1. Korean guys all carry man purses. No joke, starting around teenage years you will see almost all guys carrying some sort of bag or purse. Caroline and I sat in a very crowded bus station waiting for a bus from Seoul back home and counted the number of guys WITHOUT a purse, and I think out of about 100 guys, only 15 were without. That is definitely not something you would see in America. What do you think they carry in those things anyways?
2. No matter the age, height, or outfit being worn, Korean women all wear heels. We have seen heels on the youngest of girls to the oldest of women. We have seen them worn with shorts, t-shirts, or something fancy. Women who are already really tall still wear heels. And the Korean teachers at our school wear their heels on their 15 minute walk to school only to take them off as soon as they enter the building and wear slippers all day. NUTS!
3. I like to think of chopsticks as skis. Much like in skiing, if you cross the ends, you are in trouble. Its all about holing them parallel and never letting them cross.
4. Some things here are backwards. For example, the faucets at school, you have to push down instead of pull up in order to get the water to turn on. Also, the fast forward and rewind buttons on a tape/CD player are completely opposite and what would look like the fast forward sign to us would be the rewind button here. That definitely threw me off at first.
5. The trick to eating is you go to your food, don't bring the food to you. Although it is traditional to bring the fork full of food to your mouth in America, if you do that here, you will end up with food either all over yourself or possibly back on plate or on the floor because you can only hold on to things with chopsticks so long.
6. When Koreans teach other Koreans English, the letters S, F and random words are taught wrong. The kids at school all pronounce the letter S as "Essa" and the letter F like "Effa". Also, my students and all of the korean teachers at the school say the word strange as "strange-ee". There are also other words I can't think of right now that get the ee sound added to them as well.
7. Random American sayings that make absolutely no sense are printed all over things here. For example, I bought a jewelry box the other day that read "Is like an apple. The smell of sweet apples. The girl is a gift of the apple." I had to buy this because it was just sooooo great. You would think they would pay an American to
8. Spicy to a Korean would be deadly to an American. Koreans eat a TON of extremely spicy food and think nothing of it. They don't taste the spice at all. I hope I develop this taste bud soon because I am dying here. :)
This is all I can think of at the moment. I know I had more, so I will add to the list when I think of them. :)
Love and miss you all!!
I would be completely awesome at eating there, I bring my mouth to my food anyway, and get ridiculous looks for doing so, I'd finally fit in. But I would then spit it up everywhere because its way to spicy, guess I better keep eating here.
ReplyDeleteAnd also, when skiing, its a good thing to cross your skis if your throwing a mute grab, are there any mute grabs when it comes to chopsticks?