Exploring in the Rain!

So right now in Seoul its Monsoon season. I had been warned that June/July was the rainy season, but I did not expect this amount of rain. I was thinking the rain was going to be more like the drizzle that happens in Oregon - drizzles all day long but its not that bad to be out in it, especially with a raincoat. While that does happen here a little bit, it is often pouring down rain which makes walking to work and more important exploring this city impossible. The Koreans love umbrellas, which for an Oregonian like me has been hard to adjust to. What is more impressive to me is that many women wear high heels while its pouring, or even more impressive shorts. It's like they have massive, all protecting umbrellas to keep them dry. Mine unfortunately is not that nice.

As a result of this lovely weather, I didn't spend a ton of time out on Saturday. When myself and a few of the interns finally decided to head out for dinner on Saturday we were pleasantly met by a downpour. Luckily the downpour lead us to the nearest place we saw to eat - a crispy chicken place. Now I'm not really sure why, but Koreans LOVE crispy fried chicken. These places are everywhere! The chicken is actually baked, but its soo good it tastes like its fried. It comes with dipping sauces - we had sweat & sour and honey mustard. It was seriously amazing. I wish I got a picture, but I'm sure I'll head back this summer and will snap one then.

After the chicken we headed to a few bars for beer. What is interesting about bars in Korea is that people don't really stand around and mingle, they just pick a table and hang out with friends.

On Sunday I headed to a western brunch place that was delicious! It was nice to have some fresh food, as most stuff is cooked here!

Afterwards walked around a few very cute areas: Garuso-gil & Apugjeong, followed by an official Korean BBQ experience complete with seated floor tables, beef and Mandu - Korean dumplings. Yum! Again I need to add these pictures later too - I clearly need to be better about photographing stuff!

Anyway the weekend was filled with good food, cute neighborhoods and plenty of rain.

First Week Complete!

So week 1 is complete! The rest of the week at work went by pretty smoothly. We learned about some of the past projects current members had worked on, learned about life at the GSG and talked to alumni that have transitioned into other parts of the business. One interesting element that the team talked to us about was something called a Hoesik, which we should expect to experience this summer. A Hoesik is dinner of co-workes where they go out to eat and drink extensively. The Koreans love drinking - primarily Beer and Soju, a Korean sake. They tend to be pretty serious at work, but the Hoesik allows them to open up and loosen up and get close to their co-workers. They also talked a lot about how people are generally forget or ignore activities that happen during the Hoesik - essentially if you make a fool of yourself its okay the next day at work. This is obviously pretty different than in the US where people generally talk about nights out for days. It also appears that the Hoesik is fairly common, and occurs many nights of the week. Koreans also have some pretty different cultural norms, or traditions. For instance toasts are very important. Additionally it is important not to pour alcohol for yourself, and so its important to look when others' classes are empty. When you pour drinks for elders, its required to pour with two hands with essentially means putting your left hand on your right elbow and pouring with your right hand. I am definitely excited to participate in a Hoesik, as it's a very traditional part of Korean culture.

A few times this week we ate at in the Samsung cafeteria. This place is like a production line. You enter and there is a digital display of all the options they are serving for the day - usually around 8-10 different options. Then you go off in different directions to go to the line with the item you want to get. From there there are different seating areas depending on which item you get, so it makes most sense to get one of 3 things that others are getting with you so you can eat together. The entrees range from typical Korean food, to Western food to other Asian food. It's pretty good and heavily subsidized by Samsung so it costs less than $3 for a huge plate of food. I tried the bibimbap and then had a shrimp fried rice another day. I'm sure I'l end up eating here most days for lunch.

At the end of the week we heard some of the activities they will be hosting for us - baseball games, visiting the Demilitarized Zone at the border of South and North Korea, and a mud festival. Should be a fun summer!  On Friday we ended up getting our project assignments. I'm going to be working on some projects related to their premium mobile PC business. I don't know that much about what I will be doing at this point, but it definitely should be an interesting summer!

Arrival in Seoul and the Start of Samsung!

Hi All!

So I decided to start a blog to capture my experience living in Seoul and working for Samsung. I also thought this would be a great way to stay connected while I'm gone for 2 months!

So at this point I’ve been in Seoul since last Thursday. Another intern was on my flight to Korea, which was nice because we maneuvered the cell phone rental (old school non-smart phone), bus trip and search for our hotel together (the map we were given had no English on it or street names, only landmarks)). We are staying in a pretty basic hotel which is literally 2 blocks (<5 min) from the Samsung building. The hotel does have free western breakfast and a gym so that’s been good. The kitchen area is rather small (worse than the box of a kitchen Schwab has) so there is little chance I’ll be cooking this summer. The area around my hotel and Samsung is very very busy and has tons of restaurants, shops and bars. It's suppose to be a fun area to be in, so I definitely look forward to exploring it more. 

