Last week

Well here it is, my last week in the states before I take off for Korea. It's an interesting mix of feelings: excited to go, sad to leave everyone and everything here, wanting to explore the new place, and that part of me that just wants to be there already and not have all this stress from packing and getting ready to go.

I packed up most of my things last night and plan to finish tonight. The moving company is coming tomorrow afternoon to pick everything up and get the air-freight under way. They said that it takes about 18 days for stuff to get there, so the sooner they can start the better. That just means that I need to know exactly what will fit into my suitcase before they come, so that I can get everything there ... I probably also need another power adapter too. I'll have to get one this week or weekend.

I had cultural awareness training for two weeks last week. The training was excellent as I was able to show how much I already knew about Korean culture and I was able to learn about 3x more. During the training I got to hear from three different speakers (i know sounds boring) and they were all excellent. One is a political science professor and Korean national who walked me through a lot of the culture, history, economics, and US relations associated with South Korea. This was great as he presented a ton of information that I hadn't heard before or information that I had heard of, but wasn't sure if it was true. The second presenter was one of Westinghouse's former correspondents for pacific rim activities. He had a ton of interesting and helpful business type information which would have taken me the whole residency to learn. The final presenter was someone who currently lives in the Changwon area. She was closer to my age and able to tell me things to do and places to go in the area, which will be great for weekends and such. She also showed me the website for the city which has a ton of cool stuff.

Over the weekend I got to meet up with a bunch of the family to say hello and goodbye before I fly out this Sunday. The plan is to get into Korea June 1st, move into my apartment June 2nd, and start work June 3rd. So that is the tentative plan, lets see if it holds up. I'll try to be back for an update before I fly out of the country.

Alive still (somehow)

So its been a pretty hectic week back in the states. I think that I have finally gotten back around to normal Eastern Standard Time, which is a good thing. If only I was able to have enough time in the day to take care of everything else now...

I'm getting to the point that I have most everything ready to go. All that is left is packing up the stuff that I am taking, packing up the stuff that will sit in my room, and saying goodbye to everyone. For those that don't know already my flight leaves Sunday May 31st and I am hoping to start work sometime around June 3rd. That is the plan right now, but who knows what could actually happen. Hopefully it all goes to task like last time.

Other than getting ready, not too much else has been going on. I'm trying to stay as low stress as possible otherwise this whole thing might start getting to me. I'm really excited to be traveling and to get a chance to work in another country, but at the same time I am sad to see my life in the states being left behind. I realize that it is only 6 months and I am probably being overly dramatic, but I think that I will really miss it here. I have become rather attached to living in Pittsburgh over the last 5 years, so this trip may be good for me, and teach me how to re-adjust again, so that I don't become stale.

If you want to meet up sometime before I go, please send me a text, email, or leave a comment. I'll be in Erie Saturday and Sunday and then back in Pittsburgh until I leave on the 31st. Thanks for following my blog, even through the sporadic updates :)

double bonus !!

Two posts in one day. Crazy I know.

So I have 1000 Korean Won (KRW) for the first person (by posting in the comments) to tell me what this building is used for. (clicking on the image should make it less fuzzy, its pretty solid quality on my computer)

1. It is a really neat way to do something that we do here in America.
2. The activity that goes on in the building is popular in America, however not quite as popular as in Korea. In my short time in Korea I have seen at least 5 buildings like this (granted they kind of stand out)



and go =>

Jet-lag sucks

So I have returned to states. The flights were good, but it's looking like I've brought a cold with me. Hopefully it clears up soon as jet-lag is making sleeping hard enough on its own. Its a really interesting feeling, I'm really tired, yet not able to sleep for more than 4 or 5 hours at a time. Maybe I'll nap more today and reboot myself by tomorrow... hopefully.

Apologies for not updating recently, that last week of work before flying out was pretty jam packed. Monday I was in meetings all day and pretty much crashed afterwords. Tuesday I was out in the nuclear shop all day, watching stuff get built (which was cool). Tuesday night the supplier took us out again and craziness ensued again. I'm not going to post the details, but if you want to know get a hold of me. Wednesday was more work / recovery from tues night and packing to head home.

I thought that I'd upload a picture of the shop so that you can get an idea of the sheer size of the stuff that we are making. The two guys in the picture are about 5'10"(178cm) and 6'2" (188cm) to give you a reference. The picture was taken with my phone again. I'm still surprised at the quality that its capable of. I will probably keep using it for pictures throughout the trip.


