Unbirthdays

Sunday was Lunar New Year's Day. This is a major holiday all over East Asia...and especially Korea. It's one of the 2 major traditional holidays celebrated (along with the harvest festival/Thanksgiving aka chusok) Korea has a few random holiday's such as Childrens' Day and Christmas along with 2 get rid of Japan days...but Sunday is one of those holidays that stretch back into Korea's roots.

It's also kind of unique here in that the entire county. including yours truly, aged one year. Which is strange as my mother could have sworn that was 29 and my friends all think I act like I'm 14. But here in Korea, I'm 31.

As part of their culture, Koreans choose to have all their birthdays on the same day. It's something that permeates all of their culture. All of my first graders are 8 years old. If you are 9, then you are in second grade etc...and that's that.

It's even more confusing when you factor in the way they start counting age. The Chinese didn't have a symbol zero until the 13th century...so children always started their age at 1. (before you mock them for not having zero...please look at your own calender attempt to the 0 AD...still can't find it? The west has known about it longer than Korea has...what's our excuse for having a huge hole in our calender?)

If you are addressing someone that is older than you...the language you using is called "honorific" Case in point, when my students talk with older students...they use "older brother" and "older sister" to refer their elders. If fact, it's hard for students to have friends in different grades. When the person always has to use respectful, honorific, and deferential language...and the older gets to be more casual...it creates an imbalance which is difficult to overcome.

In honor of this Korean holiday, my pseudo birthday, and a long weekend...I decided to take my Korean friend/ex-coworker up on her offer to spend the weekend with her family in Busan.

Korean Bathrooms...

So...this is my bathroom.

I've grown up with basically one type of bathroom my entire life. My bathroom here is very similar...with a few minor changes.

First, I want to be thankful what you don't see. A washing machine. Too many of my friends have their washing machine IN their bathroom.

You can't really tell from the picture, but the bathroom floor itself isn't flat. The tiles are angled in such a way that all the water on the floor leads to the drain.

With brings me to my second point...tiles. All my life, I've grown up with bathrooms that had linoleum floors. Everything from my grandparent's house, to the house my dad built with his own 2 hands...all had the same type of flooring. This also led to a problem with water on the floor. If you let water sit there...the floor would rot.

Not in my bathroom.

This brings me to the second thing I am thankful for about my bathroom. In this case, it's something that you can see...a shower...

My shower isn't so much a bathtub, with a curtain. Nor is it a plastic, cage with a drain in the middle. It's more of a glass partition...and that's more than many foreigners have. They just have a washing machine, toilet, and a shower hose that hooks up to the sink. A partitioned shower is luxury that I get to enjoy.

If the bathroom floor is the material as the shower floor...it means you can get it just as wet. Not only can you...but you should! Cleaning the bathroom starts with spraying the shower nozzle (if you look closely you can see it's on a hose) in every which direction (except up silly)

The main downside to tile is the cracking grout...that or when the tiles completely pop out of the wall. Which was happening in my apartment in Korea...

Public bathrooms on the other hand are significantly, but not quite radically different....for 3 reasons.

The first is thing that took some getting used to is the squat toilet. Sorry, I don't have a picture at the moment, but I'm thinking twice about storming into a public bathroom stall...camera in hand...

At first, I found these to be annoying, uncivilized and uncomfortable. But after a while...you just accept it for what it is. In fact...I actually feel slightly better for using one, because as the name implies...you are squatting. Therefore you aren't actually touching anything else...while on the traditional toilet...while more comfortable....well you're sitting where 100 strangers sat before you...

Second, public bathrooms here are notorious for being well...public. As in...you can see inside from the outside.

I guess I'm used to public bathrooms being built with right angles in mind. You walk inside and have to immediately take a left turn. Well...as I keep telling myself...Toto we're not in Kansas anymore. (which is strange as I've never been to Kansas, nor do I know anyone named Toto...)

I can't count the number restrooms that I've passed with no doors and all the urinals are in plain sight. It's not uncommon to find a restaurant with a mixed bathroom. Not bathroom with a door...that would just make sense...but a room with no door...with arrows guiding both men and women inside. The bathroom itself will have a urinal, a stall and only one sink.

Finally, toilet paper.

It seems like such a simple amenity. You may complain it's not as soft as the luxurious 3-ply-flower-exbroidered-quilted-scented paper you keep at home (or in my case one gigantic pack from Costco that could theoretically last me a decade)

But when you at a place that is without...well...you find yourself pining for that glorious 1ply sandpaper from high school. Instead...outside of the public restrooms are vending machines with...you almost guessed it...packages of tissue. The kind you normally associate with blowing your nose.

