Last night I went to a Marine party at the US embassy! I had no idea that embassies could be so bumpin. We have a Marine on our program that invited some of the crowd to the party. Apparently they have parties at least twice a month. There was a dj, a dance floor, argilla, a bar, and tons of people from all over the world. It was a little weird, especially since I wasn’t drinking (can’t come home drunk or smelling of alcohol in a homestay). I had a good time though; it was so great to hear American music!
Before the party we went out to a Chinese restaurant that was delicious! Believe it or not the most expensive thing we got was all of the water they kept filling our glasses with; 16 JD worth of water! That is $22.50!! Even with that cost though it was still a relatively cheap meal, especially for the outstanding, fancy atmosphere of the restaurant. Our taxi had a lot of tassels hanging from a blue light in the back. One fell off and stuck to me as I got out and it now is a charm on my phone to help distinguish from the other 134 phones we all have on the program. That is my memory of the night because pictures are not allowed anywhere near the embassy.
The party seemed to have more Jordanians than Americans but the Marines will be having a ball to celebrate their birthday on November 10th. The guy from the program said a lot of them will be looking for dates so fingers crossed!
Saturday, September 25, 2010
School is in Session
I have finished my first week of school! It has been a hectic week of running around campus, trying to find the right room, good food, and learning Arabic. I have Arabic class everyday. Three times a week I have Fousha, which is modern standard Arabic, for three hours. Fousha is what the news is written in but no one actually speaks it. Two times a week I have Amia, the Jordanian dialect, for an hour and a half. However, since I am in beginner one, we have been doing Amia all week so we can communicate. Many students here who have studied Fousha for four semesters or more have the same vacant “I have no idea what you just said” look that I have when we talk to people because Fousha is apparently useless when it comes to conversation. I am learning a ton though and my family is beyond helpful.
Everyday at home we have Arabic hour and I have a quiz. It is so nice. I can already tell that I am learning a lot more, a lot faster than some of the people in my class. Maher, my host brother (but he is in his thirties, married, kids) threatens to kill me when I don’t study. Additionally, my Arabic teacher, Muna, threatens to eat any students who don’t do their homework. Two days ago though Muna said she would never eat me because I knew a lot of the vocabulary the class could not remember.
I am still learning the alphabet but it is really exciting. I leave class everyday feeling very accomplished because I am able to read that much more. However on our second day of class we had not learned enough letters to read the word “women.” My friend Ashley and I were looking for a bathroom around the university and could only find a women’s room that was completely blockaded on our floor. We went to the next floor and found some bathrooms missing the woman and man pictures. Since on the floor below the women’s room was on the right we assumed it would be on the right on this floor too (which I maintain is legitimate). While Ashley was in a stall (there were no urinals) a boy walked in and just stared at me for a second. He walked out, checked the sign, walked back in and started talking to me in Arabic. I gave him my vacant-i-have-no-idea-what-you-are-saying look but I guess I hadn’t perfected it by then and he just kept on talking. I started talking in English, he went out to check the sign again and then said “for men.” Luckily we had a sense of humor and could not stop laughing, even for the rest of the day. Needless to say, we immediately learned the word for woman and check twice every time I walk into a bathroom.
I am also taking a class titled America and the Arabs. My professor seems like a great guy with a sense of humor. We hopefully will be meeting many important people in the Jordanian government, such as the minister of foreign affairs, the ambassador to Israel, and also go on field trips, like to refugee camps. Additionally, I am supposedly going to be in an internship but it seems some of the paperwork is holding me back because someone from CIEE quit over the summer and lost resumes and what not. Hopefully CIEE can get its act together so I can work for some non-governmental organization as my fourth class.
It can be overwhelming being here but overall I am having such a great time. I am meeting some awesome people, both from the US and from Jordan. Sometimes my head hurts from Arabic overload/ having such a different life but I find that taking a nap is a wonderful remedy. Going to the gym is also a great way for me to just let my brain relax. It is a lot of work to learn Arabic but I can’t wait till I get to the point where I can forget how to make the vacant face.
Everyday at home we have Arabic hour and I have a quiz. It is so nice. I can already tell that I am learning a lot more, a lot faster than some of the people in my class. Maher, my host brother (but he is in his thirties, married, kids) threatens to kill me when I don’t study. Additionally, my Arabic teacher, Muna, threatens to eat any students who don’t do their homework. Two days ago though Muna said she would never eat me because I knew a lot of the vocabulary the class could not remember.
I am still learning the alphabet but it is really exciting. I leave class everyday feeling very accomplished because I am able to read that much more. However on our second day of class we had not learned enough letters to read the word “women.” My friend Ashley and I were looking for a bathroom around the university and could only find a women’s room that was completely blockaded on our floor. We went to the next floor and found some bathrooms missing the woman and man pictures. Since on the floor below the women’s room was on the right we assumed it would be on the right on this floor too (which I maintain is legitimate). While Ashley was in a stall (there were no urinals) a boy walked in and just stared at me for a second. He walked out, checked the sign, walked back in and started talking to me in Arabic. I gave him my vacant-i-have-no-idea-what-you-are-saying look but I guess I hadn’t perfected it by then and he just kept on talking. I started talking in English, he went out to check the sign again and then said “for men.” Luckily we had a sense of humor and could not stop laughing, even for the rest of the day. Needless to say, we immediately learned the word for woman and check twice every time I walk into a bathroom.
I am also taking a class titled America and the Arabs. My professor seems like a great guy with a sense of humor. We hopefully will be meeting many important people in the Jordanian government, such as the minister of foreign affairs, the ambassador to Israel, and also go on field trips, like to refugee camps. Additionally, I am supposedly going to be in an internship but it seems some of the paperwork is holding me back because someone from CIEE quit over the summer and lost resumes and what not. Hopefully CIEE can get its act together so I can work for some non-governmental organization as my fourth class.
It can be overwhelming being here but overall I am having such a great time. I am meeting some awesome people, both from the US and from Jordan. Sometimes my head hurts from Arabic overload/ having such a different life but I find that taking a nap is a wonderful remedy. Going to the gym is also a great way for me to just let my brain relax. It is a lot of work to learn Arabic but I can’t wait till I get to the point where I can forget how to make the vacant face.
I feel lucky to be alive everyday...
because of the taxi drivers. The driving is actually crazy. I could probably stick my arm out the window at any time on my ride to school and easily touch an enormous bus or truck. Taxi is my only way of transportation because there are no buses that go to my part of the city, Shmeisani. A significant portion of our orientation revolved around dealing with taxi drivers. Though there are creeps everywhere in the world I have had a great time in taxis so far. For instance last night we had one driver blasting Michael Jackson the whole way home. This morning a driver was telling me about how much Arabs love Americans, but not American policy and continued to discuss the problems with supporting Israel. Even on such an emotional topic the taxi driver was very specific in separating the American people from American policy.
