Photo Journal 4

This is a picture of the sign for the National Folk Museum of Korea, as you can most likely make out for yourself, attached to the Gyeongbokgyong Palace in Seoul.  It is a standard sign, but I took note of it for the three languages written on it.  I love this picture for the font of the Korean text, but to a Korean friend of mine, "it's boring."  In some sense, I'm still a foreign outsider in this country, wide-eyed at the novelty and mystery of the language and customs here, but I do also feel some familiarity with Korean now.

I started learning Hangul about a month before I flew to Korea, so the language started out as something of my own rather than something purely academic that I would be graded on.  I think that set the stage for my fondness for the language, but really it was Korean itself that has gotten me so interested in it.  Walking through Seoul, I can recognize the cadence of Korean and I can read emotion and inflection in people's voices, even if I can't understand exactly what they're saying.  I feel like I have some grasp at the pronunciation of Korean letters; when I say something simple to someone, like "hello, how much does this cost?" in a shop, they don't hesitate to say a stream of Korean to me.  So it must sound like I know what I'm doing.  And I've mastered the essentials, like "hello," "thank you," "goodbye," and some question words.  It's a powerful feeling, to be able to have an entire (simple) conversation in the language- to have some taste of fluency.

Beyond that, I've never felt that Korean was particularly difficult.  And maybe that thinking is the reason that it never has been.  Of course, the elegance of the alphabet makes a huge difference.  I can't tell you what a pleasure it is to be able to read the language, even if I don't know what the words mean.  Of course there is always a thrill when the Korean word is the same as the English word.  I've had such a great time making the language my own, even if ends up being a small taste of actual classroom learning, including the vocabulary and grammar structures that I haven't been able to pick up in real world interactions.

Weekly Report 6

1. What did you learn about Korea this week?

This picture is from our trip to Gyeongju last week, but I didn't learn the significance of the pig until this week.  This week, after flying back to Seoul from Jeju Island, Yee Ling, Sara, Mike, and I shopped in Myong-dong for a while.  This time, I noticed all of the pig keychains and charms everywhere.  There were actually keychains for every animal in the zodiak, but the golden pig especially.  I asked around, and learned that Koreans put a lot of stock in the Chinese zodiak.  The year of the golden pig is especially lucky, and parents even plan to have their children in that year in the hopes that the children will have lucky lives.  There is also some belief in reading blood types like horoscopes; they believe that some blood types will be better paired with some blood types than others.  It is common in Korea to ask someone for their blood type.

2. Summarize your project status.

This week, I collaborated with Sara, Liz, and Peter to gather photos, videos, and ideas on content for our 3 minute video.  We split up the work by topic and made plans for combining our work later.  I then started drafting my culminating report on the program.  I also packed and said my goodbyes to everyone in the lab and at KAIST.

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

This shop is the convenience store on every street corner all over Korea.  I chose it for my photo of the week because, over my time here, this has become a familiar and dear sight to me.  I'm surprised at how much South Korea has come to feel like home.  Despite the language barrier, I have come to feel like less of an outsider, to feel like I belong to some extent.  I know my way around KAIST, Daejeon, and Seoul, and that makes them feel like they are my own.  

4. What did you learn about yourself this week?

I learned that I enjoy speed and danger and the accompanying rush of adrenaline.  Sara, Mike, and I rented ATVs on an island off of Jeju and had a hell of a time tearing around along the coast.  I've never had the chance to do something like that before, and I really loved it.

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

Our last day in Jeju was a bit rainy, but we were determined to find a waterfall, so we caught a taxi and had him drive us out to a remote one on our tourist map.  On our way off of the site, though, we realized just how remote it was.  There was a mile walk back on a dirt road just to get to a paved one.  And then it started to rain harder.  We made our way to a parking lot (also dirt) and found someone in his car.  He came out and asked us where our umbrellas were (in broken English).  When we shrugged, he pulled umbrellas out of his trunk and gave them to us, then offered us a ride.  While we drove, we chatted and our new friend told us that he had an American friend who had been in Korea to teach, but had gone back home.  He said he missed his friend, and that's why he offered to drive us.  We talked more about his life (he was born and raised on Jeju Island) and said our thankful goodbyes at our next stop.  I will miss that kind of kindness and sense of community when I leave Korea.

