Week 5

Jeju (rainy) Weekend Getaway

Jeju

This week began with our three-night weekend trip to Jeju Island! All five of our cohort went and it was a total blast. The trip was filled with great memories and was a very fun way for us to all spend a lot of time together after working in our respective labs all week. The chief reason for my excitement was a day-long trek up Hallasan, the mountain and inactive volcano in the center of the island, via the Gwaneumsa route. Unfortunately this wasn’t possible due to poor weather, a sad realization that we made only once reaching the trailhead early in the morning. Nevertheless, spirits were high! In lieu of being able to summit, we took photos of ourselves with the informational signs’ images. They’re totally convincing and if I hadn’t told you, I’m sure you’d think we had actually done it.

The rest of the day was decided on the fly, as it should be for an island vacation itinerary! In Jeju city, we walked along the shoreline, found an amazing café where I journaled and read, and walked along a pedestrian shopping area. Robert really wanted to rent bikes and despite my initial trepidation to biking with my bulky backpack packed for a nine-hour hike, it was incredibly fun! A path took us to the base of a small mountain next to the coast, which became our mini-hike of the day. At the top, there was an exercise park that we relaxed in (and had a pullup/gymnastics competition, of course). We tried abalone for dinner, getting a handful of dishes and sharing them all. Then, it was off to our Airbnb stay for the night, a beautiful find by Serena. We played cards and went to bed, happily setting no alarms for the next day.

After a slow morning, we headed to Hyopjae beach, one of the few turquoise water beaches in Jeju due to its light sand. Eliana and I wandered off for a long walk on the beach, which ended in having Jeju orange juice overlooking the rocky shore. Over the course of the day, the water level dramatically increased and by low tide, many groups were out with buckets and nets searching for something – perhaps a mollusk or the many crabs we saw. Throughout the day, I was struck by the contrast between beach-goers in Florida. In Florida, the beaches are packed with people tanning in small swimsuits, whereas here the opposite is true. Everyone covered up in long sleeves and swim tights, likely to avoid tanning in the sun. After a taco lunch (I miss El Indio, a Gainesville favorite), we took a bus to a beautiful sunset on the Eongal Coast. On the walk there, Robert had an unfortunate mishap that led to a nasty toe injury, but we persevered and were rewarded with the beautiful sounds of waves crashing against volcanic rock, water lit up by a pinkish sky, and cliffs behind us with layers exposing their millenia in the making.

The next morning, another walk along the cliffside led us to see the haenyeo divers hard at work! I had read about them before, so it was exciting to see this unique economic force at work. Haenyeo are women that dive for mollusks, like the abalone we had for dinner two nights before. Their outfits and bright orange barges are incredibly distinctive, so I had no issue noticining them. At one point, I gave a wave and one of them waved back. Our last day in Jeju was spent mostly at Sanbangsan Hot Springs, a bathhouse and spa fed by acid-carbonate hot springs. It was incredibly relaxing – once figuring out the lay of what we ought to do. I’ve been to a sauna once before in Germany so I sort of understood the gist, but the instructions said to get in the baths in a specific order – the lukewarm carbonate water (a milky green) to restrict capillaries and increase blood flow, then the hot baths, followed by a cold plunge. The indoor saunas were separated by gender and Robert’s accident prevented him from joining me, so I had a relaxing day of quiet for the most part. Exceptions to this were the outdoor pools and jimjilbang, a Korean kiln sauna that made me feel like a little piece of clay while I was inside. From here, we showered and went straight to the airport rejuvenated for a week of work!

Lab Work: Beginning the Sejong Model

Serena and I have rolled up our sleeves and busted out the exacto knives to begin our newest project: model building. We are creating a physical foam board model of Sejong City, a planned city in South Korea established in 2007 to alleviate congestion in Seoul and promote balanced national development. Named after King Sejong the Great, who is revered for his contributions to Korean culture and governance, the city was designed to become the country's administrative capital. We certainly have our work cut out for us, the final model being 1.8m wide and 2.5m long (4 x 2 foamboards that are 600 x 900 mm each). So far, we have created a two-dimensional guide for our model building, a combination of building footprint, contour line, and roadway data acquired from the national geospatial portal. At home, I work at UF’s GeoPlan Center, which manages the Florida Geographic Data Library and I have also used a lot of data portals from across the United States to download data for projects, so it was interesting to see the Korean implementation of an open access data portal. We then used GIS and CAD software to prepare and plot the maps at scale.

Once this preparation work was done, we began work on the foam board. Given that there are eight huge boards to perfectly align, we had to do a lot of thinking about our plan of attack. So far, we are beginning with the terrain of each board, a task that will likely bring us into next week. 

Other Cultural Explorations

Here are vignettes of two more notable excursions: after work on Wednesday, Serena, Eliana, and I took a hike up Gwanaksan. We got a whole lot more than we expected – the trail was hardly marked and there was a lot of climbing tall boulders. It was a ton of fun and left us exhausted afterward. Thursday evening I met a friend for a Yeouido Hangang Park picnic. We rented a mat and table, bought tteokbokki from a CU on a boat in the river, and enjoyed the ambiance of a ton of other groups doing the same.