The G-Rated Version: How South Korea has Changed my LIfe

Umbrellas...well I started buying them in Guatamala but back then I was a one umbrella kind of gal.  For the first time in my life, I'm the proud owner of four umbrellas.  Luckily, as a result of living in the desert for half of my life, this is a welcome change! In Guatemala, for the first time in my life I started to use them to shield myself from the sun.  At home, people would look at me like I was a weirdo if I did that.  I keep meaning to buy a parasol or two.  I’m going to leave here with an umbrella for sun or rain and to match every pair of shoes.  

Littering- Without trash bins on the street, where do I throw my trash?  In the street, clearly. It feels so wrong even after knowing about the uniformed trash patrol that picks it all up every morning.  For the most part, people don't wantonly discard snack wrappers and beverage containers.  It seems as though one person decides to place one item in a particular place and other people decide to put their trash in the same spot, making it easier for the designated elderly clean up people to do their jobs.  Why do the old people have to pick up the trash?  I don't know.   

I once read about an English teacher who didn't know what to do with the trash in her apartment besides throw it out the window of her high rise building in the middle of the night.  It turns out there are special trash bags to for non-recyclable refuse.  They are near the cash registers in the grocery store.  There's no such thing as a Hefty bag here, that I know of.   

Recycling- In the States, it's easier to pretend to be a responsible citizen after you consume copious amounts of beverages bottled in plastic if you just take the time to put the bottles in the trash, no matter if those bottles end up in a landfill, allowing the benzene and vinyl chlorides to contaminate the soil.  Or maybe they will be dumped out at sea and end up swirling around in the North Pacific Gyre.  Without looking at it in the street, you can better discard of these things without thinking about them.  Apparently, whether the bottles are disposed in the street or in a recycle bin like they installed next to my apartment, they actually seem to make a decent recycling effort.  Where I come from, after the waste management department issued separate recycle bins it turned out that the trash separation was all done in vain, to get people in the habit of categorizing their refuse. It all actually ended up in the same landfill as the rest of the trash anyhow.  Perhaps my new littering habit is cancelled out by the fact that I'm a much better recycler. 

Spending more money cooking at home than in restaurants- It's not that I can't cook, it's that I don't want to. At first, I was delighted that it was cheaper to just eat in a restaurant.   It was kind of fun learning the basic menu of a typical Kim-bab restaurant...the kim-bab itself first of all is the Korean answer to what I'm most familiar with as a 'California roll.'  There's the mandoo ,different steamed dumplings usually filled with vegetables, kimche, and pork.  Other items include raman; pronounced "la-myeon"(it's raman noodles with fish paste or meat).....Kimche fried rice, a variety of stews with names like this: sun du bu jjigae, soondubu chigae, soon du bu chigae, soon dubu jjigae, soon du boo, soo do boo...) bibim naeng nyun--"spicy cold noodles" spicy buckwheat noodles served in ice, the noodleshave to cut with scissors.  There's a pork cutlet called "dongas," the one item that they serve with a knife and a fork. "Om-rice-ah" is Konglish for an omlette stuffed with a rice that  almost reminds me of Spanish rice.  I tried to eat this a couple of times when I was jonsing for something resembling a Southwestern breakfast.  It's okay but they ruin it with Western condiments including ketchup and mayonnaise.  "Curry-rice-ah" is what it sounds like...a sort of Indian styled rice with yellow curry.  

There's more to Korean cuisine than this, but this is what it is when you want something quick and cheap.  The Korean dinner table reflects it's nature as a "hermit kingdom." For someone accustomed to an international diet, I hate to say it but all Korean food all of the time becomes tiresome.  This is especially true when the menu doesn’t vary between breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Some of my favorite dishes, like ‘kimche chon’ which is sometimes described as “Korean pizza,” are only available as a side dish among 25 other side dishes or as bar food.  There’s no such thing as a personal lunch chon.  Chon is flat and round and involves green onions, maybe some zuchinni, other vegetables, kimche and squid.  

It only took three months but eventually I threw away all the pans that came with my apartment that ruined the food I tried to cook, and spent a little bit of money on a nice, non-stick pan.  I quit caring that I live in a studio apartment and that as a result of cooking, all of my clothes would smell as if I work as a short order cook.  

I discovered that the taxi ride to Home Plus is worth every jeon.  The international foods available still leave much to be desired, but I find life is much happier when I have five packages of tortillas in the freezer.  Who knew something so simple as canned kidney beans or black beans could change my life so dramatically. 

The food here has given me a new appreciation for the “melting pot” aspect of the USA.  Even though there’s so much junk food and even though food there is so overpriced, I miss eating foods from three different countries in one day.  

Fashion-  I’m not sure what’s in style at home or how my new waredrobe would go over.  After a while it seems like the foreigners start to assimilate to local style and favor tee shirts with bizarre arrangements of misspelled English words.  Long shirts/baby doll style dresses with leggings are also popular.  Hooker shoes are appropriate on any occasion, even to hike up a mountain.  The tendency is to keep cleavage under wraps but to wear obscenely short mini-skirts.  I found that this can be pulled off in a somewhat less trashy manner with spandex/cotton shorts underneath.  

Taxis-  I don’t like to drive or pay for things like car payments and insurance so I’ve always made sure to live in places where I don’t need to drive.  The only place you could hail a taxi in Albuquerque was at the airport.  Otherwise, you called them on the phone and hopefully they showed up within 45 minutes.  There’s not a big taxi cab transportation culture in New Mexico.  I ride in several taxi’s a week now.  The good thing about the taxi is that I’m not driving.  The bad thing is that the taxi driver is driving and 50% of the time is a complete psycho and I can never be sure if this is the day he’s selected for a murder/suicide mission.  

Remote Control Operated Air Conditioning- If only I’d been as careful about the terms of my schedule and vacation on my contract as I was about the certainty there would be air conditioning in my apartment. It is one of my favorite things about my place.  I can keep it at a frosty 18 degrees if I want and pretend like the humid South Korean summer isn’t happening.  And when it gets too cold, I don’t have to get out of bed to turn it up!

Not Paying the Bills- At home, it was usually because I lost them or forgot about them.  The internet, the cable, my cell phone, and the utilities; nothing will ever be shut off because of my absentmindedness or irresponsibility.  That’s all taken care of. 

• expat lifestyle in south korea