University of San Francisco Asia Study Tour

What’s a visit to China without mentioning The Great Wall of China? Like the country itself or the city of Beijing, the size and scope of The Great Wall is beyond words. Simply indescribable, The Great Wall expands over 6,000 kilometers and captures the history, present and future of China. Speaking for the group, walking just a small portion of The Great Wall created a lifetime memory for each of us.

I must say, this trip has been worth every penny and every excruciating hour on our cross Pacific flights. For me, the highlights were the Korean students and their wonderful hospitality, the site visits to GM Daewoo, Google China and Wicresoft, and of course the food, drink and culture. Just want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped arrange this trip, from the Professors, TA (Jing) and both groups of native speakers (Korean and Chinese). This has been a fabulous trip and I can’t wait to see other people’s thoughts.

More later,

Matt

There were two study tour options this Winter Intersession for USF students. One was to India and the other was to North Asia (South Korea & China). The more courageous people decided to go to North Asia only to learn that the nuclear threat is really not considered a huge deal at all by the locals, including the South Koreans.

Seriously though, I think the people who went on the India study tour were definitely the more adventurous lot because not only was it the first time that a tour was planned for that country, India is, in the words of my boss who’s been there, "a place that will overwhelm all your five senses" just by walking around a street corner.

Thanks to Rob Sanders who was on our tour and has an inside track on the India tour, I’ve put up a link to their blog on our Blogroll. Their blog has quite a number of students blogging about their experiences; something I hope we’ll soon have on ours.

Updated Jan 23rd

Editor’s Note: JP, instructor for the India Study Tour, made it a requirement for students to blog. Roger… are you reading this?

Many of the company site visits are not the same as the ones visited in previous asia study tours. Today was an exception. We visited GM Daewoo (like last year) and were the first external group to tour their newly constructed design studio. However, before we could check out their product lines, we were given a guest lecture on the history of GM Daewoo…

by the President himself,

Each of us were given a beautifully-crafted jewelry box with the GM Daewoo logo at the bottom of the box after the lecture and…

treated to an exclusive Western lunch in their VIP dining room. They even made it a point to have a senior GM Daewoo executive at every table so that we could get to know the company better. You can spot the executives from the shiny, light-reflecting texture on their corporate utility jackets.

Finally! We were led to the showroom (with our very own Welcome screen!) where the boys drooled looked at the cars.

Our first group photo! We used sooo many cameras (and all digital cameras no less) to take this single shot that for subsequent group photos, we had a rule of using only the first five cameras.

Wen and his new best friend.

This post is backdated due to too much fun lack of time and poor internet connection that prevented regular updates during the trip.

Last year, students stayed at a swanky hotel about half an hour (three subway stops) away. That took a huge chunk out of the budget so this year Roger made it a point to look for a more cost-efficient option. After a lot of research by Roger and Ashipu, they found that a night at the nearby motel would cost about USD$40 while a night at KAIST dorms would only be half the price. Moreover, the motel did not serve breakfast until 8:30am, making it difficult for our schedules to accomodate everything we wanted to include.

The final decision was to settle the 23 students and 1 professor from USF into KAIST dorms in the Pajung and Sojung buildings. Residents in the Sojung Hall enjoyed individual en-suite bathrooms while residents in the Pajung hall enjoyed a newly renovated Executive floor and shared common showers/restrooms. Although the hike from the dormitories meant a ten-minute walk just to get to the classrooms and cafeteria, the dorm-living helped to keep us focused on our daily lectures and site visits.

The numbered images and arrows show the ten-minute hike up and down the slopes… including that first night when we arrived and the cab dropped some of us off at the Sojung Hall resulting in a hike up the steepest part of the slope while pulling on our luggages to get to the Pajung Hall. 

There were 5 female USF students and four of them stayed at the Sojung hall except for me because Wen and I were the only married couple on the tour.  We’d requested to share the same room because our stuff was all packed together. It didn’t matter that throughout the trip, we never got to share a room with anything other than two twin beds. All the guys except for Roger and Martin were also based in the Pajung Hall so we pretty much took over the entire sixth floor.

Our room in Pajung Hall. See the TV in the middle? It came on suddenly early one morning in Gary’s room and he was almost worried he’d been given a haunted room. Fortunately, Elissa told him that the TV can be programmed to turn on at specific times and someone would be sent to turn off the feature in his room.

The entrance to the shared showers is the image on the left. If you turn right, you’d see two sinks. If you walk ahead, past the bright blue panels, you’ll see the showers in the image on the right. The panels are frosted so you can only see a blurred image.

The shared restrooms have two toilets (on the left) and two urinals (on the right). The blue panel sits between the sinks and the urinals.

Ta-dahhh!!! The toilet with heated seats and other funky functions that I didn’t dare to try. Apparently, one of them is specifically for cleaning the boji (read: Korean for vagina).

Altogether a more than decent place to live in at only USD$20 a night. You can even get breakfast in the cafeteria at a mere USD$2 if you can stomach the fact that every single dish except for the fried egg and rice is spicy. One thing for students going on future study tours that include living in the KAIST dorms, do remember to bring your own bath towel because only a tiny (hand) towel is provided. Shampoo and soap are also available but these are definitely shared in the Pajung Hall.

This post is backdated due to too much fun lack of time and poor internet connection that prevented regular updates during the trip.