I haven’t felt any hostility from being American either. I went into a store one day to buy water and saw a picture of Saddam Hussein hanging behind the register. The man asked if I was American and I said I was. He then made machine gun motions and sounds. Even then, he was respectful to me and we had a nice conversation. I feel perfectly comfortable telling people I am America; I have received only positive reactions (well, minus the machine gun part).
Even being a woman here is a lot easier than I was expecting. I knew women were relatively free but I was still mentally prepared for a semester of lock down. I mean there is always having to deal with catcalls, but really that is harmless; eventually it just fades into the background. The hardest thing about coming here is not being nice. When someone says hi to me I naturally want to talk to him and smile and get to know him better. However, this sends the wrong messages to creeper guys so I have been working on my mean/don’t talk to me face. It is hard but I have found that you just have to find the right setting (aka not a man in a car or in the middle of the street).
I still can’t wear tank tops or anything above the knees but it almost feels normal now. I would be very uncomfortable wearing a tank top in public. On the positive side I wear beautiful scarves everyday. It does get super hot sometimes but you wouldn’t believe the temperature difference between the sun and the shade. Additionally it is going to start cooling down soon so I won’t be missing my American clothing (or lack thereof).
Speaking of weather, I was caught in my first dust storm two days ago! It wasn’t really a storm with swirling winds; just suddenly there was dust in the air. A few of my friends and I were out to dinner on a rooftop. By the end of the meal we could run our fingers over the table and see how much dust had accumulated. Gross. When we left we could taste it in our mouths and had to wrap our scarves around our heads just to walk around. It was pretty wild. I welcomed it though because it blocked out the sun making it much cooler : )
I will be able to post pictures! Off campus there is a knowledge society that has tons of computers, wifi, study rooms, a copy store, food, and you sign in with your fingerprint! I will be able to upload pics without worrying about slowing down the internet at home. A few more days and they will be up.
I haven’t felt any hostility from being American either. I went into a store one day to buy water and saw a picture of Saddam Hussein hanging behind the register. The man asked if I was American and I said I was. He then made machine gun motions and sounds. Even then, he was respectful to me and we had a nice conversation. I feel perfectly comfortable telling people I am America; I have received only positive reactions (well, minus the machine gun part).
Even being a woman here is a lot easier than I was expecting. I knew women were relatively free but I was still mentally prepared for a semester of lock down. I mean there is always having to deal with catcalls, but really that is harmless; eventually it just fades into the background. The hardest thing about coming here is not being nice. When someone says hi to me I naturally want to talk to him and smile and get to know him better. However, this sends the wrong messages to creeper guys so I have been working on my mean/don’t talk to me face. It is hard but I have found that you just have to find the right setting (aka not a man in a car or in the middle of the street).
I still can’t wear tank tops or anything above the knees but it almost feels normal now. I would be very uncomfortable wearing a tank top in public. On the positive side I wear beautiful scarves everyday. It does get super hot sometimes but you wouldn’t believe the temperature difference between the sun and the shade. Additionally it is going to start cooling down soon so I won’t be missing my American clothing (or lack thereof).
Speaking of weather, I was caught in my first dust storm two days ago! It wasn’t really a storm with swirling winds; just suddenly there was dust in the air. A few of my friends and I were out to dinner on a rooftop. By the end of the meal we could run our fingers over the table and see how much dust had accumulated. Gross. When we left we could taste it in our mouths and had to wrap our scarves around our heads just to walk around. It was pretty wild. I welcomed it though because it blocked out the sun making it much cooler : )
I will be able to post pictures! Off campus there is a knowledge society that has tons of computers, wifi, study rooms, a copy store, food, and you sign in with your fingerprint! I will be able to upload pics without worrying about slowing down the internet at home. A few more days and they will be up.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Argilla
It has been pointed out that not everyone knows what hookah/argilla is! My bad. I am just going to use argilla from now on to keep up with the Jordanians. Argilla is a large water pipe to smoke shisha out of. Shisha is flavored tobacco that is very wet and sticky. The shisha is put in a little bowl at the top of the hookah and then the bowl is covered in tin foil. Holes are poked in the tin foil and coals go on top. There is a hose that attaches to the base, which is partially filled with water. When someone sucks in it pulls air from the top so the charcoal will heat the shisha and create smoke. The smoke goes down to the base and is cooled off by the water. The result is very thick clouds of smoke. It is hugely popular in my house, meaning multiple times a day. In the US I think of argilla as a very social activity; multiple hoses per hookah and passing back and forth every few puffs. Here it is very individual. It seems everyone has their own and if you are sharing a hose one person will sit on it for a very long time before passing. They keep giving me funny looks every time I pass it back so quickly but I was just trying to share. Here are some pics : )
btdubs no pics
Hey guys.
just wanted to let you know I don't think I will be posting pictures online. If I get the opportunity to do it at UJ I will but I won't know that for a while. Here people are only given a certain amount of internet. I am actually very lucky that my house has internet but we aren't allowed to use YouTube and can only make one video skype call per week, otherwise the internet will get unbareable slow for the rest of the month. Loading pictures online would take way too much for me to do it at home. Like I said though I will try and figure it out at UJ. Until then youll just have to use your imagination (or google).
just wanted to let you know I don't think I will be posting pictures online. If I get the opportunity to do it at UJ I will but I won't know that for a while. Here people are only given a certain amount of internet. I am actually very lucky that my house has internet but we aren't allowed to use YouTube and can only make one video skype call per week, otherwise the internet will get unbareable slow for the rest of the month. Loading pictures online would take way too much for me to do it at home. Like I said though I will try and figure it out at UJ. Until then youll just have to use your imagination (or google).
Friday, September 17, 2010
best family ever
Marhaba! I met my host family last night and it was impossible to wipe the smile off of my face. Jackie and I were the first two to get picked up at the hotel. Maher, his wife Amal, two children Laith and Tala and his niece Zena drove us to Shireen’s house. Lots of other sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews were there too. We had an orientation earlier in the day that was basically a two-hour presentation about how awkward and uncomfortable we were going to be. Fortunately for Jackie and I the awkwardness we were promised only lasted about the first ten minutes and then we were in.
