3 words to describe today’s experiencesEnrichingReflectiveAccomplished

3 highlights of the day

      Today's first highlight was the visit to Samsung - Renault Motors factory. Upon walking in, I immediately recognised the logo of the company as I have seen it in Singapore, but I never knew about the company behind this logo. The process required to construct a car is very complicated. Many man-hours are also put into building the cars that we buy, as many workers have to check for defects and problems that the machines cannot identify and fix. One examples includes screwing the right bolts in the right places at a rapid pace. This has helped me to gain a deeper understanding of the car making process and I have learnt to appreciate what I take for granted back in Singapore. This experience has also helped me to gain a better understanding out how Renault was formed and about the company's founder,  Louis Renault, and how he came into the car building industry.     The second highlight of today was being able to attend normal lessons at Busan Science High School. This allowed me to see the normal curriculum in the school and truly understand how our buddies study and live here. The teachers and students there are very close, and the students were very comfortable presenting in front of the entire class. When I attended Physics lessons, it was not the teacher who conducted the class. Instead, the teacher allowed a student to teach and carry out the entire lesson. I found his to be surprising as I have never seen this done in SST. I feel that this system is good as it will help to develop the students' presentation skills and also allow the student who is presenting to become more masterful at that particular topic. Thus, I hope we can try it out at SST in the future. 

  The last highlight was the Chemistry lesson where I was able to use skills and knowledge from Biotechnology lessons in SST to complete the task on gel electrophoresis.  This has helped me to see that we should not look at subjects separately. Instead, all subjects are interrelated. 

3 things you’ve learnt about Korea

     Firstly, the two main car manufacturers within South Korea are Kia and Hyundai. The automotive industry in South Korea is the fifth largest in the world, and is the backbone of the South Korean economy. I thought about how this relates with South Korea's exports of automobiles, and how this might benefit Busan, the largest sea port in South Korea. Since South Korea is the fifth largest automotive exporter in the world, this will surely benefit Busan by earning more revenue for the port city.
    Secondly, due to Korea's past relations with Japan, many South Koreans have negative views of the Japanese. I learnt of this while speaking with my buddy. Korea was invaded several times by Japan over the course of 400 years. However, I feel that we should learn to understand each other and put our differences aside. This can be applied to Singapore, where we must learn never to hold a grudge, or risk sparking unrest in a culturally diverse society.
   Finally, I learnt from my buddy that South Korean youths place a huge emphasis on doing well academically in order to study at university and find a good job. This is why they put in a lot of hard work in order to excel academically. This can be seen in class when students copy notes actively. I feel that we should learn from the youths here in order to do justice to ourselves by doing well academically and living a fruitful life. 

3 things you’ve learnt above yourself

     I have not been spending time engaging in my hobby for close to half a year. I found out about this because my buddy asked me about my hobby, and although I was able to tell her a lot about my hobby, stamp collection, I realised that I have not been collecting stamps for a long time because I have been studying for examinations, and subsequently my 'O' Level Chinese examination. I feel that this is not healthy and I should start collecting stamps soon to balance work and pay.
     Another thing that I have learnt about myself is that I have forgotten many basics in Arduino. I first picked up Arduino during ISS last year. During today's Arduino lesson, I realised that I have forgotten how to connect pins and how to code on Arduino. I will try to catch up on these skills as they will be useful in the future when I do other projects.
     The last thing I have learnt is that I have little experience with using drones. Since drones might be used for delivery of goods and even for transportation in the future, I need to pick up the skills of piloting a drone.      

3 things I didn’t do so well

    I was not able to construct the circuit during Arduino lesson earlier today as I had forgotten about the basics of Arduino after two years of not using it for projects. I will practice and try my hand at Arduino again during the holidays so that I can improve and this skill may prove useful for projects in the future.
    My inability to understand Korean hindered my learning during Physics class today as many of the slides and instructions were written in Korean. I was restricted to trying to understand the equations and formulas written on the board, in which I faced difficulty as they were all largely unfamiliar. I will read up more on centripetal force and uniform circular motion to learn more about it.
    My group and I were unable to obtain a good result of the concentration of the unknown sample for gel electrophoresis during Chemistry lesson today. I think this happened due to an error on our part. It was likely that we calculated the wrong dilution and amount of water to add in. My takeaway from this experience is that we should always do things carefully and cautiously so that we do not need to repeat the experiment multiple times. 

3 things that I look forward to tomorrow

    I am looking forward to the visit to Bulguksa Temple tomorrow as I will get to learn more about Buddhism.
I am excited to learn more about our buddies' projects during the project sharing tomorrow so as to learn more about their interests and their feats.
Finally, I am looking forward to the Gyeongjoo tour tomorrow to learn more about this coastal city and go near the coast to observe the shipping lanes.