In fact...most Koreans carry these around. Women in their purses...men in their man purses.

The Korean public has jumped at the oppurtunity to place advertising on something you carry around with you on any given day. Going down into the subway will sometimes pass you by a little old Korean lady passing out little packages of tissue. I rarely turn down free stuff...and you never know when you're going to need to wipe your....nose...

The Mopeds are coming!

Oh sure Korea has cars. With cars come roads, traffic, bad drivers, and all the other joys of cars. Oh and smog...Seoul has LOTS of that.

But Korea has made the decision, as have many European countries, that they want to limit the number of people driving. There are a couple ways of doing this. Cuba just doesn't import any cars. But as one of the major companies here makes cars (have you ever heard of Daewoo, Hyudai or Kia) So instead they tax the gasoline up the wazoo.

As much as people abhor extra gas taxes...and Koreans are no exception...it's not necessarily that take taxes, it's what they do with them. Seoul's public transportation is going to be one of the primary things I miss when I leave.

The buses run until 1:00 am and start at 5:00. They are clean, usually not crowded and come very often.

The subway is AMAZING. It is clean. It comfortable. Ok, sometimes it's too way too crowded. But it takes me everywhere I want to go in Seoul.

If I want to get away for the weekend, I can take a bus and go anywhere in Korea for cheap.

How cheap? The standard bus/subway fare in Korea is 900 won or about 75 cents. If I have to travel from one end of Seoul to the other...I many have to pay up to $1.50..the horror is overwhelming!

But...how in the world can Korea afford such an amazing system? Simple, they tax their gas resulting in the 8th highest price in the world. 1600 won/liter. (I guess I need to convert that into a non-metric system for those of you in the 3 countries in the world that are NOT on the metric system...you know Lybia, Myanmar/Burma...and the 3rd county slips my mind at the moment...for the other 170 countries out there...good for you) That's $5.15 cents..day in and day out.

Instead of driving SUVs, Jimmy's and full sized trucks (I know who you are...) The take a LOT of public transportation. They also use motorcycles and mopeds. A LOT. Pizza drivers in America are usually driving beat up used cars.

Well, in case you haven't noticed yes, this isn't Korea. In Korea, delivery is done by motorcycle. Period. Everything from Chinese food, Pizza, and yes even McDonalds...delivers via motorcycle. But with gas ALWAYS above $5...how else is there to drive?

The curious thing about motorcycle/moped drivers here is that they don't exactly follow the same rules as the cars. And that's really saying something as the rest of Korean drivers don't exactly follow many rules either.

But at least the cars stick to the roads.

The mopeds drive on the roads...they drive on the sidewalks...they drive everywhere. If they are stuck at a red light...instead of waiting...they'll fly onto the sidewalk...once they get sick of weaving around pedestrians on the sidewalk, they jump back onto the road...where they manage to out-do the taxi drivers for crazy, reckless driving...again...another impressive feat.

So the next time you're filling up the gas tank of your gas guzzling monster...remember...the mopeds are coming and at up to 100 mpg (sorry to all my metric fans out there) you'll be ahead of the curve because as soon as gas stays above $5.00 that's what half the country will be driving.

You can leave your hat on

Koreans have different sense of fashion. It's understandable, because they look different. The men are fond of suits and pastels (especially pink) In the summer the women are fond of miniskirts and high heels. In the winter, the women are fond of furry vests, tights, miniskirts, high heels.

If any girl reading my blog wants a pair of tights that will keep you warm despite near blizzard conditions...let me know and I can send you a pair of the best tights you'll ever own. I must however warm you, if you are fat by Korean standards (aka your legs actually touch and you are unable to hide behind a bean pole) don't bother...they will rip the first time you try them on.

When I when to Busan, I left my hat on the bus. (my umbrella in Tokyo, my hat in Busan...why do I feel like I'm stuck in a Where's Waldo Asia book...) I soon found it eminently necessary to purchase a new one. I opted for a boring, ski hat, that was similar to the one I had when I was young. But I had other options.

The hat and gloves come in two distinct categories, boring and FUN. The boring ones are identical to what you find in Seattle, mittens, leather gloves, ski hats, ear muffs, scarves, etc...

