how to ask where things and people are (which is going to be very useful as we start traveling further from our relative familiar surroundings in Daejeon) and how to read numbers like addresses and telephone numbers, then out to dinner with Dr. Oh and the rest of his American guests to a Korean style Japanese restaurant with Professor Dong-Soo Kwon of the HRI (Human-Robot Interaction, if you recall) Research Center.  Dinner was fantastic, complete with soju, a wide range of raw fish, live octopus tentacles, whole anchovies, sea urchin, and bottom crawlers.  

Of course, after dinner came the entertainment; we all walked down the stairs and into the back of the building for more norabang!  I love Korea.  

Weekly Report 2

1. What did you learn about Korea this week?

I learned that Korea is one of the few countries that can name the inventor of its language.  The Korean alphabet, Hangeul, was invented by King Sejong the Great and his scholars in 1443 in order to improve literacy in Korea.  

According to my Korean language reference book, "Hangeul consists of 40 letters, of which 21 letters are vowels and 19 letters consonants.  The vowels of Hangeul were developed according to Confucianism's three basic components of the universe: Heaven, Earth, and Man.  ㅇ, ㅡ, and ㅣ represent the circular shape of the heaven, the earth, and man, respectively.  The consonants of Hangeul were designed to reflect the place and manner of articulation.  For example, 'ㄴ' represents the shape of the tongue body when it is pronounced.  For these reasons, Hangeul is widely acclaimed by linguists as an ingenious invention."

Learning this was an epiphany for me.  It explained why ㄴ, the n consonant, and ㄱ, the k consonant, are represented with those symbols and why they are the inverse of each other.

2. Summarize your project status.

Being sick was a setback, so I am about a week behind in my Research Plan.  I did get a few articles printed and read the week of 6/7-6/13, but I won't have a written consolidated report for Choel until the end of this work week, 6/14-6/18.

3. Take photos and select one to be the photo of the week. Describe it and why you shot and selected it.

This is a picture of my health clinic goodie bag, its contents, and the vitamin C candies and green tea lozenges that I have lived on for the week.  I took this picture and chose to include it here because it represents how I spent the week and how well people took care of me here.  The doctor in the clinic was very warm and eager to help.  When I first went in, she only took my temperature and my description of my symptoms, and gave me the bag and description of the pills.  Sara brought me food once or twice, and the girls on the hall were happy to lend me the thermometer and flu medicine before I could get to the clinic.  People in the lab were also supportive when I couldn't come in to work and welcomed me back enthusiastically.

Here's the cute detail on the bag:

4. What did you learn about yourself this week?

If my body's shutting down and recharging this week is any indication, then I can conclude that my first week in Korea was too much adventuring.  This second week was too uneventful, so I'm trying hard to find the balance that I need in the third week of my time here.  I now know how much I can put myself out there in terms of socialization and planning, but I also know my limit.  

5. Who are the new people (Koreans not affiliated with the Hubo Lab) that you met this week?

I met the mother of the male lead in Hong Gil Dong after Thursday's performance.  She was an older Korean woman who did not speak any English, but was very happy to hear that Sara and I were fans of the cast (we told her through a bilingual audience member who we also chatted with after the show).  It was so cool to find a real use for the introductions that we learned in Korean class, and I felt like we really did make her happy.

Daily Log 3

Where was I?  Oh yes.

~*~

Friday (6/4)

Early to lab, going through my printed research and looking at related articles cited in them, then my first real Korean class.  Class is a lot of dictation and repetition, but I can tell that it's working because the letters and words run through my mind as I fall asleep at night.

For dinner, Sara, Mike, and I went to the weekly KAIST International (KI) House social and an introductory Korean language tutoring session.  We all squeezed into one room to sign in and sign up and get name tags before being moved into a bigger space for dinner.  I had been warned ahead of time that Korean pizza can be strange, with random toppings and strange sauce substitutions like cheese whiz, but the pizza was actually pretty tame.  KI House served cheese pizza with perhaps some unusual spices in the crust and side dishes of fruit salad and rice cakes.  After dinner, the whole crowd moved outside for an unfamiliar game similar to musical chairs.  One of the tutors played a guitar and sang while we formed groups and did circular conga lines, then, when the song ended, he would call out a number and we would have to reform groups with that many people.  Anyone left out had to kneel in the center of the field.  The game made me comfortable with everyone, and I was settled in when we went back inside for tutoring.  Sara and I originally identified ourselves as beginner level Korean learners, but got kicked out of the beginner group for knowing the alphabet.  We ended up with our own tutor, who went over two of the Korean number systems with us.

