Sep.27~Sep.30 "New Thinking New Korea" - Korea Brand Expedition Day 1

Earlier in August I decided to apply for the following program, organized and sponsored by Presidential Council on Nation Branding and Hyundai Motors

the poster

The purpose of the program is for foreigners and Koreans to explore a designated region of Korea for 4 days and to blog about the experience, promoting image of Korea. At the time I didn't look much into the future, didn't even expect to be selected.
However to my surprise they did select me, and so my wonderful adventure began. I was teamed with 2 korean onnis and 1 chinese girl. To our disappointment, one Korean suddenly dropped out due to classes, so our team had only 3 members: myself, Jinhee onni, very smart and kind Korean onni, and Yi Xin, a cutest Chinese girl :) We were allocated to Chungcheong region (충청도), and on September 27th us and other teams left for Chungcheong.
Our first destination was Hyundai Motor's Asan plant, which is specialized in making middle and large sedans. We had a rare opportunity of watching the whole process of manufacturing first-class cars step-by-step.

Me and Yi Xin

We have been to press shop, welding shop and assembly shop. Most of the work was done by robots, not humans, so everything seemed so futuristic and unreal. Besides those, we were also told that on the territory of Asan plant, there is paint shop, test track field, engine shop and an environmental facility complex, where water is recycled. After the tour all of us were given souvenirs: a miniature Hyundai car.

if only they gave us real cars ^^;;

After the Asan plant tour we moved to Daejon, city of Science. It was my first time there, but I used to make a presentation on Daejon in class before, so I always wished to go there sometime. That night we stayed in a place called 만인산 푸른학습원, located in a very beautiful place, surrounded by mountains.

picture perfect :)

In the evening we had an ice-breaking time. We also made up team names and us, foreigners, got new Korean names as well. Since then our team became 별빛달빛 (Starlight, Moonlight). Other teams chose such names as Dream Girls, Top Girl, Ez 4, Kobra, 3총4. My new Korean name is 한별 - Korean star :]

That's it for Day 1, you can learn more about my experience in upcoming posts^^