My students don't wear the kinds of hats that I resisted wearing as a small child. Instead, they wear hats with lions, and tigers, and panda bears! Oh My are they cute!

They also don't need to be reminded put on their hats...because want 10 year old doesn't want to dress up like a tiger!

The gloves are either physically attached to the hat by hat by a long piece of cloth...or they are come separately. Either way, when you look at them, you don't see gloves as much as you see stuffed claws.

So you can ask yourself...the next time you go outside and don your warm winter wear...which would you prefer to look like? A disgruntled dock work...but an adult? or a lion?

Here Fishy Fishy Fishy!

This weekend I went to Korea's #1 fishing festival...or at least that's what the brochure they gave to me said. All I knew was I was going a tour that promised ice fishing, snow hiking, and an excuse to get out of Seoul.

But since we don't have really cold winters in Seattle, my sole source of ice fishing culture consists of watching Grumpy Old Men. So I expected shacks on the ice and fishing poles. Oh ho, not so!

The picture you now see before you is the ice fishing section. There were thousands of Koreans huddled around their holes. The were no shacks. So I, along with the rest of the foreigners, borrowed the giant crow bar / ice hole digging tool and proceeded to attack the ice we were standing. After the hole was dug and scooped clean of snow-cone shavings...we whipped out the fly swatters that the tour company gave us. I mean technically they were fishing poles, but if you glanced in a store...you'd think it was a fly swatter with a bit of fishing line and the saddest, most unappealing lure you've ever seen in your life.

How sad was it?

The Korean in the hole next to us, who had caught several fish using a real lure...communicated to us thru broken, borderline non-existant English skills...(so gestures really mixed with words we didn't understand) that no fish would even bite on our lures.

But yet somehow, almost all of the foreigners wound up hooking a fish.

How? With our pathetic poles, unalluring lure and thousands of other hooks to choose from?

Maybe a little technique that I learned from Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street?

Simple. A reporter with a newspaper wanted pictures of foreigners catching fish. So he came by with a bucket of fish. He set one on each of our hooks and we had to pose surprised, excited, and awed for the camera. He got his picture and we got our fish, so everyone was happy.

Later that evening we drove out to the woods to a ring of cabins. Behind the cabins, thru a brief hike in the snow, there was a bonfire that leaped 20 feet in the air. Such acts of primitive beauty inspired in my soul the immortal words of sages from my teenage years. "Fire is cool!"

At the cabin, 10 of us spread out on the floor and fell asleep.

Korean's don't really do beds. I mean, beds are creeping in as part of the western influence, but most Koreans don't have them. They prefer to sleep on mats on their floor. They don't really have central heating either, but they do pump heat out of their floors. They call it ondol. The room was quite chilly, but the floor was quite toasty. While I lay on my back on the thin mattress pad provided, I could see my breath...but I as everything from my neck down to my toes was being heated...I felt perfectly warm.

Koreans believe in the heated "ondol" flooring so much that apartments are measured in pyeong...or how much space a person would take up sleeping on the floor.

So while I attempted to catch so sleep, the other 2 guys were sawing logs with such window shaking force that it made me miss my grandma.

The next day we went hiking in snow that was loose and powdery, perfect for skiing and sledding, but poor for snow balls and hiking. Many of our motley crew had to turn back do to inadequate footwear.

After the hike, we drove into town, ate lunch and headed back into Seoul... a little wetter, a bit colder, slightly bruised, but all smiles.

Korean Banking Part 3

I've only had one bank my entire life. When I was in elementary school, a nice lady would come once a month and collect a few dollars that my mother had given me (GAVE ME...GAVE ME I'm an English teacher now, I'd better start writing like one!) As I grew older, I continued to use them as for my checking and saving account.

Then one day, I checked the interest rate on my savings account. It was a paltry 0.25%. THAT'S LESS THAN 1% on a "SAVINGS" ACCOUNT I was losing money keeping it at the bank all all these years.

Wait...how do you lose money that's in a perfectly safe, FDIC insured savings account? It's called inflation. Inflation is the fact that everything gets more expensive each year. (There are exceptions...like computers...but they are more than balanced out by other things...say gasoline. Now look in the mirror and ask yourself which would you rather have...$2000 computers and $1 gallons of gasoline or $500 computers and $5 gallons of gasoline...)

For the last few years, inflation has averaged 2.60%. So $100 stuff at the beginning of the year is suddenly only able to buy $97.5 worth of stuff...hmmm this is starting to sound hard. Let's try to explain this another way...using something real...