Everyone was super surprised to hear I didn’t know any Arabic. Actually during one of our orientation exercises we were developing the identity of the CIEE tribe because here all someone has to do is say his/her name and then everything there is to be known about this person is known because someone would know the family he/she is from. They don’t ask questions like what is your major or what kind of music do you like because it is not relevant to your identity. Our director would make a statement and if that statement was true for us we would stand up. One of the statements she said was “We don’t know any Arabic” and only five (including me, out of 135) stood up. I guess that was the first time I realized oh, people don’t normally just pick up and go to countries where they can’t speak the language, whatever. We got a round of applause from all the CIEE students but the typical reaction from the family is “oh wow, you have a lot to learn.”
Anyway, Maher said we could put our stuff away and the coffee shop with argilla (hookah) would open in an hour. Jackie and I have a huge closet with large sliding doors covered in mirrors. It is awesome because I brought a small army of mirrors terrified there wouldn’t be any. We have to keep our rooms unnaturally clean (at least compared to my floor covered in a foot of clothing standards), which I think will be harder than learning Arabic.
After we got organized and settled we went outside and had the best time. They have a patio where people from the street can peer down. More and more family members were coming over; including some that brought their own CIEE students too. We spent the night smoking argilla, eating chocolate, drinking Turkish coffee, and laughing with the family. Maher’s oldest brother, Basel came over having already memorized Jackie’s and my profiles. We joked around a lot, warning the other CIEE students as they arrived that we had a spy amongst us. There were noisy children everywhere, multiple hookahs, lots of laughing; it was a huge loving family and we were instantly a part of it. Zena and I played cat’s cradle for what must have been an hour. Additionally, the Jordanians assured me that smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee everyday is good for my health (on a side note, Jordan has a higher life expectancy than the US).
At 11 30 we had dinner. I was a little nervous when I saw the spread and there was no hummus. There were maybe 15 bowls on the table; olives, yogurt, cheese, tomatoes, oregano, olive oil, scrambled eggs, eggplant, cucumbers, jam, and mint. Each person gets a pita and goes at it. Believe it or not I really liked it! My favorite was probably dipping the pita in olive oil and then the oregano, or grabbing some mint and yogurt with the pita. I was so tired I couldn’t wait to go to bed but then Maher turned to us and said want to watch a movie? I figured the later I stayed up the later I would sleep in and was having such a good time I couldn’t say no.
Watching TV is a big part of family time. Even if no one is actually watching, it is on. Maher, Amal, Jackie and I watched Snakes on a Plane (who in the world doesn’t love Samuel L. Jackson?) while Tala, Laith, Zena, and Zaid (a 1.5 year old cousin) fell asleep on the pillows in front of us. The weekends here are Friday and Saturday so Maher said we're all sleeping in until noon or one. Friday is family day because there is no work so when we woke up we had breakfast and lounged around the house until five in our pjs, playing games with Laith, Tala, Zena, and Zaid, smoking argilla, and just relaxing; it was my kind of day.
Breakfast was the same style except there was hummus, yay!! And this bean dish, which I have no idea what they call it but it sounds an awful lot like “food.” There were also cucumbers, eggplant, olives, peppers, and tomatoes. It was really good and it should go without saying but my favorite was pita and hummus. We taught Tala and Laith ninja assassin and they “taught” us (aka made up) a card game that conveniently was impossible to end. Maher is about to take us around the neighborhood and show us how to get to University of Jordan (UJ) to prepare us for our first classes on Sunday.
Well the argilla is about to get passed to me so I have to free my hands. I hope you all are well and your lungs are doing a lot better than mine are going to be after these three and a half months! Masalama!
Everyone was super surprised to hear I didn’t know any Arabic. Actually during one of our orientation exercises we were developing the identity of the CIEE tribe because here all someone has to do is say his/her name and then everything there is to be known about this person is known because someone would know the family he/she is from. They don’t ask questions like what is your major or what kind of music do you like because it is not relevant to your identity. Our director would make a statement and if that statement was true for us we would stand up. One of the statements she said was “We don’t know any Arabic” and only five (including me, out of 135) stood up. I guess that was the first time I realized oh, people don’t normally just pick up and go to countries where they can’t speak the language, whatever. We got a round of applause from all the CIEE students but the typical reaction from the family is “oh wow, you have a lot to learn.”
Anyway, Maher said we could put our stuff away and the coffee shop with argilla (hookah) would open in an hour. Jackie and I have a huge closet with large sliding doors covered in mirrors. It is awesome because I brought a small army of mirrors terrified there wouldn’t be any. We have to keep our rooms unnaturally clean (at least compared to my floor covered in a foot of clothing standards), which I think will be harder than learning Arabic.
After we got organized and settled we went outside and had the best time. They have a patio where people from the street can peer down. More and more family members were coming over; including some that brought their own CIEE students too. We spent the night smoking argilla, eating chocolate, drinking Turkish coffee, and laughing with the family. Maher’s oldest brother, Basel came over having already memorized Jackie’s and my profiles. We joked around a lot, warning the other CIEE students as they arrived that we had a spy amongst us. There were noisy children everywhere, multiple hookahs, lots of laughing; it was a huge loving family and we were instantly a part of it. Zena and I played cat’s cradle for what must have been an hour. Additionally, the Jordanians assured me that smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee everyday is good for my health (on a side note, Jordan has a higher life expectancy than the US).
At 11 30 we had dinner. I was a little nervous when I saw the spread and there was no hummus. There were maybe 15 bowls on the table; olives, yogurt, cheese, tomatoes, oregano, olive oil, scrambled eggs, eggplant, cucumbers, jam, and mint. Each person gets a pita and goes at it. Believe it or not I really liked it! My favorite was probably dipping the pita in olive oil and then the oregano, or grabbing some mint and yogurt with the pita. I was so tired I couldn’t wait to go to bed but then Maher turned to us and said want to watch a movie? I figured the later I stayed up the later I would sleep in and was having such a good time I couldn’t say no.
Watching TV is a big part of family time. Even if no one is actually watching, it is on. Maher, Amal, Jackie and I watched Snakes on a Plane (who in the world doesn’t love Samuel L. Jackson?) while Tala, Laith, Zena, and Zaid (a 1.5 year old cousin) fell asleep on the pillows in front of us. The weekends here are Friday and Saturday so Maher said we're all sleeping in until noon or one. Friday is family day because there is no work so when we woke up we had breakfast and lounged around the house until five in our pjs, playing games with Laith, Tala, Zena, and Zaid, smoking argilla, and just relaxing; it was my kind of day.
