What I Learned About Korea: I learned this week about the style of vacations that most Koreans partake in. The style of condo’s are much different in the US in that there are no beds in the room, but rather wide open floors and large sets of bedding for the floor. It is assumed that there will be large groups of people sharing the room.

Photo of the Week:

This photo is of Jungwoo and Inho on top of the mountain we went snowboarding at.

Status Report:

OpenRave / Lego NXT: I have completed the conversion of my code from OpenRave to use the openCV and NXT_Python libraries. Then I completed the course set-up and live line following video. This will be used to make the side-by-side PIP video of OpenRave vs real life.

What I Learned About Myself: I learned this week that I really enjoy the community aspects of Korean culture. Most situations in Korea are not designed for personal comfort, but rather for group comfort. Eating, drinking, and sleeping are all designed to bring everyone closer.

New Koreans I Met: On the ski trip we ended up making dinner and drinking that night with a group of girls from an all girls school that a lab member knew. At first, Alex and I could not remember any of their names and had to make up nicknames. Later on I began to talk more to one of the girls named 윤경아.  Most of our conversation was her trying to explaining the rules of all the different games and songs to me in Korean.