Chi chi chi chi baby baby baby!! - Girls Generation (great song for researching)

Researching
So far it's been a lot of reading, searching for "Control Systems Theory" books, and examining old reports on MR dampers. Honestly there's a lot to be done but I don't have a clue on where to start. The books I'm reading are interesting. The library interests me more though. There are so many books! A whole aisle on Structural Control! I found a grad student to check out three books for me. So far I'm on Chapters 2,2, and 3 on my books. One of them isn't really what I'm research. It's more for the other group (modal testing) but it's a good intro to the subject. I really hope I can have a small individual project to research on my own next semester. Oh, I'm such a dork sometimes.

We had a skype conference with Dr. Jung. I must say for a KAIST professor listening to Dr. Christenson explaining our 'tasks' for the next two weeks, he was somewhat patient. Ha he kept nodding his head at everything, drawing arrows on his paper or writing notes and making it bolder, or messing around with the computer mouse. He is a very helpful professor though. Very smart, like everyone else that walks around campus. I got assigned a grad student. HaeMin is one of the two girls that got accepted on a government-paid-tuition ride to KAIST whenever she came for her Masters here. So, I'm pretty lucky to get stuck with her. :) She's awesome, I love talking to her about research. Tiara has JungSu Park who is this hilarious Korean guy that always laughs at me. No kidding. The day we went to Home Plus, the three of us girls -- well, me mostly -- dragged him around the entire store. For example, as we were heading to the many busy cash registers I remembered that I needed a plastic bowl for my cereal so I ran back through the busy girls giving out food samples and the people walking across the food aisles towards the clothing sections with PINK-branded clothes. When I look behind me, Mr. JungSu Park appears trying to keep us within his sight. I asked him today if he could see me while he laughed at me because he literally closes his eyes when he laughs. He laughed again and said yes, and that ever since he was little people asked him that question.

The grad students at KAIST (or the ones we know) live a busy, hard-to-get-a-hold-of life. Today we had a class at 10 am for an hour and since the lecturer had prepared so many slides we needed to continue for a second class at 1 pm. Well, the 5 of us (excluding John, again) stayed in the study room to "study" on our materials. Somehow Anthony got Dong-doo Jang (our lecturer earlier) to agree go to out for lunch with us. When we went to get him at the grad room we saw JungSu, who laughed and asked if he could come. Then all of the grads students (total about 10) somehow came too, and I asked JungSu if HaeMin was coming. Due to my request he called her and she showed up as well. So a whole group of about 17 people headed to this Chinese noodles restaurant, which I will talk about in the food section of my blog.

Wonderful Food, Glorious Food

Dr. Yun, the professor from UAkron who came with us to Korea, took all of us undergrad researchers to a Traditional Korean Restaurant called "Man-Na" where they serve 'Il-pum ShaV-ShaV'. The server ladies were dressed in a cute pink outfit (made me want to work there). A huge steel bowl was in the middle of our table, where a some green leaves and lots of mushrooms. This was our appetizer. Soon, the pink ladies brought out uncooked meat with rice balls on the sides wrapped in lettuce. Task: cook the meat in the boiling water. Of course there were side dishes like KIMCHI! and sweet potatoes and lots of un-identifiable objects. The best part was when the ladies took our dish, and brought out some noodles, added them to the pot in the middle, added some kind of spice and sauce and served us some amazing noodles. mmm mmm It's THE best noodles I've ever tasted so far. I have no idea how they made it either because I was so busy trying to use my chopsticks. Yeah, I'm pretty bad at using them. Dr. Yun had to ask the lady to bring me a fork. That's saying a lot. ;/

That same day Anthony, Shen, and I went out for lunch at this great restaurant in the International Zone by KAIST. It was a frying food again, with meat and pork chops. Somehow I ended up paying with debit for all of us, but since both of the guys kind of just threw money at me I ended up paying on $5 out of $27.


Class today was great. Us undergrad got the grad students to have lunch with us at this Chinese noodles place. I somehow ended up with this black sauce on my noodles, but I must say.. it was exquisite. Matt took a picture of Annika and I, and Annika stole the picture so I HOPE I can get it to add here.


Girls' night out: a 5 hour adventure!

Tiara needed to find a good top to wear for Friday's night out, so we had time for SHOPPING! I got a shirt hehe so now I can dress up like a sailor. Yeah, that's what I'll be going for on Friday since I don't have anything else.


Ah clothes here are great! I love the styles. There are some dresses that are very conservative and very cheap. I don't know where I could get custom-made clothing but I'm sure I can find a place. We walked around the blocks, under the light up Korean streets, stopped at Zaras, Mango, 501, and admired the outside vendors with their shoes, hair accessories, belts, fruits, and caps out on display. Oh, gotta love Korean fashion. Soon as we know it our stomaches started grumbling, demanding some good ol' McDonalds as dinner. Of course Tiara's stomach was special and got some spicy Korean noodle plate while Annika and I headed towards the Cafe Bean on the second floor of a corner building afterwards for a nice coffee latte with a Tiramisu cake as dessert. Once Tiara joined us by the window table to watch Koreans walk by underneath us a
nd check out the guys' man purses, my stomach started asking for a chocolate mousse cake. So glad it grumbled because that was some chocolate cake! Walking back I found an amazing Korean, so I stopped to ask to take a picture with him. He didn't reply, so I took his silence as a yes.

Taxis and Buses!

Being a girl and having to wear some cute high heels to fit in with the rest of the Korean ladies there has to be a way to get from one way to another that is cheap, safe, fast, and available. Well, taxi drivers are an extremely convenient solution to this problem. :) You can see how much we enjoy the taxi drives.. and bus drives.. from the pictures I posted!

Last topic: catching up on old news

I still have a lot to write since I skipped a couple of days from writing blogs. Last time I went to the galleria at night (besides tonight), we walked around and took pictures with the night lights. We also got stopped by three Korean guys for a "question project" that they had to do. So far we've gotten stopped 3 times for this 'project.'

The next day the three of us girls walked to buy some fruits. Yeah, I stopped at HomePlus for some quick shopping while Tiara bought some organic bananas off of the street. Too bad they only last about 3 days. Well tomorrow is the last day I get to make peanut butter - banana sandwich for breakfast!! .. if I wake up.


That's it. Gotta go to sleep!

-Allie R.