Fun Fact #2

Interestingly enough, I thought this fun fact, while partly inappropriate, needed to be shared with the rest of the world. It deals with Korean body odor. They don't have any. Their food can smell like a month old corpse, their streets can (and commonly do) smell like sewers, but their bodies don't seem to smell at all. I don't know how it's done, but from my experience it seems to be true. Mindy swears to me that some people on the subway stink like feces, well that's how I described the people who smelt on New York subways, and she concurred with my assessment. But that only goes to show you that you cannot make broad sweeping comments about a group of people, but that's exactly what I'm doing. Heck, they don't even sell deodorant at supermarkets, but they really don't need to. It's not a problem.

I believe it is due to the healthiness of the Korean diet. But what scares me is how bad Americans can smell when we go for a 10 minute jog. How gross must our diets be for us, when even after putting on plenty of deodorant, we still stink when we're done. As much as a good diet is important in America, who ever thinks about a diet that might make you smell better? No one, but apparently it's out there.

With all that being said, you can see the western foods creeping in on Korean society. McDonald's is always filled with young children and I fear that in the years to come, the good smelling Korean will become a thing of the past. But if that is true, we will always have it down in writing here, that at one point, this was the way it was.

The Day the World Changed...

Today I got the internet hooked up in my apartment. Yes, that is a big thing, if that sounds lame well then I meant not for me, but for this Blog it's a big deal. I've already started putting up pictures, and I plan to write as close to daily as I can. Okay, continuing on from earlier. Where were we? Oh yes, "The Smell" it was like when you can't find your glasses because you are wearing them. The smell was coming from the drainage hole in the middle of my bathroom floor. I wanted to imagine it was just like every other shower drain I'd ever come across before, but I was only lying to myself. The thing is that Korean bathrooms don't have a "shower" as most westerners have come to think of them. Imagine your bathroom, then take out the shower, and put the shower head on the wall across from the sink, that’s really the only difference...Oh yeah, then put a drainage hole right in the middle of the bathroom floor too. So really the whole bathroom is your shower. Everything gets wet, the toilet, the floor, the walls, the sink, the mirror, and this really scared me (but almost 2 weeks in, I can tell you now that my fears were without merit). Next, I thought I'd outsmart the smell by hanging a scented thing below my sink, much like New York taxi cab's hang the scented trees. Well, it had about as much effect as the trees do, none. It took a few days of dealing with the smell until I realized, like a child who finally saw the way he could climb to get the cookie jar, that simply placing the plunger over the hole utterly and completely takes care of the smell. There is no smell, the smell is now dead, thanks to my trusty Excalibur. That wasn't the only bathroom mishap though. The first morning I showered before work at 7:30 AM (only hours after arriving in Korea) the water was a bitter cold temperature. I swore to myself I could take it, I had to get used to it because I'd already signed up to do this for a year. I told myself I had done it before. The month spent in Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala was full of cold showers, and i got used to it there. I kept telling myself this, but it didn't help. After cupping freezing water onto only my most necessary body parts, and washing at least most of the soap off, I cried a little as I put the "big towel" around myself. The biggest towel in the store I bought the night before was no bigger then the ones you get at the YMCA. You know, the very suggestive ones that barely cover all the elderly men? However, my fears of a year spent showering splash to splash were put to bed when my teachers told me I had to change my heat setting. Just a simple button on the thermostat means hot water. It's as simple as that (even though I had my doubts at the time). Now I take nice long hot showers. It's a million times better and everyday I don't take them for granted, as if showering right in front of a mirror isn't enough to put a smile on my face, coupled with the hot water, believe it or not I've become a morning person :)