The flights weren't too bad just really long. I couldn't get comfortable enough to sleep on the trans-pacific flight either and I think that's part of what has me in zombie mode right now. I'm thinking that its harder to come back than to go there. Anyone agree with me?

Hongdo Island and Southern Korea

Over the weekend we took a trip to visit Hongo Island and drive throughout southern Korea. It was an amazing trip that offered ample photo opportunity.

The Hondgo Islands are located just off of the southern tip of South Korea. There are several islands in the system, however the one that we visited is called Hongdosipkyeong. It was bought by a couple and converted into a botanical garden. The island was later converted into a tourist destination, and is quite popular. It was rather crowded there, even if my pictures do not represent that.

We also visited a dinosaur museum that was in the area. It was interesting, the museum was good however they also have all of these sedimentary rocks around the museum. Their claim is that some of the pot-marks in the rocks are actually dinosaur prints... I'm not too sure if I'm sold on it.

I started a photobucket site to collect my pictures in and I've included the link below. Feel free to post any comments about the pictures and I'll do my best to respond to them. Many of the pictures turned out incredible, especially since they were taken with my iPhone.

http://s621.photobucket.com/albums/tt294/brown-pitt/Hongdo%20Island%20and%20Southern%20Korea/

Oh yea, duh I have a camera

So lots of pictures to post from my new apartment in this one. Barring any major incident (landlord getting cold feet or something) this is the place that I will be living in. The relator has ensured me that this place should go through so feel confident posting pictures saying that this is the place I'll be living in. I’ll be living in the City 7 complex in Changwon. The apartment is 1903 (19th floor, number 3) in building 102 (there are 4 buildings 101-104). Rent will be about $2.5 million Won per month, which equates to about $1850 USD. This cost covers everything except for electricity (we weren’t able to negotiate it into the contract).

Obviously I didn’t take this one, but it gives you an idea of the skyline. The hotel is on the left with the City 7 Apartment buildings on the right. This picture shows three of the four buildings. I took a few panoramic shots later that show all of the buildings.

Pictures of the kitchen and the master bedroom. As you can see the apartment is unfurnished, but the realtor has ensured me that everything would be in place before my move in date of June first. (I plan on taking pictures once stuff is in the place too). The apartment is unfurnished because they are still completing construction on a lot of the rooms. This complex just opened up for public use a few weeks ago, so I will be one of the first tenants to live in this building. (you can click on the pictures to make them bigger)

Side, by side pictures (of sorts) taken from the living room. I like these pictures like this because you can see the vast difference that exists in Korea. The well developed cities bordering the inhabitable mountains. The country is very different from American in that it is almost entirely cities. There really aren’t any rural areas, because they are so landlocked. The road in the picture on the left has 8 lanes (for reference).

Observations II: Technology

I initially chose this title to be ironic about the time difference (since Korea is 13 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time), but the united states is definitely lagging behind in this department. Its not that Koreans have things that we have never heard of, they just have better access to everything that is available.

For example, I haven't been in a car yet that doesn't have GPS mapping. Most everyone that I have run into also has a cell phone (or two depending on work). Many of the housing complexes are less than 5 years old. So they also have all of the newest and greatest things. Its not that they have 1-million inch LCD TVs, but they have all of the little things that make life easier. For example, apartments don't have heating ducts; they pipe the hot water through the floor and allow the heat to radiate into the apartment. Also each apartment building has a camera near the door and each apartment has an LCD built into the wall. So when someone comes to your apartment and they ask to be buzzed in, you can see them. This control is also connected to other parts of the building, handles the security features, most anything else that you can think of. Its really incredible.

Its not that they are doing incredible new things, they are just doing all of the cool little things that makes life easier. Roads are wide enough to handle traffic, roads don't have potholes all over the place (most are blacktop), your GPS will notify you when you come up on speed cameras or if you're speeding (it dings). Its just the little things.

Cars are much smaller than in the states too. This is to be expected because of the area, but the larger cars feel much bigger. We spent most of the day driving around in what would be called a mid sized car in America (think Ford Taurus) and while it was comfortable and had a lot of space in it, you could tell that it was difficult to manuver and it struggled in some of the parking garages. I'm sure that I'll continue to expand on this, being a tech nerd and all.