BEER.

Last year you spent $100 on beer. Last year, that bought 100 bottles of beer. (This is the good stuff that costs $1 a bottle, I'm from Seattle....land of the micro-brews...after all) The problem is that this year, due to "inflation" (or Washington's bad habit of raising beer taxes each year...) Suddenly, 100 bottle of beer costs $102.60.

But that's OK, since you've saved $100 dollars in a savings account at your local bank. With a 0.25...that turns your $100 in $100.25...you're $2.35 short

Now you're only buying 98 bottles of beer. Sad : (

What's even more depressing is that this "inflation thing" stacks on itself every year. So after 30 years, you're $100 is only buying 50 bottles of beer.

Depressing...you really need a beer...

...oh wait, you can't afford one...

OK...back to reality...When I found out my bank was only paying me less than a penny on the dollar, I moved my paltry savings to an online. But my checking account stayed where it was.

The bank was sold to another bank and I kept my checking account there. As long as I didn't have to pay for my checking and the statements kept coming in the mail...there wasn't really a difference.

That is until I came to Korea.

While, my banking account isn't a savings account by any means...it isn't a checking account as I understand it.

I checking account involves, well, checks and the attached checkbook.

Well, not over here. Checks here are issued from an ATM machine and they aren't TO a specific person, but FROM a specific. Let me explain, if a Korean has a check for 100 chon-won (around $ 90) and walks into the local "7-11" (and there are more kwiki marts here than there are street corners, I have 3 in my apartment building alone!) and hands over the check and a bag of squid flavored rice puffs...the teller will hand back 99 chon- won and the bag of chips which cost 1,000 won.

That's just how it's done here. Most Koreans don't have more than 100 chon-won in their wallet at any given time, but they will have a couple of checks in there. If they run out of cash, they'll simply buy something small at the "Mini-stop" and get 99 chon-won in change. That's just how things are done here. And the sales clerk just smiles and says thank you!

Odd, just think of the dirty look you would get if you gave a $100 dollar bill at the local AM/PM and asked for $99 dollars in change. That is...if they even accepted $100 bills.

The other thing that they don't do here is bank statements. Instead, they use something called a passbook. It's about the size of your standard check book and in it are pages that look like a check ledger book (you know, that thing that's in your checkbook, above your checks, that you don't use as often as you should...)

But the pass book has a electronic strip in it that lets it double as an ATM card. The ATMs here accept both the books AND ATM cards. When you use the passbook, the ATM automatically prints flips to the last page and prints out your latest account activity.

Case in point, my account back home in the US of A. Every month my parents get a piece of mail from my bank that has all the latest activity. Even if over the course of the past 11 months, only 1 or 2 things happen on my account each month, they still mail me a 3 page letter every month.

While in Korea, all I have is a small, thinner than a diary sized notebook that can fit inside a daily planner. Oh, and it only uses up a much space as it is used...while one person will fill 3 passbooks with all the times they withdraw money, I'm still on my first one.

Snow Day

I really thought that Seattle was the most pathetic city when it comes to snow. I mean 3 inches on snow shuts down half the city. Well Seattle must have a dysfunctional cousin here in Korea called Seoul.

In some ways I understand how Seattle has problems. The city hasn't thought about subway/light rail, the snow/melt/freeze weather cycle, and the hills all compound into one giant massive traffic accident when the snow comes.

Seoul has none of the disadvantages. The city has a spiderweb of 9 subway lines, it's not even close to freezing, it's flat, and the weather isn't even CLOSE getting above freezing. One additional advantage of living in apartment building that are 20+ stories is that half my students walk to their schools.

So a little snow wouldn't stop these dedicated workaholics, right?

WRONG

They don't have plows, salt, sand, or chains. I live near a major intersection. It's where an 8 lane road meets an 8 lane road, meets a subway stop. If the city was going send a plow anywhere, it would send one by here as it cleared the highway towards Seoul. The road is covered in snow, unsanded, unsalted and unsafe.

The one things that are passable are sidewalks. That has nothing to do with the government as much as it to do with the business that line sidewalks. This morning, while walking to work, I small a small army of ajishis and ajimas (old Korean men and women) shoveling the snow. In fact, the parking lot in my apartment complex is well shoveled. I am truly amazed to see the security guards actually lift a finger let a lone shovel a parking lot. I mean these guys usually reside in a state of torpor that would give Tom Hanks in a League of Their Own a serious run for his money.