This weekend I visited a few different tourist attractions. The first was Dongsan Pottery Museum, a very small museum in the north-east quarter of the city. It took me a few cabs to find it (it's rather obscure and the first couple drivers couldn't locate it), but it was worth it -- I learned some things about Korean pottery, and I got a couple of free books about the subject as a gift. So that was nice.
After Dongsan I went to Uam Historical Park. It has a lot of old-style buildings, as well as a museum about the founder (Song Si-Yeol, pen name of Uam). It was an extremely peaceful place. It was lightly drizzling and some mist hung over the mountain peaks behind the park (Uam is on a lower slope of Gyejoksan), and it was very relaxing to wander around and look at the structures and the paths. I learned about some traditional Korean structures while I was there.
My third destination was Dongchundang. This is a nature park on a city block that also includes a few historical houses. The houses in front of the wooded area were originally built for Korean scholar, Song Jun-Gil (pen name of Dongchundang), in the Joseon dynasty. They were recreated and kept as a monument to him.
On Sunday, I completed the hike that Clayton and I got lost attempting last week, and I made it all the way through the Hwanbon mountain trial. The path terminated in Munji-Dong, Yuseong-Gu, and it was a great walk. I then got to explore Munji-Dong a little. It seemed similar to the Yuseong Market area, at least the part I saw of it.
Lastly, on Friday, it was Teacher Day. This meant that the whole lab went out to dinner with Dr. Jun Oh. It was a very nice meal; we had all-you-can-eat barbecue at a restaurant north of KAIST. The barbecue was followed with a rice or noodle course. It was very good, and reminded me of when I came to Daejeon for URAI and we had a similar meal. All in all, I both learned about the Teacher Day custom, and about Korean barbecue during the meal.
2. (Project status)
Clayton and I are starting to make a new GUI. We're doing it in C# instead of MFC, so Clayton and I wrote a program to get and set the shared memory variables between the C++ and C# systems. I also studied a C# tutorial to learn the language. Also, I sent the first draft of the camera-ready ICAHRR paper to Dr. Kim, and finished the ICHIT paper.
3. (Pictures of the week)
Two this week. The first is of Uam, the second of Dongchundang.
4. (What I learned about myself)
By completing the hike, I learned that I can indeed get through the Hwanbon mountain trail (and, more generally, on complex mountain paths in general) without getting lost.
Also, I'm beginning to put together lists of where else I want to go during weekends in Korea (on the list so far -- Seoul a few times, Jeju, the DMZ, and Busan). So I'm doing some thinking and prioritizing about what I want to see the most.
5. (New people I met)
Clayton and I went to a CostCo this Sunday, and while we were there we ran into a couple people Clayton had met while seeing the Star Trek movie. Kevin and Caroline were English teachers, and they'd both been in the area for at least 18 months. They gave us some advice on where to go (Caroline in particular recommended Busan as a great place to visit during the summer, for the beaches and the aquarium). We might meet up with them later this week when we see Terminator.
No comments:
Post a Comment