When Odd Becomes Normal

One of the things I love the best about living overseas is that you can never predict what funny thing is going to happen on the way to the Forum. . . or anywhere else for that matter. I never knew what the day would hold when I stepped outside my dorm in Jerusalem, or my hotel in Paris, or Monrovia, or San Ignacio and same thing here in Daegu. Life just moves with a different flavor here. I thrive on this sort of existence, but I will admit that it does not go without its absolute frustrations. So here are some of the amusing and not so amusing aspects of our life right now.

The above picture is a picture of a mini-mini van. I don't know why these make me giggle like they do, but I find them to be a bit ridiculous. Why not just ride a four wheeler or a golf cart? In fact, I'm pretty sure these cars are built on golf cart bases. The people (and remember most Koreans aren't exceptionally large individuals) look like they've been stuffed into an itty-bitty driving space. I like to drive by and sing, "Big man in a little car." I think they should just save energy and take the bottom panel out and let the driver run with the vehicle.

There are a lot of things I go without here. I don't have a microwave or a toaster. I don't have a driver's license or a car to drive. I didn't have an oven until about a week ago. I don't have a real dishwasher (I'll tell more about that in another post), and the thing I mourn most, I do not have a garbage disposal. In fact, we have been forced into a life of tree-hugging servitude and are required by law to recycle. I'm not even sure how to do it right (our doorman yells at me a lot in Korean about it and I don't think he's shouting "yea! good job sorting plastics and papers!" But, I do my best and I make do with my circumstances. However, after this last weekend I am certain while I can make it without a toaster, I have to have a GPS! We had to drive up to a city called Pyeongtaek on the other side of the penninsula just southwest of Seoul to ge our SOFA visas (these allow me to stay in the country with Brian as long as he is here and they are HUGELY important). Well, what should have been a three hour trip turned out to be a six hour trip because we kept getting lost. Then the really crappy thing about Korean freeways is that if you miss your exit you cannot make any sort of u-turn and there isn't another exit for about 40 kms. So, knowing we were desperately lost, I called the Air Force lodge we were staying at and asked for directions. Several people transferred me to other people, some hung up on me. The Korean ladies tried to help me, but they only live a few blocks from the base and ride the bus everyday. Apparently, they had never ventured out of their five mile life radius to get on a major freeway. The airmen were no help either. They kept saying to me that they never leave the base period. So in talking to fifteen different people, no one could even give me a hint of where we were supposed to be going. After a lot of hours, a lot of prayers and a lot of screaming at the children to quit asking me when we were going to get there, we arrived. Luckily, they had an American Chili's restaurant and our wounds were healed. Until the next day, when we went to get our SOFA visas and they had shut down the immigration office because of internet problems. They tried to tell us that we would have to come back another time and I just started to cry. They were very nice after that and said that they would work extra hard to have it online by 1 pm. Okay, it was closer to 2 pm and it made for an extremely long, boring day waiting in an Air Force terminal, but we did get the visas. (The picture below was taken on our drive back to Daegu. As you can see, it is breathtakingly beautiful here.)

Just around the corner from our apartment we found an Olympic themed playground. It is definitely not US safety standard approved, but all the better for my kids. They go there every day to give me a break after we finish our homeschooling. The awesome thing about Korea is that it is so safe (except for maybe speeding buses and taxis--which the kids now know how to watch for). They take a few thousand wan ($3) and buy treats at the Thank Q Mart next to the playground and play for awhile and then walk home.

Just a few minutes walk from our house (we walk everywhere everyday) there is a beautiful river walk with fountains in the rivers, a walking path, a bike path, flowers, old people playing croquet, and strange little workout stations. We love these! We can't get over the oddities of these little machines. I have worked out a lot in my life and I cannot figure out what exactly these things are supposed to do for you, but the kids love swinging around on them.

This last one is crazy. This is how they move your furniture into your apartment:

If you allow the movers to move your funiture up and down on the elevator, the apartment building charges you lots of money. So the ingenious Koreans have invented a solution to that problem: the elevator moving platform. They raise up a fireman's type ladder to your floor (if you're under like the 30th floor), then they load your boxes onto a platform that rides up the vertical conveyor and then they take out the giant sliding widows and sliding screens and lift your funiture up and over the safety rail onto your balcony and into your home. (Our balcony is more like a sunroom so it's part of our house really.) It made me nauseous to watch, but these guys didn't even flinch. The oddest part to me was that they worked in their socks because it is custom to take your shoes off when entering anyone's house. I don't know I find it strange that that applies to the repairman and movers that come in too, but it does.

Which brings me to my last oddity. I went with a coworker of Brian's to look at getting some of the kids into public Korean school so that they could be immersed in the language and learn it quickly. When I went into meet with the principals I was required to take off my shoes and put on little slippers. The little Korean ladies took our shoes and handed us little Korean women's slippers. I felt like an ugly step sister trying on the glass slipper. Try as I might, I could not get my gargantuan size 8 American feet into those things. So, a little sheepishly they took them back, went to another cupboard and brought us Korean men's slippers. They were embarrassed for me, but I thought it was pretty stinking funny! Another odd moment to add to my list :)!