Breakfast was the same style except there was hummus, yay!! And this bean dish, which I have no idea what they call it but it sounds an awful lot like “food.” There were also cucumbers, eggplant, olives, peppers, and tomatoes. It was really good and it should go without saying but my favorite was pita and hummus. We taught Tala and Laith ninja assassin and they “taught” us (aka made up) a card game that conveniently was impossible to end. Maher is about to take us around the neighborhood and show us how to get to University of Jordan (UJ) to prepare us for our first classes on Sunday.
Well the argilla is about to get passed to me so I have to free my hands. I hope you all are well and your lungs are doing a lot better than mine are going to be after these three and a half months! Masalama!
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Day 1 in Jordan!
Hi everyone! I would say hi in Arabic but so far I only know hurry up (which Danielle taught me in Korea) and hookah, but what else do you really need? Today was my first full day in Jordan and despite the jetlag it made me really excited for the coming semester. Though we had to sit through a few hours of presentations and have a few more hours tomorrow it was a great opportunity to explore the group of people I am with. I still am not sure if I feel like I am in Jordan, I mean I feel like it but I haven’t had any interactions besides asking for the bathroom and having a lovely man rub garlic on my arm, but I’ll get to that later. I guess it is nice to ease into transition so I don’t decide to just wander into the dessert from frustration on day two.
I arrived off the plane cranky and praying to the luggage gods that mine had made it. It is very common for luggage to just disappear, it happened to many people on my flight but I was a lucky one. As soon as our activities coordinator Ahmad led us outside the airport I felt my mood instantly change. There was a beautiful breeze and even though I was wearing jeans and a zip up the 80-degree heat didn’t bother me at all; it felt nice.
Our driver skillfully packed the van with all of our luggage and we hit the road to Amman, a 40 minute drive. I was sitting in between the driver and Jenna, a girl who grew up in Korea! We spent the whole drive talking about Seoul and the Korean language that I almost forgot where I was going. The first thing we both instantly noticed from the front seat of the van was the lack of lane dividers, and lanes for that matter. It seems that you just drive where you want, weaving in and out, and emitting a honk or two if a car may be encroaching your personal bubble, which is probably an inch or two smaller than the car itself. However we made it to the hotel in one piece, ate dinner, and went to bed.
In our orientation materials I got a look at my home stay family! I am really really excited, I think I hit the jackpot. I am going to live at Shireen’s house, a 60-year-old woman who loves to cook, feed people, and knows all the neighbors. She has six children. Her son Maher and his wife Amal live in the house as well with their two children Laith (8) and Tala (5). Maher and Amal are both engineers (electric and computer respectively) so I am ever so hopeful there might be internet in the house (I’m not holding my breath though…). Shireen has many grandchildren and the family loves to spend time together so there are almost always people over the house. The family is Muslim and a 15-20 minute taxi ride to the University of Jordan. There is another girl from CIEE that I am sharing a room with too, Jackie. So it sounds like it will be a full and fun house! Lastly my information sheet said that shisha (hookahing) is very popular in the house. This will be an awesome experience. We move in after orientation in two days.
Until then, we have activities planned that keep us busy and give us tons of information. Today we went to the Dead Sea for a full day of presentations, swimming, mud, and food. We rode in the bus (well actually 3 buses, there are 135 kids in the program) for a little over an hour to go to the Dead Sea Panorama. It is on top of a mountain next to the Dead Sea that has just an amazing view. The guy next to me caught me off guard when he said, “wow, I really didn’t think I was going to see Israel today” and I could not stop laughing despite agreeing with the sentiment.
We all took some pictures, sat through orientation presentations and than had an amazing lunch with lamb AND chicken shawarma. I was in heaven, until I stepped outside and was stung by the largest wasp I have ever seen. My first encounter with Jordanian wild life…what a shame. At first I wasn’t worried about it but the swelling got to a point where my friend Chris made me go get some ice. I asked the men who were working in the restaurant for some ice in a napkin (they spoke English to some extent). One guy said “Can I put some garlic on it?” I kind of just looked at him, not sure if I understood him correctly (I am terrible with accents) or should be mentally preparing to bust out the charades. I looked at him like he had ten heads and then said “Garlic, like the food? Yea absolutely!” He laughed a little then came back from the kitchen and rubbed garlic in my wound and after some ice time the swelling went down. It still really hurts but it is a nice little constant reminder I am not in America anymore (I’ve only been stung by a bee once in Charlotte!).
We headed down to the Dead Sea and got to swim and cover ourselves in the mud. It was the craziest feeling ever. I was walking into the water and kept walking until I realized suddenly there was no ground under my feet! I could easily have more of my body out of the water than in the water, such a strange feeling. In one of my finer moments I tried to swim to the bottom and not only failed terribly but instinctively opened my eyes underwater and spent the next ten minutes with my eyes squeezed shut cursing my stupidity. We had more presentations and an outstanding dinner with duck, beef, lamb, hummus, and the most ornate table of desserts I have ever seen.
We finished off the night on the deck overlooking the Dead Sea, seeing the lights of the West Bank across the way. It was truly amazing. I conjured up whatever energy I had left to stay awake on the bus and write this post for you guys but I can’t wait to go to sleep! We have another day of orientating tomorrow at the University of Jordan so I will give my salty eyes and stung arm and sleepy head a break. I unfortunately left my camera cord at home but my roommate’s computer will take my camera’s memory card so I will probably be a lot slower with pictures until my cord is hand delivered or I find a replacement. But I will get into the swing of things soon enough. This is only the end of Day 1 after all!
I arrived off the plane cranky and praying to the luggage gods that mine had made it. It is very common for luggage to just disappear, it happened to many people on my flight but I was a lucky one. As soon as our activities coordinator Ahmad led us outside the airport I felt my mood instantly change. There was a beautiful breeze and even though I was wearing jeans and a zip up the 80-degree heat didn’t bother me at all; it felt nice.
Our driver skillfully packed the van with all of our luggage and we hit the road to Amman, a 40 minute drive. I was sitting in between the driver and Jenna, a girl who grew up in Korea! We spent the whole drive talking about Seoul and the Korean language that I almost forgot where I was going. The first thing we both instantly noticed from the front seat of the van was the lack of lane dividers, and lanes for that matter. It seems that you just drive where you want, weaving in and out, and emitting a honk or two if a car may be encroaching your personal bubble, which is probably an inch or two smaller than the car itself. However we made it to the hotel in one piece, ate dinner, and went to bed.
