Day 5 & 6 - First Weekend

Each weekend we have a goal to get out and do something interesting in the city and in the country. We kicked off the weekend with our first cold beers in Korea. On KAIST campus part of the cafeteria there is pub called the "Mercury". Bryan and I kicked back and discussed the usual, any guesses? Talked shop (robotics of course) and we planned what we wanted to do with our first weekend in country. We decided our first adventure on Saturday to be a 7 mile journey through downtown near South Gate. The goals for this outing were to have fun most of all, but we had some business items to take care of. First we had to find one of the two Citi Banks in the city to withdraw our money to pay for our housing. Second we needed the some necessities: toilet paper, hand soap, Landry detergent, Cup- O-Noodles, and chopsticks. Mind this whole trip is on foot, no wheels allowed! In the Google earth picture depicts the root we took in yellow. Number 1 is KAIST campus that is 2 miles from (H) were we live, we stopped for breakfast. The number 2 was our first location visited, the Homever. The Homever is just like our Super Wal-Mart’s in layout just imagine four stories stacked. There are flat escalators connecting the floors so you can bring your shopping carts with you to different floors. This store was packed on all floors; we had to move with the flow. One floor was devoted mainly to the food and home living department. This is where we bought our gear. We found everything we were looking for, but there was allot to look at. They did not sell any packs of toilet paper that were smaller than a 48 pack. So it’s safe to say Bryan and I will not run out of toilet paper!! The package was huge bigger than any bag and one of us had to carry it home...or the rest of the 4 miles. I think it would be funny if you saw a person let alone a foreigner walking around Korea with a 48 pack of toilet paper! But RJ came to the rescue with his messenger bag! The one I wrote about in a previous entry. The package fit snugly inside the bag, loosened the straps and closed the lid securely. So if you are interested in buying this bag, I got news for you, you can fit a 48 pack of toilet paper in it!! After Homever we traveled on an over pass and moved into an area with lots of high rise apartments. We found the bank at location 3 on the map. This was a interesting experience too...lets just say ATM in Korea operate on the times 10,000 won principle and I took out a little to much! After this we walked back to our place and on the way we saw this Korean teen. He was walking like us but as soon as he crossed the street he placed these two pads on the ground. They had two wheels on each, very simple design. Then he got up on them and moved like riding a snowboard and sped away. Bryan and my jaws' dropped to the ground, we had to find out what these were! Bryan searched on the internet for an hour and had no success, but I searched for 10 minutes and found it. They are called Freeline skates and are manufactured in the States, but are popular in Korea for their compact size. Bryan and I found a vendor in Seoul and we are going next weekend to track them down...that is next weekend adventure story!

Sunday was a very relaxing day I spent the morning reading up on the US Civil War and Bryan slept. Around noon we ventured out to eat and when we returned we went hiking on the mountain that we have in are backyard. This mountain is highlighted in green on the map. We traveled about 700-800ft up and the view of the surrounding area was spectacular. I took many pictures looking over the Science Expo Park, that is next to were we are living, and the city skyline. I took a panoramic picture from the highest point on the mountain that I will share with you. The picture is way to large for blogger so I have hosted it on my Drexel research page, click here to see this breath taking picture!