You Learn Something New Everyday

Last Wednesday I was finally united with my Mom and my aunt also known as Oma (mom) and Emo (aunt) in Korean! We went shopping for a few things I needed for my apartment and when we came back they went to town on cleaning my apartment. I knew the apartment looked old but my mom and aunt were disgusted by the way it looked. eek! A few things I learned that day:

1. If you know me, you know I HATE recycling. I know it’s good for the environment but it is a pain in my butt. Well with my luck, I happened to move to a country that REQUIRES you to recycle. I have to separate my food, boxes, and then regular trash into different bags. Then once I separate those, I have to go downstairs where I sort through my trash even MORE because there are specific bins for all the different bottles, cans, glasses, and jugs. Oy. Maybe I will have a new found love of recycling when I get back into the states, but I highly doubt it. Wishful thinking Dad 

2. There are a lot of good things thrown away in Korea. If Koreans don’t need something, they don’t want to sell it, they just want to get rid of it. So when you go by the dumpsters in Korea, you will find a lot of good things on the side such as tables, chairs, tvs, etc. Many foreign teachers who usually stay here for a short time will usually set their furniture out to be thrown but are treasures to the new foreign teachers moving in.

3. I usually don’t eat the American food here because it’s not the same. But if you ever are craving something from your homeland, Costco’s concession stands still have great pizza and hotdogs!

Afterwards my mom and aunt took me hostage (pun intended) for a few days to Seoul where my great grandmother and grandfather live, and where my mom has been staying. During my time there we shopped some more for my apartment. Although my mom has a way of getting on my last nerve, she has the biggest heart. I feel like the luckiest English teacher here. She has really done everything she can to make my apartment feel like home. She set me up with a new cell phone, showed me what all the Korean writing means on all my appliances, bought me a brand new t.v. and some furniture, and has just been my life saver all in all.

Unfortunately, I was living in a Korean house straight out of the movies where you had to sleep on the floor with no air conditioner in 80 degree weather all the time. It was rough, but I survived. We had went to dinner one night with a couple that were my mom’s good family friends. The dinner entrées were a little much for me to take. I really do try to taste everything when I am here, but there are a few things that I draw the line. The husband of the couple handed me a large fried fish about the size of my hand with head and all. When I went to go take a bite, a massive amount of fish eggs came pouring out of its body! That was a no-go for me. The restaurant also served us the raw insides of the fish on a bed of rice noodles which the husband of the couple popped in his mouth like popcorn. Needless to say, I mainly ate a squid pancake all night. Yummmm haha

The last day before I went back to Ilsan, my mom’s entire side of the family went to this large river resort where we set up a tent and had a picnic and played in the clearest water. My mom’s sister in law has two little boys named Sung-ha and Sung-hu. They are going to English summer school right now so throughout my stay with them, they thought it was fun to use English words around me which was so adorable. The vocabulary mainly consisted of no, yes, thank you, hello, etc. At one point I was trying to teach them the difference between pretty and ugly and after that they thought it was funny to say “You-are-UGLY!” to their mom all day. Haha
A few other things I have learned about Korea so far:

1. Koreans are health nuts! Everything Koreans do, eat, and buy seems solely based on their health. They are concerned about taking their vitamins all the time and making sure everything they eat is good for them. This probably explains why my 92 year old great grandmother was still kickin’ it and was probably more active than I was when staying there. I even saw a face roller that is used to roll on your face to exercise your face to make it slimmer. Hopefully some of this health craze will rub off on me!

2. The first night I arrived in Seoul my mom’s family wanted to take me to dinner to celebrate me being here. I learned there are specific rules to drinking in Korea. In Korea you should not pour your own drink. It is customary for others to pour your drink for you and for you to pour for them. Whether you pour using one or both hands is important. If the person for whom you are pouring is older than you or of higher status, then you should pour holding the bottle with two hands, otherwise pour with one hand. This is extremely different for me because my family was placing their empty cups in front of me waiting for me to pour for them. I had read about this before but didn’t think it was so implemented!

3. Customer service here is amazing! There are people in every isle of every store waiting to help you. There are always super happy greeters at all the stores that take a long bow when you come in. I noticed in the grocery store that whenever someone got something without a label instead of the customer going to go get the price code, the cashier would run and go get it for them. They always throw in something for free as well! We went to go get gas and the man who pumped our gas just decided to give us 2 free bottles of water with our gas. They just seem to go the extra mile here.

4. Everything is a race here whether it is getting on the elevator, the escalator, getting in line, getting on the bus, even just getting into a door. No one can wait for the next person. My aunt who lives here told me people do treat life like a race here because everyone is so busy they don’t have time for waiting-in-line manners.

I wish I would have had access to my computer over the last few days so I could have written about everything. Everything seems like a blur now looking back. My blog for my first day of school will soon be coming.