In our orientation materials I got a look at my home stay family! I am really really excited, I think I hit the jackpot. I am going to live at Shireen’s house, a 60-year-old woman who loves to cook, feed people, and knows all the neighbors. She has six children. Her son Maher and his wife Amal live in the house as well with their two children Laith (8) and Tala (5). Maher and Amal are both engineers (electric and computer respectively) so I am ever so hopeful there might be internet in the house (I’m not holding my breath though…). Shireen has many grandchildren and the family loves to spend time together so there are almost always people over the house. The family is Muslim and a 15-20 minute taxi ride to the University of Jordan. There is another girl from CIEE that I am sharing a room with too, Jackie. So it sounds like it will be a full and fun house! Lastly my information sheet said that shisha (hookahing) is very popular in the house. This will be an awesome experience. We move in after orientation in two days.
Until then, we have activities planned that keep us busy and give us tons of information. Today we went to the Dead Sea for a full day of presentations, swimming, mud, and food. We rode in the bus (well actually 3 buses, there are 135 kids in the program) for a little over an hour to go to the Dead Sea Panorama. It is on top of a mountain next to the Dead Sea that has just an amazing view. The guy next to me caught me off guard when he said, “wow, I really didn’t think I was going to see Israel today” and I could not stop laughing despite agreeing with the sentiment.
We all took some pictures, sat through orientation presentations and than had an amazing lunch with lamb AND chicken shawarma. I was in heaven, until I stepped outside and was stung by the largest wasp I have ever seen. My first encounter with Jordanian wild life…what a shame. At first I wasn’t worried about it but the swelling got to a point where my friend Chris made me go get some ice. I asked the men who were working in the restaurant for some ice in a napkin (they spoke English to some extent). One guy said “Can I put some garlic on it?” I kind of just looked at him, not sure if I understood him correctly (I am terrible with accents) or should be mentally preparing to bust out the charades. I looked at him like he had ten heads and then said “Garlic, like the food? Yea absolutely!” He laughed a little then came back from the kitchen and rubbed garlic in my wound and after some ice time the swelling went down. It still really hurts but it is a nice little constant reminder I am not in America anymore (I’ve only been stung by a bee once in Charlotte!).
We headed down to the Dead Sea and got to swim and cover ourselves in the mud. It was the craziest feeling ever. I was walking into the water and kept walking until I realized suddenly there was no ground under my feet! I could easily have more of my body out of the water than in the water, such a strange feeling. In one of my finer moments I tried to swim to the bottom and not only failed terribly but instinctively opened my eyes underwater and spent the next ten minutes with my eyes squeezed shut cursing my stupidity. We had more presentations and an outstanding dinner with duck, beef, lamb, hummus, and the most ornate table of desserts I have ever seen.
We finished off the night on the deck overlooking the Dead Sea, seeing the lights of the West Bank across the way. It was truly amazing. I conjured up whatever energy I had left to stay awake on the bus and write this post for you guys but I can’t wait to go to sleep! We have another day of orientating tomorrow at the University of Jordan so I will give my salty eyes and stung arm and sleepy head a break. I unfortunately left my camera cord at home but my roommate’s computer will take my camera’s memory card so I will probably be a lot slower with pictures until my cord is hand delivered or I find a replacement. But I will get into the swing of things soon enough. This is only the end of Day 1 after all!
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Final Report
I am just going to start out by saying my time in Korea was amazing. I learned so much while having some of the most fun ever. In this report I am going to explain and reflect on my project, travels, and the people I encountered. I will wrap it up with a summarization of how my trip contributed to the fulfillment of PIRE goals. So without further introduction I will dive into my project in Hubo Lab.
Previous to my arrival at Hubo Lab, Bruce Maxwell and I had laid out a week-by-week plan of what I wanted to accomplish in Korea. A group of students at Colby programmed Simon Says for virtual miniHubo. I planned to program arm movements in Webots, like pointing at whom ever is out. Upon my arrival though this did not sit well with my mentor Inho, who thought my time would be better spent gaining experience with robot movement. My project then changed to learning inverse kinematics and Robotics Lab to simulate a three-degree of freedom Puma robot and programming it to spell out my name in the air with the end effector.
I started my research in textbooks. Since everyone in the lab had taken the introduction to robotics classes as KAIST they had a range of intro books leftover for me to read from. I learned the basics of robotics, such as the classifications of robots, types of joints, and the vernacular in general. However the highest-level math class I have taken is multivariable calculus. I was lost amongst the pages and pages of equations in the textbooks that I could not wrap my head around because I did not have the math knowledge base they assumed. I definitely could have benefited from a linear algebra class. I did not feel comfortable asking for help without a little bit of background as to what I was even asking. I decided to look on the Internet for video explanations.
My first stop was YouTube. I found lectures by Professor Oussama Khatib’s Introduction to Robotics Class at Stanford. It was much easier to understand a person explaining a concept and even more helpful to have video when it came to visualizing rotations. I learned about Denavit-Hartenberg parameters and homogeneous transformations from these videos. This gave me a little more of the background I was missing from round one of reading the textbooks. So a little more confident I went back to the books and was able to understand significantly more. I was then able to ask intelligent, specific questions as opposed to, “I don’t get it.”
Inho gave me a test on what I had learned. This was a bit of an ordeal because he unintentionally gave me a very difficult problem that I had not studied material for and even took him over an hour to solve. Of course we did not discover this until after I had secretly asked every single person in the lab for help at least twice and several frustrating conversations (as if communication wasn’t frustrating enough sometimes already) about not being able to solve an “easy” problem A couple of days and several fried brain cells later, I passed the test and began using Robotics Lab, a robot simulation program. Virtually building my three-degree of freedom Puma robot was pretty uneventful thankfully because I had experimented with Robotics Lab the first week I was in Korea. Besides some minor axes issues I had my robot and its servos running relatively quickly.
After I got the servos running the next step was to control them. Inho gave me some of his code for controlling Hubo. I used this as a reference and a crutch since I did not know C. I did not learn the ins and outs of C (I can do that anytime) but instead learned the ins and outs of my code; I understood the purpose of each line and what happened when it was executed. My program was basically a continuous loop that called a function that calculated the next angle position for the servo until it reached the final position that I hardcoded in. This function changed an array in memory. I then set the appropriate servo to go to the appropriate angle in the array. The program stopped running when the user pressed Q.
However, I wanted to make several movements to spell out my name, not just to one endpoint. I modified my code with a series of if statements that relied on the variable time. Inside each if statement was my angle settings for the servos. In the end, I had programmed my robot to write out my name (L-I-Z) and Inho’s name too because he helped me so much.
I was very proud of my final product. It was really gratifying after spending all of the time and effort to have solidly reached my goal. I was also very pleased with my studies in general. I am normally an independent learner but I have always found I need a human explanation when it comes to math. I knew Inho had a lot of work on his plate so I spent a lot of time finding alternatives and reading things repeatedly to get as much as possible out of each non-human resource. I definitely have never worked so hard at or have been so dedicated to math.
