And this is why I'm afraid of bugs...

These are the spiders that are outside my classroom windows.  They are HUGE.  

Scroll down for another fun one...

And after class one day I hear a bunch of screaming, about this guy on the wall.  One of the construction workers came along and very un-ceremoniously killed him which sent them running and screaming...fantastic fun.  PS Praying Mantises are also HUGE.

Hurricane Sandy

I just can't get over this!

....???

....Man Clinic?   For sad peppers?

Shopping Carts...yeah. Really

So this is what the shopping carts are like here...a few differences.

One: the wheels.  Rather than having two front wheels that spin for steering, all four wheels spin so you can pull you cart sideways to get out of peoples way...pretty convenient.

Also, notice how they look chunky?  Those are magnets so when you're on an escalator (like in the picture), your cart doesn't roll away.  This is like an airport escalator on an incline, not stairs.  Very convenient put kinda slow.

The other real difference is on the handle, notice the box on the handle?  Yeah, you have to put in a 100 won coin (about 10 cents) to get the cart to unclip from the others, then when you reattach it (so they know you return it to the right spot) you get your coin back....and let me tell you people are pretty serious about that little coin, I've never seen a cart in the wrong spot.

Mopeds and such

Ok so there are a TON of mopeds and scooters and motorcycles around here.  Basically every restaurant and decent sized store own at least one.  The Lotteria down the road owns at least three...that's because everywhere delivers.  Now add to that other delivery companies and personal scooters and...it's a lot of two wheeled traffic.

Now the biggest problem with this is they don't seem to need to follow street laws, or pedestrian laws.  They have free reign EVERYWHERE.  They drive all over the sidewalks, wait for cross walks when it's convenient and use the roads at other times...the only exception are the actual motorcycles but they are more rare...

So, watch out on the sidewalk, you might just get run over.

Old Habits Die Hard

So I was shopping and decided I'm going to start a campaign. I'm going to call it “Commas for Dumbasses”. Now what in the world does that mean?

So I was shopping and my American brain kept looking at the prices like a freaking American. So we generally have a price that has the dollar amount and some arbitrary coin amount that makes you feel like you're getting it cheaper (only $49.96! That's less than $50.00!!) So I'm used to seeing these numbers and dropping off two digits.

So imagine my surprise when I'm shopping and can't figure out why they want $350 for a skirt...like it's a nice skirt but no where near THAT nice. A while later I was really looking at a price...and I realized it was 35,000 not 350,000. Now I wouldn't have made that mistake if they put in commas for dumbasses. But if you knock two digits off of 35000 it's $350....and yeah I am apparently not smart enough to go shopping

Learning to read!!

So I'm slowly but surely learning to read...This is my fridge:

I'm hoping I didn't screw this up, then I'll feel like a real idiot....

Hilarious Toothbrush holder

Hilarious

119 We don't do emergencies...

So if there's a fire you dial 119...and possibly for an ambulance...I don't remember the different numbers.  That's probably pretty important huh...

ANYWHO

So you dial 119, they send out a truck.  The truck then proceeds to the road with it's lights and sirens on...then sit in traffic.

And sit in traffic.

Now I noticed this with the police cars and thought "well, maybe they have their lights on like 'look, the cops are here...serving and protecting' and they're just cruising around making sure everything looks ok"

Because when they drive by even the taxis and buses pass them.

But no, there must have been a decent sized accident because traffic was seriously backed up and there's the fire truck...sitting in the traffic.

They don't drive down the wrong side of the road, like the other traffic was still coming the other way.

And there's a fire...and they aren't getting there.

I just thought this was super weird.  I pray my building never catches on fire, the whole block would be gone by the time they got there!

Another strange thing is that they don't seem to care about people imitating police vehicles...especially the motorcycles.  I've seen a ton of motorcycles with flashy blue and red lights...and I'm sure they're not police bikes.

Halt! Who goes there?

Haha, are you enjoying the stupid titles as much as I am, so lame and so fun…

Anyway, I was heading out of school on Friday the…7th or so and I noticed the teachers and the security guard checking IDs…I thought this was a little strange. Now I’m in a “conservative” school and some teachers carry around these nice little polished beating sticks “just to scare the girls” because corproral punishment has been outlawed for like a whopping three years…I’m not positive but I think one of the girls got whacked…so I did what they told us to do, don’t make a scene and walk away. Yup, that is what they told us to do. To be fair, I think he probably just smacked it into his hand for emphasis…but that teach is like SUPER scary.

So the next week I saw him screaming at a girl in the hallway and my coteacher asked if I had any idea why. I was like “uh, she’s in her uniform so I’m assuming she must have said something wrong…”

Oh no, she had earrings in and her hair looked a little dyed because it wasn’t perfectly black…yup. She was getting REAMED for it.

And RIGHT afterwards, my teacher asked me basically why I wore so much black…I was like “well you told me it was very conservative and so I’ve been trying to be careful.” She’s like oh but the other teachers wear colors…yeah, so I’m supposed to wear colors after being warned against them…and after watching that girl get her ass handed to her?? So ok, I’m slowly working my way into colors now. Very slowly.

I’m pretty sure they meant for the first few days because I was meeting the principle but w/e. I think things are getting better, everyone is a little more comfortable and it’s all good. Colors and all.

Toilets that have plugs...

Chocked full of TMI, proceed at your own risk!

Ok me and toilets that have plugs tend not to be the best of friends. There’s always something just a wee bit too creepy about them.

First time I had to deal with a plugged in toilet was camping up at Nobleview. Now down’t get me wrong, it’s WORLDS better than an outhouse…but you’re still dealing with that creepy hole into an unknown abyss…

Alright, you know what’s down there, it’s not totally unknown, just NARSTY. Now those plug in because they use foam instead of water to flush.

