Week 7 -- Homecoming and Ppuri

1. (What I learned about Korea)

Saturday was Homecoming for the lab, so I got to see how Koreans celebrate homecoming. It was different from its American equivalent -- there weren't any sports, first of all. It was a big barbecue, and alumni from the HUBO labs came by to say hello and catch up with the current students. The barbecuing was different from American ones too -- rather than grilling the food and then serving it at a table, or even splitting it up onto plates at the grill, the meat was just placed onto a single tray as soon as it was done cooking and we all took pieces from the tray with chopsticks and ate while standing by the grill. 

Also on Saturday, before homecoming, I saw the Dunsan Prehistoric Site. There were a few recreated twig huts there, and some information on the prehistoric inhabitants of Korea. So I learned a little about that subject.

Finally, today I went to Ppuri park. There were may sculptures there, and walking around them was very relaxing. I learned a bit more about what sort of sculptures can be found in Korea.

2. (Project status)

This week I was documenting the khr3 code. Unlike the HUBO project, there is no main loop; this code runs the GUI and so functions are called depending on what buttons the user presses. So I documented the tutorials we have that are used to turn on the HUBO and make it gesture, and then documented the various buttons on the GUI and explained what everything did.

I also finished the rough draft of my ICHIT submission. 

3. (Picture of the week)

Some sculptures at Ppuri park:

4. (What I learned about myself)

I ran into a setback this week when the ATM at Citi bank (the only one I know of that accepts foreign cards) was broken when I needed money, but I simply reprioritized and shifted my plans to make do until the machine was fixed. I thus learned a little bit about making flexible pans.

Also, Clayton and I went hiking in the hills behind Nuri Hall and became somewhat lost. However, we were able to find our way down the mountain and back onto a road despite losing the trail. And even before that we went a large distance on the trail, and got about 65% of the way to Daedeok. So I learned that my hiking abilities are still pretty good.

5. (New people I met)

One of the alumni I met at the Homecoming barbecue was John, a native of Sweden. He was very friendly and we discussed the HUBO lab and a thing or two to do in Seoul.

I also met JungHo Lee, who wrote a paper that I read and cited for ICHIT. That was neat.