It was really challenging at times though. It was not uncommon for me to be beyond frustrated and confused. The hardest part would be when I had spent hours if not days working on one task, coming at it from every angle, doing absolutely everything and anything I could think of to solve the problem and then being completely stumped. But as they say, what doesn’t kill you makes your stronger. These struggles were what helped me learn the material. Hubo Lab provided the ideal environment for me to study, from the resources to the people.
I found nothing noteworthy about being a female in an all male lab. I prefer it that way; I seem to get along better with those of the male persuasion. Having said that, I loved having Danielle. We became such good friends and she was one of the primary reasons my time was so amazing. From both of us riding a bike at the same time around Daejeon to sharing a moped in Jeju we were best buddies. But I would not attribute our relationship to the fact we were the only women in the lab. I think at first we became friends because we were American and then our personalities clicked so well that our friendship was natural and inevitable.
I love the lab guys. I was skyping with David Urias and he kept saying that every time I mentioned the people I met my “face completely lights up.” The people were definitely my favorite part. Even if it was just a regular day in the lab we still had a fun time. What I liked most about the lab guys was that they were really helpful in the lab but we also had a great time out of the lab. One time we were out at a bar watching the World Cup and I was bemoaning the difficulty of a problem that I was having trouble solving. Cheol then offered to go through the problem from beginning to end with me and the next day we went over it. Another time we were asking for a jimjilbang (bathhouse) in Jeju to spend the night. Jungwoo printed out a list of jimjilbangs on a map in English and Korean. What I liked most about the boys was that I felt I could be myself around them, make jokes, and talk about anything. We even met up with Cheol and his brother in Seoul one weekend.
It is weird that I did not find the age difference between the lab guys and me weird. Since a lot of them had done their two-year mandatory military service and had already done undergraduate school and/or gotten their masters, they mostly were in their upper twenties. Whenever we hung out our ages never seemed relevant (unless I was teasing them about being old and boring). It was really nice to feel equal among all of these obviously smart and older guys. This allowed us to be friends and to feel comfortable around each other. I think the novelty of Americans contributed to the initial candidness but the transition to friendship is what continued it.
It seemed to be the general consensus amongst all KAIST students that Daejeon was not the place to be on weekends. You didn’t have to tell us twice so every weekend Peter, Danielle, and I adventured to a different area of the country. The three of us were the best traveling companions. Danielle knew a lot about Korea’s history from her three months prior to our arrival and was amazing at planning. She gave us our own private tour of Seoul. Peter was energetic and inventive, pushing us to do things I may not have not done (like cliff jumping at Oedolgae Rock!).
The coolest thing I saw was the statue of Admiral Yi Sun-shin in Gwanghwamun Plaza. Admiral Yi fought off the Japanese during the Joseon Dynasty through several invasions from 1592 to 1598. Admiral Yi was victorious in all of his 23 battles and his last words were spent telling the navy to hide his death in secrecy so the enemy would not gain morale. Admiral Yi’s statue stands tall over a mall with water fountains spewing in front of him. At the foot of his statue lies a turtle ship, which he was known for strategically using. The water from the fountain rises to such a height that the ship could be floating on top of the water.
I was so amazed by this statue because when I originally saw it I was under the impression Admiral Yi’s body was encased by the turtle ship part of the statue. I was actually under this impression until I started writing this paragraph and looked at some websites to check my facts (FYI he is buried in his hometown next to his father). Regardless, Admiral Yi’s story still impressed me. I will admit I thought the statue was a lot more interesting when I thought his body was in the turtle ship; it made me feel a connection and brought the history of Korea alive as I stood next to it. I really enjoyed the site of children frolicking in the fountain of history under the calculating stare of the admiral. I was honored to be in what I thought was the presence of a Korean hero.
The markets in Seoul were really fun to navigate. It gave us a lot of chances to practice Korean, especially the numbers. One time Danielle and I were at Myeongdong and all of a sudden every girl we could see started screaming and running. The next thing I knew Danielle had grabbed my hand and we were running along side these fanatic girls. We arrived at the front of something similar to a mosh pit in front of a skin store and asked the security guard holding us back what was going on. A Korean pop group, 2 PM, was doing a promotion. We played the “we are Americans and have no idea what is going on and we are just trying to get out of this zoo of girls” card to get under the arms of security, which made the other fans livid, get a closer look at the stars and then left on our merry, VIP un-crowded path.
The markets in Seoul are one of the iconic images of Asia. They are filled with bright signs, tons of people, and street vendors for haggling with. But that was about the only expectation that I found to be true in my travels. Another expectation I had was that the generational gaps would be vast. Though this assumption was accurate the difference was not what I had anticipated. I thought the older women would be extremely traditional but they seemed to just be perpetually unhappy unless they are standing in the street with other old women either laughing or glaring at others. Perhaps this is a side effect of the Korean War because it does not reflect in the generations below. The younger generation was a lot more normal than the super cute hyper bubbly girls I was imagining. I think what I was picturing was more Japanese but regardless I was happy to encounter down to earth girls. Though the couples everywhere holding hands in matching outfits could make even Hubo gag.
One of the main goals of PIRE is the exchange of tribal knowledge between the United States and Korea. I learned inverse kinematics and got experience programming a robot. Though I could learn from a textbook anywhere I would not have the access to Hubo information everywhere. For instance, Inho showed me some of his Hubo code to help me learn Robotics Lab, Cheol taught me a special way to set up my Denavit-Hartenberg table. I took all the knowledge I gained and brought it back to Colby to improve the movements for playing Simon Says with miniHubo. Peter and I are vessels that brought humanoid research tools to Colby. Hubo Lab provided a mentally stimulating environment and really contributed to our research. We saw many demos and we could experiment with Hubo to get a better understanding of his movement. This contributed to making our motions as fluid and natural as possible.
By enhancing the movements of the Simon Says game we are making the robot more relatable. When people are more comfortable they are more likely to explore something new and unfamiliar. This is a great way to get everyone willing to explore technology, regardless of age or discipline. Additionally it makes the robot more impressive, which brings new people to the field of humanoids, another goal of PIRE. The United States dedicates nearly one third of its budget to military, which makes up nearly half of the world’s military budget. Robotics is and always will be focused militaristically but simple awareness can shift the public focus to humanoids and get diverse groups interested, invested, and active in the humanoid community. The more this occurs the more the humanoid community expands, spilling over into the general public, which the government cannot ignore. This can manifest simply as record number of humanoid grant approvals, more media coverage, or integrating more robotics into science curriculums nationwide. Regardless, by taking the Korean emphasis on the humanness of Hubo and applying it to our Colby project we can contribute to the momentum humanoids need.
