Public Urination

Gross!!!!....I know.  You see this everywhere.  No, it's not just the random Korean who has gotten drunk from too much soju.  The majority of citizens seen urinating in public are young boys, and they're guardians help them. I have heard that this does not only happen outside but has also occurred in the subways (ewww).  There is no shame in it and it seems that none of them actually hide to do their business either....But what's worse, it is not only the male species taking part in this but also little girls ( I don't think grown women do this, but I could be wrong!).  I experienced this first-hand when my students were out playing on the playground a few weeks ago.  One of our little girls pulled on my co-teacher's jacket and said that she needed to use the bathroom.  Without hesitation the teacher helped her with her pants, lifted her ankles above her head and she just peed on a bush!! I was embarrassed to be near this and was looking all around to see if anyone was watching.  Of course back home, you know they would be.

Another encounter that we had was a little boy peeing in the sewer and his nanny was telling him to hurry up.  As I said this is pretty frequently seen throughout Korea and will always be strange/amusing to us.

Maybe Haechi could teach a lesson to our Korean friends :)

Taking out the Trash

One of the really nice things about Korea is their effort in trying to recycle.  Every time we go to take out the trash we have to separate our trash into many different categories.  The main stations are glass, plastic, heavy cardboard, light cardboard, paper, food waste, and a place for trash bags.  Trash bags are pink here because they are government regulated.  We get a pack of 10 trash bags for $5.  A lot of Koreans that we have talked to think this is a high price for them to pay for this.  They use the money to put back into the cities sanitation. When we go down to put everything away we are always afraid of the security guard.  He walks inches behind you and literally looks over your shoulder when you are putting away stuff.  He's checking if we are putting things away in the right spots.  At first we thought he did it just for foreigners, but he does it to everyone.  We have gotten use to it, but when it first happened we wanted to drop everything and tell him to do it if he was so worried about it. Here are some pictures of our place we put all our trash and recyclables.

A walk to school

Here is what my day looks like when I walk to school every morning.  Its about a 15 minute walk and it is very enjoyable to do everyday.  We have yet to take the bus or anything else to get to school, so whether rain or snow we will be walking everyday.  Just some days we have to bring a change of clothes because of the rain during monsoon season.

Pretending to be too busy to post

We have been ignoring the blog too much because we don't want to post very long posts with our busy schedule.  We will be back to doing regular posts soon.  We will try to do a post 1-3 times a week.  We'll do shorter posts, but looking for interesting things about Korea.  We are getting closer to the end of our contract and we are thinking that we are not going to resign with Etonhouse.  There are some things going on and we are looking for a new job.  We are not sure what we are going to do yet, but we are looking for a new place in Korea down south or Japan.  So long story short, we want to make the best of our last months of our contract in Korea because it might be our last.

First post of randomness that happens in our lives everyday, ADVERTISEMENTS!!!!! We live in a studio apartment called an Officetel which means the building could be used for living or business.  So we are use to having lots of people in our building that could live here or be here for business.  Anyone who passes by our door always leaves an advertisement. The ones on the doors are only from this week.  We throw it away at the end of each week.  Then we start over collecting them again.  We are in a busy area having a subway station in our basement.  That's it for now, we'll have more to come.