Weekly Report 5

1. What did you learn about Korea this week?

This week's weekend adventure was a trip to Gyeongju arranged by the KISS program at KAIST. We (a small group of KISS students and a student mentor of the program) had the luxury of our own tour guide, van, and van driver to take us around and teach us about a bunch of the historical sites in this historical city. I learned that, of 307 national treasures in South Korea, 36 of which are located in Gyeongju. One of these treasures, and one of our stops on the Gyongju tour, was Cheomseongdae (meaning 'star gazing platform' in Korean), an astronomical observatory built under Queen Seondeok of the Silla dynasty when Gyeongju was the capital of South Korea.

Another stop, the Bulguksa temple, houses seven national treasures:

Dabotap (Many Treasure Pagoda),

Seokgatap (Sakyamuni Pagoda),

Yeonhwagyo (Lotus Flower Bridge) and Chilbogyo (Seven Treasures Bridge),

Cheongungyo (Blue Cloud Bridge) and Baegungyo (White Cloud Bridge),

and two Bhudda statues that we were not allowed to photograph. It was awesome to see monumental pieces of Korea's history in their actual ancient architectural setting, rather than preserved within a museum as some treasures were.

2. Summarize your project status.

This week I finished my robot simulations for the emotions sadness, anger, and disgust.  I also wrote up the research behind my decisions in the process.  Here is a sample. the simulation and write-up for Anger:

Anger

            I began with the forward transfer of weight (de Meijer, 1989; Coulson, 2004) and a backwards tilt of the upper body in order to create the angular posture of anger (Coulson 2004).  I chose many intermediate positions both directly and indirectly forward to simulate the aggressive movement characteristic of this emotion.  The inclusion of both direct and indirect movements reflects de Meijer’s inconclusive findings on directed movement in anger (1989).  I included an upward head tilt to create the jutting chin characteristic of anger (Coulson 2004).  I chose the fastest time step (1) to make the motions as fast and strong as possible (de Meijer 1989).

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 drinks that I collected from the campus convenience store, campus vending machines, and the cafeteria.  I took the picture because I wanted to capture at least some of the awesome variety available to the thirsty student.  The canned drinks range from oaky teas to soda to coconut juice drinks with chunks of coconut in it.  I love how vending machines here are so reasonably priced, but at first I was put off by the drink can size.  It may be hard to tell from the picture, but the cans are a bit taller than those in the US, but much slimmer.  As I came to realize, Koreans are smart about their food.  They don't drink water during meals because that dilutes the stomach acid and impedes digestion.  They treat soda as a dessert.  And they have very reasonable portions for their food.  After a while, I realized that I was getting just as much drink as I needed and no more.  The same went for meal portions, which were also shockingly small to me at first, but that I found to be more filling than I expected.

4. What did you learn about yourself this week?

While in Korea, I've been treated as an honored guest both in the lab and as an American foreigner in this country.  I've been stared at, I've been told that I'm pretty for my height and my blue eyes, and I've been approached with interest more than I ever was in the States.  It is a lot of positive attention.  This week, I've been tempted to dye my hair blonde to achieve the trifecta of desirable foreign features, but I realized that I wouldn't want to get attention that way.  It is one thing to be appreciated for what I am, but I believe it is something else to go after that attention, to change myself for it.  I learned that I wouldn't want to do the latter.

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

Our Gyeongju trip included an overnight stay in a traditional Korean guesthouse, with sliding paper panels for doors, mats on the floor for beds, and a gracious host living with her family in the next house over.  Our host also served us breakfast on picnic tables between the two houses, which is where I met this young girl.  I asked her for her name (in Korean, thanks to my language class at KAIST!), but I couldn't understand her speech.  I spoke to her a bit more in Korean, which I could tell that she understood, but she didn't answer.  She scooted over right up to me on the bench and watched me eat.  It was sweet.

She is pouting in this picture because her mother (our host) was demanding that she go inside and leave us alone.  She whined and refused and dragged her feet but eventually did as she was told.  It was funny to see, because I knew the gestures and the script from so many similar interactions in the States.  I could make out a few of the words, such as 'Ande!' (which means 'Stop it!'), and JB translated the rest.  "She's being stubborn," he narrated.  Little kids really are the same the whole world over.