I Don't Get... Open Doors and Windows in Winter

My father prided himself on how long he could hold out before the family bitched enough to fold to turning on the heat in the winter. Korea takes this pride to a whole new level.

Yesterday was a very pleasant winter day, for February, that was disguised as a normal spring day. Temperatures were somewhere around the mid 40s. The sun was shining and morale

 was high thanks to the winter heat wave, relief. Upon walking into my school at 1:00 PM I find the heating is on full blast. Which it really didn't need be but was. Its not the fact that the heat blasting on this day perplexed me as I entered but more so that it wasn't on days in November when the temp was 6.

Turns out that Korea simply does not turn on the heat until December.

Students and teachers during that time wore coats and scarves while they were at school. Some classrooms were lucky enough to have a small portable heater, but not all. For two months now there is one student I have yet to see without his long black coat and neck warmer.

OK, I get the whole, 'Lets be thrifty' mantra. Everyone survived, we saved a buck, and the environment won out. I can roll with it, I understand. Until, that is, when December comes round and its open season for the heating units. During dark and harsh winter days with the temperatures in the Baltics outside, and the heat finally on, one can find windows open not by just a crack to let in fresh air, but by full extension and double doors pried wide like a church welcoming parishioners on Sunday.

I don't get it.

Too, hallways in the buildings that separate the businesses are not heated, as well as the entrances, stairwells, and bathrooms. Yes, bathrooms. As such, nature waits for me until I get home.

Turns out that traveling and living abroad not only supplies you with new experiences and stories but also new pet peeves.

I Don't Get... Eating at Outside Temperature

Quite commonly during these harshest of winter days in Korea you can find a student on a snack break eating ice cream.  Six degrees Fahrenheit?  Time for ice cream!  Though its just not students, its adults as well.  You may not to be able to feel your hands but hey, why not freeze your mouth too.  However, I prefer students to eat ice cream rather than dried octopus.  Wow.  Remember that guy on the team that sweated the most and never washed his practice uniform.  Its like that.

The same goes for eating hot things during hot times.  Take Belize.  People here drink their tea hot, thanks to colonization, and put some hot sauce, Marie Sharps or otherwise, on everything.  Even when its 1,000,000 degrees.  Though with this custom I find that the tea is more for relaxation, a cultural mainstay, than for temperature balancing.  Not much A/C anywhere and you are sweating anyway so why not feel relaxed?  Also,  it is said in regards to the hot sauce, that if you make the food hot and spicy and raise the temperature in your mouth then the temperature outside your mouth is more bearable.  

As Anderson Cooper says, "You just have to see it for yourself."  Or taste it.

I Don't Get... Segment Introduction

I don't want to sound like the loud, small minded "Eddy Expat," one frequently encounters when living or traveling abroad.  You know, that guy who denounces the other culture while they are in said culture with natives around talking loudly with other foreigners- enough for the entire bus to hear them.  If you want to experience one hop on any bus heading for San Ignacio or Punta Gorda, in Belize, during the tourist season.  However, there are simply too many instances, comical or otherwise, where I'm utterly confused in a cultural situation and though they are probably not that unique to foreigners, past or current, in the same situation, its unique to me and others who have yet to experience wherever I am.  So, I will write about them in this segment called, I Don't Get... 

Therefore I open myself up to people that are foreign to me to laugh at the way I do things and would love to hear it.   If you give it, you gotta take it.  

The Singing OK Mart Dog!

On my way back from a nice walk through the trails of Ochang on a lazy New Year's Day I stopped in for some gum at the friendly OK Mart.  I didn't know buying gum got me a free ticket to the concert performed by the store manager, Thomas, and his talented dog, Doodi.