According to our schedule, the afternoon of our second day in Seoul was set aside for a cultural tour. Since we were such a big group (23 USF students in total along with 8 KAIST students), the KAIST students hosted us in smaller groups. YouJin (Korean Ann) offered to take us to a place where they sell souvenirs but most of us wanted get our shopping done cos we’d heard about how we could get really good deals on cosmetics in Korea. Gary in particular, had a long list of cosmetic items complete with photos and instructions on what is considered a reasonable price from his girlfriend.

Wen and I were very concerned about the baggage restrictions (20kg per person for trips within Asia) on our flight to Beijing and I figured that I’d rather use up any spare space for cosmetics that I could also use as gifts rather than souvenirs. Guess I’m just too practical for my own good. So off we went with Kim (YoungSoo) and Ann.

Our first stop was a place famous for its Dol Buk Gi (hope I spelled that correctly) also known as spicy marinated rice cake. I love this dish because it reminds me of the Shanghainese rice cakes that my mother always cooks for Chinese New Year. Ann mentioned that she’d tried to find similar rice cakes while she was an exchange student in Singapore but found the quality to be quite different.

We had to exert serious self-control to take this photos because everything looked so delicious. From left: Seaweed soup (even that was a little spicy), Gim Bap (typical Korean sushi), Dol Buk Gi, and spare parts (pig’s blood, pig’s stomach etc).

After the quick snack, we made our way to the subway where we proceeded to act like tourists by snapping shots everywhere, including the little ticket stubs that were about the size and length of my thumb… ok maybe two thumbs.

Yes, we even posed while waiting for the train. The trains didn’t take long to come but there were so many different lines that I would definitely be completely lost without our wonderful hosts. In fact, hardly anything was in English although there were Chinese words that we found to be rather similar in pronunciation when spoken in Korean. A couple of us cluelessly decided to sit on some empty different-colored seats, but Kim immediately told us to get up and explained that they were reserved for the elderly.

The crowded streets of downtown Seoul packed with goods of all types and quality

We had dinner at a place selected by Taiwanese Ann (top left corner) based on a small guide book she carried with her on best places to visit/eat/shop in Korea. The restaurant only had three items in its menu - dumplings, hot hand-pulled noodles, or spicy noodles. We were all somewhat tired of the constant spicy food so we went with the dumplings and hot noodles. Definitely a place I’d want to eat again if I was ever in the area.

Satisfied faces after a night of shopping (Gary got almost everything on the list!) and good food.

Guess what I found in the restroom of the restaurant!? A mouthwash dispenser complete with paper ‘cups’!

On our way back to campus, we couldn’t resist the delicious smells wafting around us via strategically placed roadside stalls

Step-In-Store Freebies.

An interesting marketing tactic: Everytime we stepped into a cosmetic store, we’d be given a small basket with some freebies. That means even if we ended up not finding something to our liking in the store, we could still walk out with the freebies.  A part (probably the American-educated part) of me felt guilty about getting the free stuff but my staunch Singaporean upbringing came through and I couldn’t help the gleeful smile on my face at the end of the night as I took a picture (the very one you’re looking at right now) of all the freebies I got. At one location, Gary was invited to stick his hand into a box of freebies after he made a purchase and he pulled out so much that the salesperson had a priceless look on her face.

This post is backdated due to too much fun lack of time and poor internet connection that prevented regular updates during the trip.

The day began with a lecture by Betty DeVita, CEO Consumer Banking of Citibank KOrea. Then we all walked off campus for lunch at a restaurant.

We had beef hot pot except for Adith who had a vegetarian hot pot.

The food was delicious but took a while to come so we got to practice some Korean - "Pae go pah yo" = I’m hungry, and "Pali pali" = Quickly! (Disclaimer: Spelling of Korean words are subject to the limited understanding of blog author). Also, most of us were unaccustomed to sitting traditional Korean style (cross-legged for men and kneeling for women) so we had to fight for space to stretch our feet under the table or risk having pins and needles.

Our entire group was so big that seven of us spilled over to another room.

After lunch, we returned to campus for another lecture by Richard Lee, Principal at McKinsey & Co.

This post is backdated due to too much fun lack of time and poor internet connection that prevented regular updates during the trip.

After being given a primer course on Bombshots including an entire case of leftover beer to practice with, some of us decided we needed to work harder on perfecting this assignment.

Tools: Kiwi, Lemon and traditional dreaded clear soju

Complementary tools: Spicy Korean rice cake

Evidence of how hard we worked in practising the bombshots (See: red faces)

Group shot of some very hardworking students 

Leftover beer & chips from Bombshot ‘class’

The VP of Coex International, Mr. Jay- Hyuk Shim, was invited to conduct a bonding activity on campus where he showed us different types of bombshots. What are bombshots? Well, apparently they are an excellent substitute for old drinking practices where Koreans trade drinking glasses as a sign of respect to each other. In such a scenario, the head honcho typically drinks a lot more than the subordinates because everyone would offer him a shot as a sign of respect. Generally, a basic bombshot consists of placing a whiskey-filled shot glass into a mug of beer and it is hence called because of the "explosive" foam that results from the beer and liqour mixing together. It is also known by different names in other cultures (e.g. Sake Bombshot, etc)

Prof. Asif Siddiqui, Mr. Jae-Hyuk Shim & Prof. Roger Chen, after an impressive ‘headbanging’ bombshot from Mr. Shim

The last shot of the evening where seven volunteers were needed to demonstrate the ‘domino’ bombshot

The seven volunteers enthusiastically valiantly finishing their drinks