Monday, April 14, 2008

Days 7&8

We went on a short visit to Japan and then headed back home toAlabama.

Day 6 Friday, March 21, 2008

On this day we visited the Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ). This was an amazing experience for me. We toured their building and was able to see future developments in Korea that will be a great way to upscale any business plan.

Day 5 Thursday, March 20, 2008

We walked alongside some of the Han River and went shopping in Myongdon Namdamin Market and ate at another Korean House.

Day 4 Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Today we visited the Hyundai Motors and Ship Building
Some differences in Hyundai in Montgomery and Korea are that Hyundai Plant in Montgomery has 2,000 employees and operates mostly on robots and the Hyundai Plant in Korea has 34,000 employees and manually assembles their cars.

Day 3 Tuesday, March 18, 2008

We visited the Posco Steele plant company in South Korea. We mostly visited this plant by touring on the bus and it went faster than I expected. This plant covered so many acres it’s almost impossible to do this tour in one day by foot. Some of the plant were indoor while most of it was outdoor. We were able to go inside of part of the plant was indoor and see how sheets of steel is made. There were lots of heat wave and fast acting machines but overall it was a great experience to have. Then as souvenirs we received gold manicure sets made from Posco.

Day 3 Monday, March 17, 2008

After a wonderful night of rest and relaxation, we enthusiastically awakened to be greeted and filled with a buffet breakfast at the hotel. This consisted of a variety of Korean foods from rice to Kimchi, eggs to ready to make omelets fresh vegetables and fruits, juices and coffee and too much to name and even choose from.

After breakfast we then were on our way to Chung-Ang University (CAU) to for the signing of the official memorandum of agreement between Alabama state University and Chung-Ang University. We arrived at CAU and were again greeted kindly into a room that had complimentary cups of juice and tea for everyone. The juice was for the students and the tea was for the faculty that attended. Each person was also handed CAU bags that had some CAU paraphernalia in them for us to keep as souvenirs. We then saw a short video about the University and some of its future plans. It was here where we learned that there are two locations for CAU (one concentrating in Biology-where we just visited and one concentrating in Information Technology).We presented them with a gift from our University, took pictures and then moved to the second site of where they had another CAU but the main concentration here was more specifically geared toward Information Technology.


When we arrived at the CAU for Information Technology we were led right into Dr. Sang-Man Lee’s class. They welcomed us and we then had to introduce ourselves to them. This was a great experience. They were so polite, no disruptions, no cell phones were ringing, no one got up to leave the room, and they were also very attentive. Dr. Vaughn spoke to them and it was over from there.

Day 3 Monday, March 17, 2008

After a wonderful night of rest and relaxation, we enthusiastically awakened to be greeted and filled with a buffet breakfast at the hotel. This consisted of a variety of Korean foods from rice to Kimchi, eggs to ready to make omelets fresh vegetables and fruits, juices and coffee and too much to name and even choose from.

After breakfast we then were on our way to Chung-Ang University (CAU) to for the signing of the official memorandum of agreement between Alabama state University and Chung-Ang University. We arrived at CAU and were again greeted kindly into a room that had complimentary cups of juice and tea for everyone. The juice was for the students and the tea was for the faculty that attended. Each person was also handed CAU bags that had some CAU paraphernalia in them for us to keep as souvenirs. We then saw a short video about the University and some of its future plans. It was here where we learned that there are two locations for CAU (one concentrating in Biology-where we just visited and one concentrating in Information Technology).We presented them with a gift from our University, took pictures and then moved to the second site of where they had another CAU but the main concentration here was more specifically geared toward Information Technology.

Day 2 Sunday, March 16, 2008

We toured the Korean Folk Village. Here we learned more about the Korean culture through our tour guides Cindy and Soya and walked for a long time as we found out more about their ancient palaces and temples. We learned how to be able to identify which palace the King lived under and Queen. We saw lots of other religious sacraments in the South Korean culture.

Day 1 Saturday, March 15, 2008


Today we have finally made it to Incheon then traveled to Seoul, South Korea. After being overwhelmingly exhausted from our many episodes in San Francisco, CA we were excited to have landed in our great destination. We were warmly greeted by our Eminent Scholar, Dr. Sang Man Lee and our assigned tour guides, Cindy and Soya, for the remainder of our stay in South Korea. As we walked outside to load onto our limousine bus we felt very important especially when we saw a welcome banner on the bus made especially for us. After loading our luggage on the bus we loaded ourselves and were on our way to the famous Lotte World Hotel!!!

When we arrived at our wonderfully accommodate hotel later than we expected, due to the delay and exhaustion from San Francisco, we were told to get ready within a short amount of time to recuperate for dinner at the Korean House and a custom Korean performance afterward. The performance from the Korean House gave us first hand experience on the talent and creativity that the Korean Culture has and is willing to share with anyone.