Over the weekend, the other interns and I explored various parts of Seoul. There isn't a ton of historic landmarks to see in Seoul, but we did make it to a few palaces with guards in traditional clothing, as well as the Seoul tower which is positioned on the top of a hill smack in the middle of Seoul. We also successfully maneuvered the subway system, which is very easy to manage, despite having 10 lines and tons of different stops. Additionally, we ventured to a technology market, which is basically a huge building housing a bunch of different vendors all selling the same items.  This place is massive and sells pretty much anything you might need (aka I bought a flat iron ). The Koreans clearly love their technology as is clear from this place!

As I mentioned  we've actually explored a number of areas. One area we visited, Insadong, is a pretty artsy area with a number of tea houses, restaurants, and tons of arts, crafts and antiques shops. Its a pretty cute area, and I definitely plan to go back here to get some nice gifts. Another interesting area is called Itaewon, which is basically "little America." This area is filled with foreigners, which you don't find in such large numbers in other areas. There were tons of American restaurants like Taco Bell, Outback Steakhouse and Subway. There is also an English bookstore here, so I'm sure this area will come in handy when I can't find something.  

Over the weekend we also explored a number of Korean restaurants. I hadn't had much Korean food prior to coming to Seoul, so I only knew what I had read about - bulgoggi, which is marinated, grilled beef and bibimap - which is a dish with rice, vegetables and beef. On the first day we decided to venture to a restaurant near the hotel. The place looked crowded, clean and smelled good, but did not have a single word of English on the menu. We basically pointed to a few dishes, none of which had heard of. We ended up getting a squid dish with a very spicy red sauce, a clam soup and a egg pancake, kind of like an omelet, which appeared to have squid and green onions in it. It was definitely a interesting first experience with Korean food.  The next day we tried to find a traditional beef BBQ place to get bulgoggi, but instead went to a place that specialized in pork BBQ. While pork is generally not my favorite thing, I figured I would do as the Koreans do and indulge. It tasted a lot like the fat part of bacon, so probably won't do it again, but it was an experience! For lunch one day we wandered upon a place where a lot of people were eating a noodle soup type thing. We must have ended up ordering the wrong thing because we got a more stir fry like thing where it was cooked in front of us, but turned out to be pretty good. 

As you can tell, not that many restaurants have English menus and if they do they may not be all that descriptive. This turns out to be difficult many times, but has also been an experience to sorta just see what happens. In the area around where we are staying there are a TON of restaurants - there is no chance we'll be able to try them all. There is also an impressive number of American chains such as Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks and Burger King. That'll come in handy when I'm totally sick of Korean food. Another fascinating thing I've observed is the number of coffee shops. I would say there is a coffee shop every 4 doors. Koreans clearly love their coffee. I've heard that its pretty hard to get a warm cup of coffee in the summer and its hard to get a iced coffee after September. Regardless they clearly love it. Another interesting phenomenon is the number of German beer places. I think there are probably 6 within 5 minutes of my hotel.  

Yesterday was my first day of work at Samsung. Most of the day was spent meeting the other members in my group. The Global Strategy Group (GSG) has nearly 70 foreigners (all with MBAs) working in 3-month cycles on a variety of projects across the company. Yesterday was also the day that the projects are presented for the next cycle of project work. This was particularly interesting because it gave me a much broader perspective on what type of projects people will be working on, but also gave me a little insight into the different areas that Samsung is focused on right now. In the US, Samsung is primarily known for Consumer Electronics and Appliances, but in Korea Samsung makes EVERYTHING. I'm not kidding - the toilet at work is made by Samsung. Samsung is written across many buildings, and actually comprises 20% of the Korean GDP. The projects that were discussed covered Consumer Electronics, Semi-conductors, Construction and Green Technology. It was very fascinating. Another interesting thing about Samsung is that they are extremely fearful of information leaking out. As a result you have to "checkout" a laptop, interns aren't given official badges at work etc. It's pretty intense. This makes for a very different work environment where no one works from home, and people stay at work to get things finished. While Koreans typically work pretty late, most of the GSG works until 6 or 7 usually. After work the entire GSG went to a German bar for happy hour. It was nice to get to know some of the members in an informal environment. 

Today, we had a few briefings on various things regarding Samsung and took a visit to their offices in Suwon, which is about 30 minutes from Seoul. Here most of the marketing groups and R&D groups sit for Samsung. We were taken on a tour and shown all the latest technology that Samsung has developed including very thin LED tvs, the Galaxy Tablet, and robot vacuums. Later in the day we got our desks, and gave our preferences for projects. It will be interesting to see what we end up working on.

Alright, given how long this is, I figure I'll stop right here, but will definitely write more soon!