Week 3 -- CAN completion and Mt. Sikjangsan

Another good -- and productive -- week.

1. (What I learned about Korea)

I went up to Mt. Sikjangsan this week, and I saw some very nice trails and did some hiking. I ended up going about 3 km into the woods. It was a lot of fun. I found out later that this was known as one of the 8 most famous attractions in the city. I also found the temple section of the mountains, and I explored Gosansa and Sikjangsan temples. It was a good place to get photographs.

I also went and applied for my alien card (as well as to upgrade my visa to multiple entry, in case I later want to visit another country in East Asia during my stay here). So I learned how to do that and how to get to the Immigration Center.

Finally, as it was my birthday on Wednesday, Sean helped us get a cake, and I learned where to go to get cakes in Daejeon.

2. (Project status)

I extracted the CAN from the rest of the HUBO code early this week, and used the documentation to write a program that would test the CAN bus. Clayton wrote drivers for the CAN code, and when this was done, we sat down and debugged the system. It now works -- we can send and receive from the CAN bus.

3. (Picture of the week)

Sikjangsan temple on Mt. Sikjangsan.

4. (What I learned about myself)

I learned that I can hike through the woods pretty well. I also learned that I really like these '8 Daejeon attractions,' and so I'll try to go visit more of them in the coming weeks (next up, I think, is Lake Daecheonghosu. Expo Park, literally next door to Nuri Hall, is on the list as well, but that one's so close that I want to see some of the further ones first).

5. (New people I met)

I didn't meet any new people this week.

6. (Current events)

North Korea claims to have launched a missile a few days ago. America is denying this claim. It's a little bit strange to think that we're relatively close to a hostile country, but at the same time it doesn't feel like we're in imminent danger or anything. Even setting aside whether the missile got into orbit or not, it just seems hard to imagine an actual attack on the city. Some of it may be due to language disconnect, though -- it's hard for me to tell if average people in the street are nervous about it, since I have trouble understanding them.