After dinner and tutoring, a bunch of our KISS friends in attendance organized a group to go out into Daejeon, so Sara and I tagged along to a norabang, or karaoke place, for a couple of hours.

Even after karaoke, we went out to the international bar in Daejeon, the Santa Clause Bar.  I had the good fortune to team with the pool shark of our group in a friendly game of pool against a couple of guys from France.  With my partner's coaching and expertise, we won and I got just a tiny bit better at pool.  Then we called it quits and I was among the stragglers going back to the dorms for the night.

~*~

Saturday (6/5)

I slept in, then started on my second adventure to Seoul for Sara and me to see the Korean musical Hong Gil Dong!  It started with some last minute scrambled planning with our Korean friends Bill and Yumi, but then catching the express bus with Sara and Liz went smoothly.  It is ridiculously easy to manage public transportation in Korea, and taxis are wonderfully inexpensive.  I feel so empowered by the simple ability to get where I want to go without being afraid of getting lost or feeling unsafe.  Anyway, we got to Seoul early and did some trinket shopping in the subway station before meeting Yumi.  We had no trouble meeting up and making our way to the National Museum of Korea (http://www.museum.go.kr/EngMain.do, if you want to learn more) where the musical was being performed.

The four of us had dinner in the Museum restaurant (my first fancy Korean meal- so much food!).  I had a pork rib soup/stew and successfully asked the waiter for more water in Korean (Mool chooseiyo.  Kamsamnida!) and Yumi was impressed.  It was a proud moment.

Sara and I split up from Liz and Yumi after dinner and made our way to the theater.  The performance was spectacular, even though we couldn't understand the language.  I thought the costumes were beautiful and elaborate, but in retrospect, they were most likely traditional historical outfits, as Hong Gil Dong is basically a Robin Hood legend based on real historical figures in Korea.  The musical had dancing, martial arts, and spectacular scores and vocalists.  Sara and I were so blown away that we hung around after the show.  On the way out, Sara did her friendly approaching-and-talking-to-strangers thing that I am too shy to do.  We ended up talking to one of the show's sound booth technicians who was delighted to hear that we were foreign fans of the musical.  He spoke enough English and we spoke enough Korean to introduce ourselves and have a short conversation.  He gave us his contact information and the go-ahead to talk with the show's director about the show possibly going to America.

We waited to talk to the director, and as we did, the cast came into the auditorium for a staff meeting.  It was exciting and nerve wracking to see the behind-the-scenes business, but we weren't really sure if we were supposed to be there.  In any case, the meeting was short, and we got to talk to the main female lead, Yoojin.  It was our luck again that she spoke fluent English and that she was so friendly and kind.  We got a couple of autographs from the cast as well as Yoojin's contact information and an offer to give us a 50% discount on tickets if we wanted to see the show again.

When the cast and crew left for the night, so did we.  We met up with Liz and Yumi who had gone shopping during the show, and decided to go home rather than try to find a bathhouse or hostel to sleep in.

~*~

Sunday (6/6)

My first true down day of sleeping, eating, reading, and Korean homework.  Of course, that night was the beginning of my illness.  My fever started that night, but friends on the hall found medicine for me and I borrowed a thermometer from one of the KISS advisors upstairs.  My temperature wasn't too high, and the campus clinic is closed on weekends, so I stuck it out in bed.

~*~

Monday (6/7)

My fever broke in the morning, but then the congestion and exhaustion set it.  I slept all day.

~*~

Tuesday (6/8)

Still sick, but I felt better after sleeping in and eating lunch.  I made some headway on reading through my research and finally met Peter, who had arrived that Sunday.

~*~

Wednesday (6/9)

Early to lab, lunch with lab friends.  Caught up on my Korean homework and went to class.  Class was difficult to get through because I was still exhausted and coughing, but the time went relatively quickly.  I went to bed soon after class.

~*~

Thursday (6/10)

Back in lab early to make some headway on my research before going back to Seoul for our encore viewing of Hong Gil Dong.  Sara and I were lucky to make it to this showing, which was the last one with the cast that we loved.

