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).

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!

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!

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.

Photo Journal #5

I can’t believe my time in Korea is already over. I am writing this photo journal from the AAAI conference in Atlanta because the end snuck up on me so quickly! Danielle, Bob, Peter and I spent the last 4 days in Jeju (the Hawaii of Korea) together but I got to spend time with the boys the night before Peter and I flew back.

My last official lab day was July 6th. Dr. Oh had a faculty meeting so he was out of the lab all day, which gave the boys a little more freedom. Typically Danielle and I would make a big deal when it was someone in the labs birthday and since we had a lot of January birthdays we decided to have a big half birthday party on that last day. Cheol , noticing the emphasis we put on birthdays, got me a half birthday cake. It was the sweetest thing ever. We put on two and a half candles (because I was 20.5 years old on July 5th) and sang happy half birthday in Korean. The cake was an awesome sweet potato cake but this is different than the American orange sweet potato. It looks like a normal potato but is sweeter and is usually served with this almost syrup tasting sauce on it.

Our idea of a big party was playing Korean card games with a traditional Korean deck of cards and, of course, good old regular poker. Chung su, Jungwoo, Inho and I stayed up late playing a tournament and then I hit the hay before waking up super early to go to Jeju.

I got back from Jeju on Sunday and it worked out perfectly that the World Cup final was at 3 30 in the morning on Monday. I got to finish up my packing and decompress from Jeju and then the boys said they would come in for one last hurrah with Peter and me. Jungwoo, Cheol, Taejin, Dongil, Peter, Danielle, and I went out and ate lots of Korean food and Soju (Korean rice alcohol). Peter and I brought our luggage in the back of Jungwoo’s car on the way there because we had to go straight to the airport immediately after the game because our flight was at 10 30 Monday morning. The above picture of Danielle, Jungwoo, Peter and me was when we were saying goodbye (even before the game ended because we didn’t have time to see it all!) on our way to the bus. It certainly was an interesting adventure getting to the airport. Actually now that I think about it, it was the exact opposite of interesting because we passed out immediately upon getting on the bus.

We got on the plane and that was it! We certainly made the most of our hours in Korea. Peter did the calculation and we did not sleep in 52 hours before finally falling asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow at the Georgia Tech apartments we are staying at for this conference. Definitely the longest I have ever been awake, I am pretty sure I was losing my mind. Peter and I tried to log in to his blog for about 20 minutes, going through every email he has, and didn’t even realize until the next morning we were typing his email address @google.com instead of @gmail.com. It is five o’clock even after twelve hours of sleep last night and I am already ready to go to sleep.

I was really sad to leave Korea. I was mostly sad to say goodbye to everyone I met. Going around the country was really fun and I was really glad I did it but my favorite part was definitely just hanging out with the lab boys. I loved how they would teach me bits and pieces of Korean, help me out on my project whenever, eat whatever crazy delicious concoctions Danielle and I would make, go along with all of our ideas that must have seemed ridiculous to them, and just being friends with a group of great guys. I mean no one has actually gotten me a half birthday cake, no matter how much I go on and on about it.

I really hope to stay in touch with them in the long term. Jungwoo and Cheol already had facebooks and Danielle is setting them up for the other guys. I actually skyped with Danielle at 4 this morning (jetlag…) and got to say hi to everyone. Danielle said afterwards they all said how much they missed us and wanted us to come back and just really great things so I don’t feel like I am keeping up fake relationships but real friendships. I also have been convincing them to come to the US and hopefully down the road they will. Who knows, maybe I will hit up Korea in the future and be able to hang out with them.

All in all it was such an amazing trip. I think back to the time in February when I first heard about it and my apprehension about traveling to Asia for six weeks. I mean if you had asked me before this trip where the last place on the planet you would ever find me it would probably be some Asian country. Now I am so happy I went and can’t wait to return. It is different but people are people. I had so much fun getting to know the hubo boys and exploring the country that I definitely would not trade this summer for anything.

This experience was even more perfect when I think about it in conjunction with my traveling abroad this September to Jordan. Korea was the perfect stepping-stone because the language is completely different like Arabic, which gave me the feeling of being really helpless while at the same time being an easier language and everyone in Korea is nice and helpful (which I am not expecting to the same extent if at all in Jordan). I got to learn how to travel the right way in a very foreign country to an American but still a safe environment. I can apply this to make myself more effective at traveling and living in Jordan; I have that many less hiccups to survive.

It is amazing how attached one can get in six weeks. Even less than six weeks in the program I was near tears when the Korean Red Devils got eliminated in the World Cup! I hope I get to see these guys at many points again in my life but in the mean time thank you whoever invented the internet!

Final Results

This was the final result of my project. This is my 3 degree of freedom version of the Puma robot programmed to spell out my name in the air. I also programmed it to write Inho's name in the air because he helped me so much. After I wrote my last blog post Inho went to Mexico and so I was on my own. I really wanted Inho to be proud when came back and to have proof that i was working the whole week. I first saw him at midnight the night he came back and i went up to his desk and said that my robot could write his name. He said he wanted to see and as we were walking in the hallway he asked "who helped you?" and i proudly, like a five year old, said i did it by myself. He watched and was super impressed and told me i did a good job like three times (which if you have been reading is legit). I was sooooo happy. Its odd, i have never really looked for someone's approval as much as Inho's. I am not sure why, maybe because i really liked him, but i just wanted him to think I was doing a good job.