I embody the fusion of US and Korean research. Though my research was low level compared to what the rest of Hubo Lab was doing, it was what my school needed. My project wasn’t blazing any trails in the world of robotics, which would not have been a realistic goal, but I was blazing trails for the projects at Colby. Korea provided Peter and me with resources we could not get in the United States while at the same time directly benefiting our school, which contributes to PIRE and humanoid robotics in the United States.
Additionally, the relationships we formed, though they cannot be quantified or packaged up as a deliverable, are a significant part of PIRE’s goals. The global collaboration aspect of this project is crucial to uniting engineers. Though I seldom take life advice from Woody Allen, I can’t help but admit he is right when he says, “Ninety percent of life is just showing up.” Despite my government major I made international partnerships that are indispensible, even to the engineering community. By experiencing Korea I laid that path for other Colby students to do the same. Colby is a part of the PIRE alliance and it is important that we be globally engaged due to the norm for advancements to be a result of international work. Globalization is not only about fast food chains in third world countries but the increased communication and cooperation worldwide. My success facilitates the preparation for and participation in international research collaboration for future Colby/PIRE students.
My trip to Korea has been positive for PIRE and even more so for me. This experience really opened up my eyes to the rest of the world. I am already going to Jordan for fall semester to study abroad but I enjoyed Korea so much that I am returning to study at Yonsei University for spring semester too. The lab boys and I are already planning epic reunions for February. I cannot express how thankful I am I had this opportunity; I will just have to leave it at 감사합니다.
Previous to my arrival at Hubo Lab, Bruce Maxwell and I had laid out a week-by-week plan of what I wanted to accomplish in Korea. A group of students at Colby programmed Simon Says for virtual miniHubo. I planned to program arm movements in Webots, like pointing at whom ever is out. Upon my arrival though this did not sit well with my mentor Inho, who thought my time would be better spent gaining experience with robot movement. My project then changed to learning inverse kinematics and Robotics Lab to simulate a three-degree of freedom Puma robot and programming it to spell out my name in the air with the end effector.
I started my research in textbooks. Since everyone in the lab had taken the introduction to robotics classes as KAIST they had a range of intro books leftover for me to read from. I learned the basics of robotics, such as the classifications of robots, types of joints, and the vernacular in general. However the highest-level math class I have taken is multivariable calculus. I was lost amongst the pages and pages of equations in the textbooks that I could not wrap my head around because I did not have the math knowledge base they assumed. I definitely could have benefited from a linear algebra class. I did not feel comfortable asking for help without a little bit of background as to what I was even asking. I decided to look on the Internet for video explanations.
My first stop was YouTube. I found lectures by Professor Oussama Khatib’s Introduction to Robotics Class at Stanford. It was much easier to understand a person explaining a concept and even more helpful to have video when it came to visualizing rotations. I learned about Denavit-Hartenberg parameters and homogeneous transformations from these videos. This gave me a little more of the background I was missing from round one of reading the textbooks. So a little more confident I went back to the books and was able to understand significantly more. I was then able to ask intelligent, specific questions as opposed to, “I don’t get it.”
Inho gave me a test on what I had learned. This was a bit of an ordeal because he unintentionally gave me a very difficult problem that I had not studied material for and even took him over an hour to solve. Of course we did not discover this until after I had secretly asked every single person in the lab for help at least twice and several frustrating conversations (as if communication wasn’t frustrating enough sometimes already) about not being able to solve an “easy” problem A couple of days and several fried brain cells later, I passed the test and began using Robotics Lab, a robot simulation program. Virtually building my three-degree of freedom Puma robot was pretty uneventful thankfully because I had experimented with Robotics Lab the first week I was in Korea. Besides some minor axes issues I had my robot and its servos running relatively quickly.
After I got the servos running the next step was to control them. Inho gave me some of his code for controlling Hubo. I used this as a reference and a crutch since I did not know C. I did not learn the ins and outs of C (I can do that anytime) but instead learned the ins and outs of my code; I understood the purpose of each line and what happened when it was executed. My program was basically a continuous loop that called a function that calculated the next angle position for the servo until it reached the final position that I hardcoded in. This function changed an array in memory. I then set the appropriate servo to go to the appropriate angle in the array. The program stopped running when the user pressed Q.
However, I wanted to make several movements to spell out my name, not just to one endpoint. I modified my code with a series of if statements that relied on the variable time. Inside each if statement was my angle settings for the servos. In the end, I had programmed my robot to write out my name (L-I-Z) and Inho’s name too because he helped me so much.
I was very proud of my final product. It was really gratifying after spending all of the time and effort to have solidly reached my goal. I was also very pleased with my studies in general. I am normally an independent learner but I have always found I need a human explanation when it comes to math. I knew Inho had a lot of work on his plate so I spent a lot of time finding alternatives and reading things repeatedly to get as much as possible out of each non-human resource. I definitely have never worked so hard at or have been so dedicated to math.
It was really challenging at times though. It was not uncommon for me to be beyond frustrated and confused. The hardest part would be when I had spent hours if not days working on one task, coming at it from every angle, doing absolutely everything and anything I could think of to solve the problem and then being completely stumped. But as they say, what doesn’t kill you makes your stronger. These struggles were what helped me learn the material. Hubo Lab provided the ideal environment for me to study, from the resources to the people.
I found nothing noteworthy about being a female in an all male lab. I prefer it that way; I seem to get along better with those of the male persuasion. Having said that, I loved having Danielle. We became such good friends and she was one of the primary reasons my time was so amazing. From both of us riding a bike at the same time around Daejeon to sharing a moped in Jeju we were best buddies. But I would not attribute our relationship to the fact we were the only women in the lab. I think at first we became friends because we were American and then our personalities clicked so well that our friendship was natural and inevitable.
I love the lab guys. I was skyping with David Urias and he kept saying that every time I mentioned the people I met my “face completely lights up.” The people were definitely my favorite part. Even if it was just a regular day in the lab we still had a fun time. What I liked most about the lab guys was that they were really helpful in the lab but we also had a great time out of the lab. One time we were out at a bar watching the World Cup and I was bemoaning the difficulty of a problem that I was having trouble solving. Cheol then offered to go through the problem from beginning to end with me and the next day we went over it. Another time we were asking for a jimjilbang (bathhouse) in Jeju to spend the night. Jungwoo printed out a list of jimjilbangs on a map in English and Korean. What I liked most about the boys was that I felt I could be myself around them, make jokes, and talk about anything. We even met up with Cheol and his brother in Seoul one weekend.