~*~

Friday (6/11)

I went to the clinic on this morning and was given a medical goodie bag with twice-daily pills, cough syrup, and cough drops.  Then back to bed.

~*~

Saturday (6/12), and Sunday (6/13)

Still sleeping.  Lots of coughing.  I was sorry to miss the first World Cup game that Korea played on Saturday night, but I heard really cool things about the cheering all around Daejeon and Seoul.  

~*~

Monday (6/14)

Back to the clinic for medicine specifically for my irritated tonsils, then back to work!  I made a good amount of headway on my research reading, homework, and blog before class.  Class was difficult because I didn't know the required vocabulary and so it took me longer to pick up on the sentence structures that we went over using that vocabulary.  Sara helped me through it, though, and after class we headed straight back to lab.  Dinner was uneventful in the undergraduate cafeteria, but I'm starting to see the patterns in the menu, and I am discouraged by the short cycle in the variety.  I think we will be exploring other food options on and near campus in the next couple of weeks.  

We went to the weekly presentations meeting in the lab, which was illuminating in that we got to see the presentation slides in English, but was less helpful in that the Korean students in the lab speak Korean to present and discuss.  In any case, I was very productive in that setting and stayed late to continue my catch-up marathon.

Photo Journal 1

Can you spot me in this picture?  It shouldn't be too difficult.  People in the crowd didn't have too much trouble doing it.  This picture is one that Sara took of me in a park in Ttukseom Resort, Seoul, somewhere along the Han River that runs through and splits the city.  Anyway, it was a terribly hot and sunny day, so everyone was covering up in order to avoid tans (pale skin is attractive here).  I wore my long-sleeved over shirt in order to avoid sunburn and sunglasses so that I could stand to open my eyes in the sunlight.  The former made me fit in, because everyone was avoiding the sun, but I felt like the latter made me stand out.  Almost no one else wore sunglasses.  Looking on from behind tinted lenses, I finally felt like an outsider.

It isn't that people treat me poorly or shut me out, but rather that they have an understanding, an in that I don't have.  In fact, they looked at me with interest.  When I introduced myself that day as an American, and as a student at KAIST, they were impressed.  I get a lot of complements on my eyes, which are blue (very unusual and desirable in Korea), and on my height (which is unusual for a girl in the US, but even more so in Korea).  So if anything, the way people treat me differently is with favor.

It's strange to have things flipped around so much, where the values placed on things are so different.  In Korea, the status hierarchy is based on age seniority, not wealth.  Beauty is perhaps even more preferential in Korea than in the USA; plastic surgery is common among idols, especially one that is meant to give women the crease in the eyelid that is so common in westerners.  I find myself getting special treatment for being American, a KAIST student, and for having a lot of beauty traits here.  I can't lie- I like it, but it feels strange to be praised all of a sudden for things about me that had been so ordinary in my community at home.  It seems too good to be true when I'm given status without having worked for and earned it in a sense.

I'm enjoying standing out (in a good way) for a change, but it also means that I know I'll never be a true member of the crowd.

Weekly Report 1

1. What did you learn about Korea this week?

I have learned that KAIST is a very big deal in Korea.  There is mandatory military service for all male citizens of Korea, but many KAIST students are exempt for going here to get their PhDs.  KAIST is a highly esteemed university, where I've met brilliant postgraduates in programs from physics to nuclear engineering.  Whenever I told someone in Seoul that I am a student at KAIST, I got shocked and admiring looks and often the compliment that I am very smart.  It makes me feel like I belong, that I have status, even as a foreigner in this country.

2. Summarize your project status.

This week, I formed an understanding of the work being done in the lab, and where my research can fit into it, by sitting in on the weekly presentations and by conferencing with Dr. Jun Ho Oh and Cheol Son.  I have also updated my research project plan:

Lauren Neudorfer Plan, as of 5/19/2010

---------------------

The Psychology of Humanoid Robotics: Communication and Intention

Week 1

   Research project conception with BMC advisory

   Write a proposal and plan

Week 2

   Orientation at Drexel

   Meet Jaemi Hubo, and Drexel Team

Week 3

   First week at KAIST

   Meet KAIST Team

   Explore Hubo's capabilities

Week 4

   Explore the idea of the Uncanny Valley

   What behaviors does Hubo do well? Which ones seem   

   artificial? Why?