I didn't actually use inverse kinematics to do the name writing because the positions were very easy and mostly just common sense. I am still glad I learned it though. It gave me a much deeper appreciation for the problem solving involved in robots. It is easy to just think a robot can do anything but still serious work is put into just getting a robot to move the slightest bit.

Along with this appreciation though came the realization that robots are no where near where I thought they were. The media makes it sound like any day now we are going to have robots servants, or robots running the world, or robots doing amazing things we can't even dream up yet but we are no where near that. I remember Danielle asked Dr. Oh when is she going to get a robot to do her dishes and Dr. Oh said she would be lucky if she ever saw that. Additionally Hubo is run by Jungwoo on a computer pressing buttons. I haven't seen it do anything autonomously so there certainly is a long way to go before I get my robot servant.

The problem (and im not sure i even know what i mean when i say the problem, i guess just the whole robot uh..thing...) is a lot more complex than I assumed. I know I only learned a tiny piece but I get why even though all over the world people have dedicated themselves to robots we still don't have flying cars and what not. This was a solid educational experience and I would recommend it on so many levels to anyone. I am a government major and I still got a ton out of it. Anyone willing to work hard and be out going should absolutely jump at this opportunity. All that matters at all is whether you are willing to put in the effort to do what you want. It really is the type of program where you get out what you put in and I will be forever grateful I put all I could in.

Photo Journal #4

This is a picture from the weekend Peter and I spent in Seoul. We met up with Cheol (on the very left), his brother (on the very right), and his brother’s friend to watch the Korea world cup game (and it was pouring rain).

This week provided me with a window into the mind of Koreans. Up until now I was under the impression that yea, maybe had some different customs but that essentially we all thought the same way. I knew there were some differences, like the way disabled people are swept under the rug or homosexuality was not accepted but we encounter that in the US regularly to some extent, or at least I am aware of that line of thinking. I was so surprised at three instances this week in which Koreans left political correctness at the door and just said it like it is.

First was Cheol. Bob, Peter, Danielle, Cheol and I were sitting around. Bob was talking about Mike going to the gym and Cheol said, Mike needs to go to the gym. He needs to burn off his fat. He needs to burn some calories to get into shape, he is too fat. The four of us were just silent, jaws semi-dropped. Danielle then asked “you said that to him?!” and Cheol replied “yes, he needs to know. I am helping him” completely serious, like he had just done something really nice for Mike. We continued on saying , “you cant say that! That is mean.” But he insisted, saying how it wasn’t mean, that he was helping him. We were all so surprised. However in retrospect Cheol also told Danielle that she had gotten bigger compared to when she first got here (which isn’t true by the way) right before going into a bathhouse. But then it seemed like a joke, whereas this time he sincerely was trying to help Mike. Another instance of this was when Mr. Kim walked up to the office manager and told her she had a big pimple on her face. She just looked down when she told him and when Danielle asked him about it he too explained how he was helping her.

At first I was just so surprised that my knee jerk reaction was how do they not have emotions, I mean do they think that the other person doesn’t know already? But I find it sort of refreshing now. They just speak the truth instead of cluttering it up with formalities. And if that is the norm then maybe hearing someone say a comment along those lines wouldn’t be as hurtful as it may sound to us Americans. No beating around the bush, straight to the point. I like that. Another aspect of this is that it seems Koreans wear their emotions on their sleeves. They don’t put on happy faces to make everyone around them happy; if they are angry, upset, sad you know it.

This week was the final stages of my semi-puma robot project. I was writing the code for it and no matter what I did I could not get control of one of my three servo motors. I had spent hours trying to fix it but finally asked Inho and he straight up told me not to bother him with little problems and that he has been reading other people’s code a lot and it is takes a lot of time for anyone besides the writer to understand what is going on and that he was not my teacher. Of course it was really hard to hear this but the fact he just told me and his actions and facial expressions clearly matched what he was saying made me really appreciate what he was saying. He was totally right and he was not going out of his way to soften the blow.

I have welcomed this sharp contrast but I think that is due to my personality. I would much rather here how I am failing right to my face than have it sugar coated and watered down. I have a feeling this won’t catch on in the US. I don’t think enough people share my enthusiasm for bluntness; everything is about positive reinforcement but sometimes people just need to hear they are wrong. It makes the compliments that much more momentous. I know when Cheol said I was a fast learner or when Inho says good job that they truly mean it.

Sometimes we flirt with heartbreak when we ask the guys how we look to Koreans or if we are too big compared to the Korean girls but that is part of the fun (cheol says that Danielle and I are not too big and that we are a good size, so whew dodged a bullet there). I will miss this honest society but maybe I will spare those who surround me from bringing back this part of the culture, well anymore than I already do
: ).