A Slower Paced Week

This week has been alot more relaxed than last week when we were in Seoul. With the exception of tomorrow (when I go back to Gyeongju) we have class in the morning and some sort of cultural activity in the afternoon. As I mentioned in my last post, on Monday we went bowling. On Tuesday we went skating and yesterday we went to Hyundai Heavy Industries and SK Petrochemicals and today we learn Samulnori (traditional Korean Folk Music).

Tuesday we loaded up in the buses (we always seem to leave at least a half hour late and Tuesday was no exception) and headed to Ulsan College(?) where they have a huge building that houses an ice rink. As far as I know this is the only rink in the city (pop 1,000,000) but am told that skating is getting more popular in Korea since the success of Korean figure skater Kim Yu-Na, who is the reigning world champion. There were quite a few people in our group who had never skated in the lives and many more who had only skated a limited number of times. Now, I am not the strongest skater in the world but it was nice to actually be one of the strongest skaters on the ice instead of the weakest. I am pretty sure that will never happen again. It was fun helping people try to skate for their first time and encouraging to see some of the people that started off pulling themselves shakily along the boards to actually skating, even if quite off balance and ready to fall at any time. There were quite a few people who fell on their butts pretty hard and one girl fell just as we were getting off the ice hitting her knee on the boards and hurting herself, but overall I think that everyone had a fun time. Personally, it was nice to get into the dry cold air and skate around for a couple of hours (I have probably never skated in shorts before so that was nice too.)

By the time we got back it was getting late and I hooked up with a group of Canadian and American students and we went to a pizza place and had some supper. I then headed back to the dorms and after a bit of relaxing and talking to home (you have to love Skype), I headed to bed. Unfortunately it has been quite noisy in the dorms the last few nights and I have not slept well and Tuesday night was no exception.

Wednesday morning was cool and rainy. It was the first day since I got here that did not feel grossly humid so was very nice. After lunch we loaded on the buses again (late again) and headed to Hyundai Heavy Industries for our tour. When we arrived we were ushered into a briefing room where we were given a short introduction and watched a 10 minute promotional video. They had an interesting museum dedicated to Asan, the founder of Hyundai, that was bigger than the one at the Asan medical centre in Seoul) Afterwards we got back on the buses and took a short (15 mins ?) tour around the yard but were not allowed to take any photographs. The site is huge (1,300 acres with 10 dry docks and numerous cranes capable of lifting up to 1400 tons) and the scale of the operation is difficult to wrap your head around. They build the ships in pieces and then assemble them in dry dock like they are giant Lego sets. In the two dry docks we saw, there were 4 ships being built in one and 5 in the other. It is really an interesting process to see. Unfortunately the tour was over too soon. I am not sure if there was more we could have seen but it really felt like the tour was cut short. Still interesting never the less.

After HHI we went to SK petrochemicals which is a heavy oil upgrader (for those familiar with Regina think the Co-op refinery except covering 2,000 acres. We had the same short orientation and promotional video ("Maximizing the happiness of all people!","Providing a constant supply of petrochemicals!")(It was really a little over the top as most promotional videos are) and then were shown the plant on a huge model they had in the briefing room. We then got back on the buses and drove through the site looking at everything there. Maybe it is just because of years of driving past the refinery in Regina but it really was not all that interesting. Buildings, pipes and storage tanks followed by buildings, pipes and storage tanks. Kind of like driving past the upgrader non-stop for 15 minutes (except they had a port where they load ships which Regina definitely does not have.)

Back to the school and I headed back to the dorms and started researching for my paper. I only worked for 10 minutes when my roommate came in and asked if I was interested in going for supper, so I accompanied 4 of the Korean students out for supper and my essay would have to wait for a little bit longer. We went to the same BBQ restaurant that we had gone to the first night we were in Ulsan (which is owned by the parents of Jin, one of the student staff people) picking up a couple more students along the way. Once again, supper was fantastic and we had a huge amount of food. Eating in Korea is very interesting, I am not sure if I have said this before but eating is a very community oriented thing. Everyone shares the food at the table. If you want soup or salad or another of the side dishes that always come, you just take some off the serving plate with your chopsticks and put it in your mouth. Or if you want soup you just use your spoon to take some out of the bowl that everyone uses (this all takes a little getting used to.) When cooking meet (pork in this case) on the barbecue, it is cooked in one piece (very thin and pre-marinated) and then when it is cooked the use a pair of scissors to cut it into bite-sized pieces and you take the pieces off the grill as you want them (usually you wrap your beef in a lettuce or sesame leaf with some garlic and soy or hot sauce and then pop the whole thing into your mouth. The only food you normally get to yourself is a bowl of rice and maybe a little salad. You can use one of these dishes to put food from the grill before you eat it or when clearing off the grill so nothing burns. Anyways, the meal was fantastic and Jin refused to take any payment for it, we had a great time and it was definitely one of the best meals I have had since being here.

After supper, we saw a small market set up at the end of the street, so the other tow foreigners and I went to take a look while the Korean students headed off on their own. The market had chicken (including chicken feet by the bag), all kinds of seafood, and many different fruits and vegetables). After looking around we just wandered through the little business districts for a couple of hours and then one of the students and I stopped at the Wabar for a couple of beers before heading back to the dorms to call it a night.

Today the rain is falling quite hard (I have definitely got my money's worth out of the umbrella I bought on the first day) and it is still nice and cool (not as cool as at home from what I hear. This morning our lecture is on the Korean war followed by a trip to hear (and maybe attempt to play) some traditional Korean folk music.) Kind of scary considering I have no musical talent at all. Should be a fun and interesting day.