   What could be done to make Hubo seem more human?

Week 5

   Explore Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

Week 6

   Explore "Social Robots"

   What sensors and behaviors does a robot need to be able   

   to communicate and signal intentions?

Week 7

   Explore Computer Vision

Week 8

   Summary write-up

   Last week at KAIST

Week 9

   Project debrief with advisory back in US

   Presentation

Week 10

   Project debrief with Drexel

Lauren Neudorfer Plan, as of 5/26/2010

---------------------

The Psychology of Humanoid Robotics: Emotion, Personality, and Communication through Facial Expression

Week 1

   Research project conception with advisory on campus

   Write a proposal and plan

Week 2

   Orientation at Drexel

   Meet Jaemi Hubo, and Drexel Team

   Research Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)

   Introduction to Bryan Kobe’s Hubo Face LED display

Week 3

   First week at KAIST

   Meet KAIST Team

   Explore Hubo's capabilities

   Learn about current efforts to create emotional  

   expression in the robots

Week 4

   Research past experiments done on human perception of

   robotic expression

   What factors influence that perception?

Week 5

   Research microexpressions and muscle activation in

   facial expression

   What are the crucial mechanics of facial expression?

Week 6

   Design facial expressions and minimal animations for

   happiness, anger, and sadness on a 5x20 grid using

   MatLab

Week 7

   Research past experiments on emotive gestures in

   Robotics

   How can gestures complement or complicate facial

   expressions?

Week 8

   Summary write-up

   Last week at KAIST

Week 9

   Project debrief with advisory back in US

   Presentation

Week 10

   Project debrief with Drexel

Lauren Neudorfer Plan, as of 6/3/2010

---------------------

The Psychology of Humanoid Robotics: Robotic Body Language

Week 1

   Research project conception with advisory on campus

   Write a proposal and plan

Week 2

   Orientation at Drexel

   Meet Jaemi Hubo, and Drexel Team

   Research Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) in order to

   understand the key issues therein

Week 3

   First week at KAIST

   Meet KAIST Team

   Gather research materials

Week 4

   Read through the research materials

   Prepare and present summaries and trends

Week 5

   Work with Cheol to quantify the findings

Week 6

   Research facial expressions that pair with the body

   language cues

Week 7

   Summarize and present my findings

   Design animations for each of the universal emotions:

   happiness, anger, sadness, disgust, and fear

Week 8

   Summary write-up

   Last week at KAIST

Week 9

   Project debrief with advisory back in US

   Presentation

Week 10

   Project debrief with Drexel

3. Take photos and select one to be the photo of the week. Describe it and why you shot and selected it.

This is not a picture of a real person.  It is a traffic scarecrow.  I took this picture in Seoul this weekend, and it made me do a double-take at the time.  I chose this as my picture of the week because it is so representative of all the things that I find fascinating in Korea.  I take notice of all the little things that people do differently here than in the west, or at least in the States.  And that's the beauty of life here, that it's so easy to notice and enjoy the little things.

4. What did you learn about yourself this week?

This week, I've learned that I am a very independent person.  Traveling to Korea meant navigating the world on my own, or at least without an authority figure.  I was surprised at how easily I took responsibility for myself in the unknown without any fear or homesickness.

And now, in this collectivistic society where strangers care so much about other strangers, I find myself at a striking contrast.  I would like to think that I would help someone in need, and I have often stopped to help people that look lost on my own campus, but I definitely draw a harder line between my life and the lives of others.  Even at Bryn Mawr there is a culture of group unity, where I often wait for my friends before going to a meal in order to eat with them.  What I've learned since coming here is that I feel like those ties are a burden at times.  I enjoy walking and eating by myself just as much as in a group.  I've even found that I prefer small groups to large ones, but perhaps that is a different issue.

5. Who are the new people (Koreans not affiliated with the Hubo Lab) that you met this week?

We (Sara, Liz, and I) spent a good amount of time with Bill and Yumi this week between our trips off campus, playing pool on campus, and hanging out in Seoul.  We also spent one evening this week tutoring three KAIST students who approached Sara and me to ask for English tutoring sessions.  