Observations I: Changwon City

This is the city that I am currently in and should be staying in during the course of my residency (I'll update once the lease has been signed). The city is very impressive in itself, especially since it did not exist before 1956. Not that it was a town or something smaller; it was flat land, nothing at all. During this time the government officials saw the need for a centralized capital city for the forming providence and as such, Changwon was established.

Once this happened, they went into the planning stages for the city. Instead of just going at the city they put a lot of thought and effort into the city's need and purpose. Besides being the capital, Changwon is one of the premiere manufacturing cities in Korea. This is because of how the city is designed as much as the drive of the people that live in it.

The city was designed to be split in half, part residential and part industrial. One main road (4-lane road) splits the town in two, providing the border between the two halves. This design makes the city very drivable, and very livable as you don't have some major manufacturing company working out of your backyard.

Just being around the city, you can see the planning that went into making this city, as well as the rest of the surrounding areas. Everything feels to have been done with a purpose, with a definite goal in mind. This is also true about the residential side of the city. Most of the population lives in large apartment buildings similar to what I will be in. Each building houses hundreds of people, and there can be up to 20 buildings in any given park. This creates a significant population density in these areas, however this has been planned for. Parking is typically below the buildings, electric lines are underground, bike lanes are provided. Most anything that you could think of has been thought of and sorted out. It is a very odd sensation, Changwon has nearly twice the population of Pittsburgh, yet it feels much, much smaller.

The area that I am currently in is called City-7. It is a very modern and Americanized part of the country because many of the shops have english words and english speaking persons working in the shops. City-7 is a complex with a 3 story shopping mall and apartment complex. So it has most anything that I could need. I will probably cover this further in a later blog post. I'm thinking about covering a specific topic of interest in each post as well as the general day-to-day activities going on in my life. I hope that will provide a good view of my experiences, as well as the Korean people and culture.

Website: http://eng.changwon.go.kr/home/home.jsp

Welcome to Korea

So I've finally made it to Korea, it really doesn't seem like I'm here, but I am. Getting here wasn't too bad, the flights were all on time and didn't run into too many issues. However the flight into Japan was grounded to investigate everyone's "health status." ie they're wayyy too worried about the swine flu. We were stuck on the plan for about another hour after we landed, as they went through everyone's history etc. It was a bit annoying and a lot of the passengers agreed that they were making too big of a deal out of this. They even went through scanning everyone's body temperature looking for people with fevers. One guy in the front row of the plane registered a high temp, so all of the people around him had to wait as the rest of us got off.

Business class for the trans-pacific flight was pretty awesome. The seats were really comfortable and the food was pretty good too. I'm glad that the company is picking up the tab for that one.

The hotel that we are in is really amazing. It just opened 4 months ago and it really shows. They've put in almost anything that you can think of which is great. Hopefully that will translate into me being more rested / ready for the weeks ahead, but we'll see. The hotel, however, only offers a LAN connection and no wi-fi (I also don't have a router), so I'm not going to be able to get onto Skype, unless I can at the office. I may have to go find some place with free wi-fi so that I can call. More on that as it develops.

Initial impressions: Koreans are very outgoing and friendly. Everyone that I've ran into today has been great and has spoken english very well. However there is a lot less printed English than I was expecting (signs, etc). That may change depending on the area that I am in, but an international data plan so that I can have gps may be a necessity. I'm at the shop for work all day tomorrow so that should be a good experience.

Ready to fly?

So its Sunday already and I'm flying out tomorrow morning. I knew that this was coming, but I can't say that I expected it to be here this quickly.

I finished moving across the house, for the time being anyways. Most everything's sorted out and in the room, which is good enough for now. I might change some things around throughout the day or when I get back, but at least its done for now.

Most of the details for this trip have been sorted out, so it should be good to. The hotel looks like it'll be pretty awesome (pictures coming when I arrive) and it will be good to get to see how Doosan works and what all they do. They are a pretty large manufacturing company making components for all different sorts of industries. I'll try to take some pictures or get more information about how they work. So stay tuned for those.

So the flight path is Pittsburgh => Detroit => Tokyo => Busan, South Korea for those who are interested. We're scheduled to get into Korea around 9pm, their time (8am EST). Packing wise I'm pretty good to go. I've gotten most everything together already, now its just making it all fit into the suitcases. I'm trying to take some extra stuff too, with the hope that I can leave it in Korea until I go back at the end of the month. I get something like 300 lbs of shipping, but if I don't need to use it, it would make things easier.