in detail

so while i think i've told most of you that i'm here in korea working for samsung, i don't think i've gone into much detail as to what i'm doing here. so, here i go!

in the beginning of january, i asked a colleague of mine who was offered a job at samsung (but later declined it) to shoot an e-mail to his contact over there to get an internship. pretty much just five months later, i got an e-mail back from them saying that they wanted me to come work at samsung's advanced institute of technology (sait) as an intern. sait is basically a separate campus (next to their semiconductor research center) where all of samsung's research is done. it includes seven technology groups, ranging from MEMS to human-computer interaction to digital bio-labs. the group that i work under is MEMS division, under the microfluidics section.

the internship program consists of about 40 interns all together. most are korean, half of whom have gone to the united states for undergrad and/or grad school, the other half whom have studied in korea. there are maybe about 4 or 5 foreigners, and i'm really the only american-born korean among them. it's a paid internship, so on top of paying for my flight over here, they give me about 1,000,000 to 1,200,000 W (about $1000) per month. also, all the meals are taken care of; they have a pretty good cafeteria here that serves both western and korean food, seven days a week, breakfast, lunch, and dinner... pretty sweet deal, huh?? so pretty much all the money i'm making is play money ^^

the only downside is that SAIT is to the south of seoul, outside the city. it takes about 30 minutes by bus to get to the south part of seoul, and another hour or so by subway to make it above the han river (which divides seoul in half). so i pretty much spend the weekday confined in SAIT, and on the weekends go play in seoul. since i've only been here for two weeks or so, i've only been a couple places: gangnam station (ritzy area, in the south), apgujung (trendy area, also in the south), ilsan (north), coex mall (next to the world trade center), and briefly, sinchon (yonsei university).

the dorms here are pretty much low-end type college dorms. there are three dorms, and i'm in the one where there's only one large public shower in the basement (which, surprisingly, i'm already used to). but it isn't even that great. last week i went to a real public-bath place in bundang (where my cousin lives), complete with the three different types of sauna and ten different baths... nearly fell asleep in one of 'em

anyway, that's pretty much the situation here... i've already gotten comfortable here, and other than the difficulty of communicating with people in detail, i'm having a blast!