But I moved into my apartment, and my toilet was plugged in…not because of foam.

Because of water.

Behold, my bidet…ok, don’t behold it I feel weird putting up a picture of it.

Ok, so bidets kinda freak me out. The first time I’d ever actually seen one, like in person, was during our orientation…now we had normal toilets in the dorms…

These were PUBLIC bidets…PUBLIC

GGAAHHH

Alright, public restrooms are gross to begin with I don’t want to encourage and extra…splash-age or anything. Just…no.

So I have a bidet. In my apartment.

First of all they’re at a weird angle and I don’t like it, it’s like you’re about to slide off.

And do I really want my toilet squirting cold water at my hoohaw?

Not really.

Now I know a lot of people love them once they start using them…I just can’t get myself past the squimish factor.

And really considering the mixed advice on flushing or throwing out toilet paper…yeah some people use them just so they don’t have nasty toilet paper stankin up the bathroom.

I dunno, I’ve been flushing mine. I’m trying to be conservative with it but…yeah the verdict on the bidet is probably going to be out for a while…

Resident Evil

Ok, this is not about Satan’s Spawn again. This actually about Resident Evil, the movie…it sucked. Moving on.

So we went out to the theaters for one of the opening showings of Resident Evil last Thursday (I guess movies tend to come out earlier here…unless it’s like Brave which is coming out months late).

So here’s a quick rundown of some positives and negatives of going to the movies here:

+ Super empty theater

- …we were the only ones laughing…it was a little akward but maybe they just didn’t translate it well…or they didn’t like the lame ass humor, whatever.

+ Cool assortment of popcorn to try. There was onion, cheddar, bbq?(maybe), and regular butter.

- Stale nachos with cold squeeze bag cheese…yum

+ Cheaper than US (unless you’re in Amherst/Hadley)

- Not exactly the best movie of all time…

So overall I never noticed the subtitles. They had cool seat riser cushions you could use during the movie if you’re short or not comfortable. Sodas ran on like the “normal” size range and at reasonable prices (at least compared to US movie theaters) so it didn’t cost a fortune and you didn’t have to run out in the middle to go the the bathroom.

And honestly I had never seen Resident Evil 1-4, I thought maybe the people that wrote the plot summaries on Wikipedia just sucked at writing…no I’m pretty sure it’s just cause the movies sucked.

The others liked it though, I dunno. It was just too much, like Watchmen. Just…too much.

Selfbar

 So it was a birthday weekend for one of the teachers who came in at the same time as me. A bunch of us went out to dinner and decided to go to a Korean BBQ place.

As a side note I'd like to point out that the birthday boy was an hour and a half late. We didn't head to dinner until 9:30...and one of the girls got kicked out of her cab on the way there because she lit up a cigarette. Now that's “ok” in some cabs, but a lot of them are starting to enforce the law. A separate related side tangent: Most of them started smoking in the restaurant and didn't get yelled at but there was a smoking area in the hallway right outside the main door...

So we go to this BBQ place, twenty of us sit down and have no idea what's going on. I guess someone figures it's all you can eat and we start grabbing plates, grabbing meat, and grilling it up at the table. There is a menu on the table that lists the dinner price, side dish price, and beer prices....

At the end of a rather awesome and super filling meal we grab the clipboard with the receipt...receipts.

There are four receipts...for just under 300,000 each. We start having a panic attack because we weren't sure if that was right and we didn't know how this worked or what....was that a different receipt for each table or....uuuhhhh oooohhhhh.

So someone goes and asks and I guess they kept adding on the receipts each time they ordered more beer. It was 15,000 per person for twenty people, all you could eat, with like 18 or so beers (if they didn't clear any). And these weren't 20oz beers, these were like a liter. Not a bad deal. So that's like around $14.50 a person back home. Like I said, not a bad deal.

What's funny is it would have cost WWAAAYY more than that to eat in, fresh food is crazy expensive here.

For anyone here: That is in Busan at Deokcheon (brown line), take exit 9 then your first right. Walk past the intersection with McDonalds and take a right at the next one. It's up the road about a block on your right, second floor. Yum yums!

On a side note, if you go right at the McDonalds, like one or two doors down is Blue Ketchup. I've heard they're awesome rave-like bars (glowsticks and club music for half the night)...personally I skipped out before they went because that's just not my thing but everyone loves it, worth checking out.

Satan's Spawn

Like all teachers, I have a hell class. Class 1-12. They are…or at least half of them are, the spawn of Satan.

So there’s a problem. I think I’ve lost them. I got out of class last week and checked my schedule to seen when I had missed them…and I hadn’t. I had just gotten out of their class. Strange.

BUT I gained some insight.

I decided I wanted them to get used to talking to me so I was going around table to table and talking to every single girl so they HOPEFULLY wouldn’t be as scared the next time. I listed the questions on the board and they were things they should have been learning since like elementary school like “what’s your favorite ____?” or “what do you hate?”

Well I got PLENTY of “I hate teacher“‘s…and I’d feign hurt and drop my head and pretend to sniffle a little…and they’d go OH!! NONONO! and then point to the back and say “teacher, I hate teacher.” As in one of my coteachers. Funny, I have problems with him too.

So I know partially why they are horrible little shits, but not why they decided it was suddenly time to behave, but hey, I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Heads up to pilots

Ok, so I sometimes notice….random and inconsequential things…this is one of those things.

I don’t know why I didn’t notice it in my first apartment, but I noticed it like right away here…There are no blinky lights on the buildings.

You know, those red “don’t fly here, there’s a building!” lights? Yeah, none.

Well not NONE, they are up in the mountains on the radio and cell phone towers.

But yeah, none on the buildings…and oddly my first though was “I wonder how big they’d build Cinderella’s castle here?”

Just a strange and random fact…