life in korea

Onyunghaseo!

Wanna hear a funny story - the kind that will keep natives laughing at the poor innocent foreigner for decades? Mm, that might be an exaggeration.

Today I had to get a medical checkup so I could get my alien registration card. Wan, the director of the school I work at, brought me to the hospital. Before going in to get a chest x-ray, she said, "You have to take off EVERYTHING," and boy did I take that literally. I walked into the x-ray area, and indeed took off everything then put on the x-ray garment. I was expecting the garments to be a top with pants, but I couldn't find any pants. The top was long enough to cover up the 'essentials', so I walked out to find the technician, a guy close to my age, ramble off something in Korean and point to his legs. I assumed that meant I could wear my pants during the x-ray.

Here's a list of other oddities I've experienced so far (but not limited to the following):

-COLD weather here in Busan (mid 30s F, not including wind chill!!)

-Chinese food for lunch

-lasagna for breakfast

-being scolded by Koreans for walking into my apartment with shoes on

Busan is a big, busy city full of cute, polite, hospitable Koreans who aren't ashamed of staring at foreigners. I feel very well taken care of by the faculty at my school who picked me up from the airport, helped carry my luggage up five flights of stairs to my apartment, and have prepared me for my job and life in Korea. One thing I wish I could do is speak Korean - that would make things a lot easier. For now, I wander around and ask random strangers for help and buy strange things at the grocery store (most labels are only in Korean). Then I open them up at home to find that they were NOT what I was expecting. Oh well, it keeps things interesting.

Pics to be posted soon!!