It is weird that I did not find the age difference between the lab guys and me weird. Since a lot of them had done their two-year mandatory military service and had already done undergraduate school and/or gotten their masters, they mostly were in their upper twenties. Whenever we hung out our ages never seemed relevant (unless I was teasing them about being old and boring). It was really nice to feel equal among all of these obviously smart and older guys. This allowed us to be friends and to feel comfortable around each other. I think the novelty of Americans contributed to the initial candidness but the transition to friendship is what continued it.
It seemed to be the general consensus amongst all KAIST students that Daejeon was not the place to be on weekends. You didn’t have to tell us twice so every weekend Peter, Danielle, and I adventured to a different area of the country. The three of us were the best traveling companions. Danielle knew a lot about Korea’s history from her three months prior to our arrival and was amazing at planning. She gave us our own private tour of Seoul. Peter was energetic and inventive, pushing us to do things I may not have not done (like cliff jumping at Oedolgae Rock!).
The coolest thing I saw was the statue of Admiral Yi Sun-shin in Gwanghwamun Plaza. Admiral Yi fought off the Japanese during the Joseon Dynasty through several invasions from 1592 to 1598. Admiral Yi was victorious in all of his 23 battles and his last words were spent telling the navy to hide his death in secrecy so the enemy would not gain morale. Admiral Yi’s statue stands tall over a mall with water fountains spewing in front of him. At the foot of his statue lies a turtle ship, which he was known for strategically using. The water from the fountain rises to such a height that the ship could be floating on top of the water.
I was so amazed by this statue because when I originally saw it I was under the impression Admiral Yi’s body was encased by the turtle ship part of the statue. I was actually under this impression until I started writing this paragraph and looked at some websites to check my facts (FYI he is buried in his hometown next to his father). Regardless, Admiral Yi’s story still impressed me. I will admit I thought the statue was a lot more interesting when I thought his body was in the turtle ship; it made me feel a connection and brought the history of Korea alive as I stood next to it. I really enjoyed the site of children frolicking in the fountain of history under the calculating stare of the admiral. I was honored to be in what I thought was the presence of a Korean hero.
The markets in Seoul were really fun to navigate. It gave us a lot of chances to practice Korean, especially the numbers. One time Danielle and I were at Myeongdong and all of a sudden every girl we could see started screaming and running. The next thing I knew Danielle had grabbed my hand and we were running along side these fanatic girls. We arrived at the front of something similar to a mosh pit in front of a skin store and asked the security guard holding us back what was going on. A Korean pop group, 2 PM, was doing a promotion. We played the “we are Americans and have no idea what is going on and we are just trying to get out of this zoo of girls” card to get under the arms of security, which made the other fans livid, get a closer look at the stars and then left on our merry, VIP un-crowded path.
The markets in Seoul are one of the iconic images of Asia. They are filled with bright signs, tons of people, and street vendors for haggling with. But that was about the only expectation that I found to be true in my travels. Another expectation I had was that the generational gaps would be vast. Though this assumption was accurate the difference was not what I had anticipated. I thought the older women would be extremely traditional but they seemed to just be perpetually unhappy unless they are standing in the street with other old women either laughing or glaring at others. Perhaps this is a side effect of the Korean War because it does not reflect in the generations below. The younger generation was a lot more normal than the super cute hyper bubbly girls I was imagining. I think what I was picturing was more Japanese but regardless I was happy to encounter down to earth girls. Though the couples everywhere holding hands in matching outfits could make even Hubo gag.
One of the main goals of PIRE is the exchange of tribal knowledge between the United States and Korea. I learned inverse kinematics and got experience programming a robot. Though I could learn from a textbook anywhere I would not have the access to Hubo information everywhere. For instance, Inho showed me some of his Hubo code to help me learn Robotics Lab, Cheol taught me a special way to set up my Denavit-Hartenberg table. I took all the knowledge I gained and brought it back to Colby to improve the movements for playing Simon Says with miniHubo. Peter and I are vessels that brought humanoid research tools to Colby. Hubo Lab provided a mentally stimulating environment and really contributed to our research. We saw many demos and we could experiment with Hubo to get a better understanding of his movement. This contributed to making our motions as fluid and natural as possible.
By enhancing the movements of the Simon Says game we are making the robot more relatable. When people are more comfortable they are more likely to explore something new and unfamiliar. This is a great way to get everyone willing to explore technology, regardless of age or discipline. Additionally it makes the robot more impressive, which brings new people to the field of humanoids, another goal of PIRE. The United States dedicates nearly one third of its budget to military, which makes up nearly half of the world’s military budget. Robotics is and always will be focused militaristically but simple awareness can shift the public focus to humanoids and get diverse groups interested, invested, and active in the humanoid community. The more this occurs the more the humanoid community expands, spilling over into the general public, which the government cannot ignore. This can manifest simply as record number of humanoid grant approvals, more media coverage, or integrating more robotics into science curriculums nationwide. Regardless, by taking the Korean emphasis on the humanness of Hubo and applying it to our Colby project we can contribute to the momentum humanoids need.
I embody the fusion of US and Korean research. Though my research was low level compared to what the rest of Hubo Lab was doing, it was what my school needed. My project wasn’t blazing any trails in the world of robotics, which would not have been a realistic goal, but I was blazing trails for the projects at Colby. Korea provided Peter and me with resources we could not get in the United States while at the same time directly benefiting our school, which contributes to PIRE and humanoid robotics in the United States.
Additionally, the relationships we formed, though they cannot be quantified or packaged up as a deliverable, are a significant part of PIRE’s goals. The global collaboration aspect of this project is crucial to uniting engineers. Though I seldom take life advice from Woody Allen, I can’t help but admit he is right when he says, “Ninety percent of life is just showing up.” Despite my government major I made international partnerships that are indispensible, even to the engineering community. By experiencing Korea I laid that path for other Colby students to do the same. Colby is a part of the PIRE alliance and it is important that we be globally engaged due to the norm for advancements to be a result of international work. Globalization is not only about fast food chains in third world countries but the increased communication and cooperation worldwide. My success facilitates the preparation for and participation in international research collaboration for future Colby/PIRE students.
My trip to Korea has been positive for PIRE and even more so for me. This experience really opened up my eyes to the rest of the world. I am already going to Jordan for fall semester to study abroad but I enjoyed Korea so much that I am returning to study at Yonsei University for spring semester too. The lab boys and I are already planning epic reunions for February. I cannot express how thankful I am I had this opportunity; I will just have to leave it at 감사합니다.
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