Daily Log 2

Well, my ambition of writing daily posts has thus far failed miserably. Never before has by life held up to the mantra of "Work Hard, Play Hard," but I'm enjoying every minute of this organized chaos. I have been waking up early and getting back late without a boring moment between.

~*~

Monday (5/31)

Sara, Liz, and I woke bright and early to register with the International Relations Office. We went through the bureaucracy and forms and came out of it all with Korean bank accounts and key cards to get us into all of the academic buildings on campus. It took time to trek back and forth across campus, but we met a group of other summer students from the boys' dorm which was also jumping through hoops and the time passed quickly from there. It was interesting to learn that most international students in the KAIST International Summer School (KISS) program are from Singapore through exchange programs at their home universities.

At noon, we made our way back to the lab, and back to work. I continued my research on simulated facial expressions in robots until Korean class at 2. We impressed the professor with our limited knowledge of Korean (the 'hello,' 'nice to meet you,' 'my name is _____,' and alphabet literacy from our two-day crash course at Drexel taught by a Korean grad student in DASL), and most likely intimidated the other students. The professor seems incredibly sweet and animated, which I think will make class warm and fun. I was so nerdily excited to get my Korean language work and resource books!

At 3, we moved to the next building over for orientation. We were given snacks and powerpoint presentations as well as personal invitations to groups on campus, such as the KI house which does one-on-one Korean tutoring sessions for free. It was comforting to meet the coordinators of the program as well as student mentors who could help us out in a bind or just hang out with us if we liked.

Dinner was delicious as usual, but we didn't linger in the cafeteria for too long. We went back to the lab in time for the weekly meeting where each student presents his or her progress. The presentations were first in Korean with detailed explanations and feedback from the peers, but then the students did short presentations in English to introduce us to their topics. Dr. Jun Ho Oh also asked each of us to introduce ourselves and our research topics to the group, then matched us up with his students so that we could collaborate and learn with more experienced engineers.

After presentations, at about 10pm, we got in touch with a KAIST student friend of a friend from school and decided to meet right then. As soon as we had introduced ourselves to Bill, and he to us, he proposed to take us out for drinks. We walked off campus to a traditional bar, where we had makkoli (an approximated romanization of the word), a rice wine, and pig's feet salad as well as side-dish servings of ice cream, corn cream salad, cornflake rings, black noodles, and yogurt and fruit salad. We all got better at speaking the other's language as the night went on, and I felt so at home with the company. We came home extremely late, but ecstatically exhausted.

~*~

Tuesday (6/1)

Breakfast then registering for an overnight field trip to Gyeongju (a historical city) then lab at 10:30 to meet with Dr. Jun Ho Oh. He consulted with us, gave us our new headquarters (a gorgeous room with a desk big enough for three and a whole wall of windows), and advised us a little on how to begin our projects.

I met with my coworking graduate student, Cheol Son, to learn about his work in personality programming in more depth so that I could work most efficiently and effectively to find useful research for him.  I had just enough time to start on research before it was time to meet for lunch with Bill. The four of us went off-campus to his friend's restaurant, the Pasta House, and had some impromptu Korean lessons.

(This picture is us on the Endless Road- the straight stretch of road that constitutes an entire fifth of the campus perimeter. It was fondly nicknamed the Endless Road because, when you have had too much to drink, you can run and run and run along it and never get to the end.)

~*~

Wednesday (6/2) (National Voting Day in Korea- Holiday)

Rest and recuperation!

~*~

Thursday (6/3)

We woke up ready to work with a vengeance.  Early breakfast and diving into research.  I spent all day in the lab collecting a thorough literature review of robotic bodily expression of emotion, or robotic body language.  The goal is to create vitality and personality in this robot:

In later models, Cheol aims to add facial expressions and gestures, but this robot allows for a lot of body language with its 7 degrees of freedom (DOF)- meaning that it has 7 ways to move at its joints.

For dinner, Sara, Liz, and I met up with Bill and his best friend Yumi.  Dinner in the undergraduate cafeteria was still delicious to me, but those who have been here longer maintain that it's boring and terrible compared to food outside of campus.  I don't think I'll get sick of it in six weeks, but we'll see!  After dinner, we played pool for a while.  I lost every game, but had a fantastic time playing around with them.

It was a late night in the lab, but my bed was all the more comfortable for it.