Ding Dong!

I would like to reiterate my apologies for not keeping up, hopefully this the first in a chain of new posts...let's just keep it simple this time around.


So this woman just ran my door bell and looked super embarrassed when I opened the door, I figure there could be three reasons...
1. Ringing some random person's doorbell after 10 at night.
2. I got them big scary round eyes.
3. My naughty tank top that shows my shoulders and my chest.

I kinda hope it's number three but that's mostly because I'm still up and doing stuff and I'm sick of getting stared at.

In case I haven't mentioned this before shoulders are a bit of a no-no here.  The president (yes the new female one just voted into office) signed a law very early in her term to impose a fine on women who are too scantily dressed.  It was pretty loosely worded so shoulders (which are improper to show here) and super super short shorts (which everyone wears) could both be included.  Basically anything that makes someone else "uncomfortable" can get you fined about $45.

Hurray for progress, way to vote in the only non-progressive female who would ever run for office.

Now, because all I have are crappy translations in snarky "foreigner" magazines and websites I'm not sure if this applies only to females or to males too; those bedazzled ties really make me uncomfortable and they could make a fortune clearing those out of my high school alone...

Sorry the picture is pretty terrible, I just took a quick shot with my cell phone.  I wasn't planning on posting it.  But yes it's pink, flowery, and covered in rhinestones.

 

So some guy made a video showing the great variety of these ties...and it's from 2009 so this isn't just a passing fad...I don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing.  So funny yet so so awkward.  I can't get the video to embed so check out all the shiny goodness here: Bedazzled Ties

As a last note I just want to point out that shoulders are ok in the US and other western countries  but super shorts are frowned at (especially the way they're done here) but shoulders aren't ok in Korea but short shorts are almost an expectation.  It's interesting how the two norms are totally reversed.  It's kind of representative of life here in general.

iherb

Sorry I suck at keeping up with my posts :(

So I want to tell you about this fantastic site 

First, they ship super cheap to Korea.  Shipping to South Korea starts at $4 and goes up $1 for each pound over 4, this will go up to 15 pounds.  So I ordered one of those big tubs of protein powder and some vitamins and it cost $8 to ship.  It only took about 4 days to get here.  I say "about" because it's currently Wednesday and it arrived first thing this morning, and I placed the order over the weekend so I don't know exactly when it was packaged and shipped. (Check out all their international shipping options.)

Here's what was the clincher for me, I was having problems putting in my address (part was my own stupidity, part was the system) and I got an actual response.  I hate when I ask companies a question and they pick out one key word and they copy and paste the FAQ from their website.  Thanks for absolutely nothing jerks.

But no, I got a real  answer from a real person.

So what did I screw up?
1. the "-dong" and "-gu" should go on the same line and I didn't realize this, I was originally told to put them on separate lines...I think this may be solely for sites like this but I really don't know.

2. Their website is originally built for the US so I had to put "Busan" in the "state" box.

So that's it and I got my package a few days later.  Sweet.

Oh, and if you're in the US they ship for free if your order is over $40.  Here's all the US shipping info.

Now if you are actually interested in checking the site out, you could be SUPER awesome and use my referral code. This gets you $10 off your first purchase over $40 or $5 off your first purchase under $40.  If you don't use my code I'll only hate you for a little while :P Really though, you should check them out with or without the code  WGB768 

Dirty roads

Every time you go somewhere around Korea expect to find disgusting roads. People spit everywhere, sometimes drunkenly pee in the streets or have their kids squat over grates (I've seen it, promise I'm not making this stuff up) and just generally do disgusting things.

This doesn't include the trash. They have people who's job it is to ride around in the morning and toss business cards onto the side of the roads. In popular areas people hand out fliers and immediately drop them on the ground. Sometimes you'll see someone come around with a broom and one of those big dust pans to clean it up. I don't know if they're paid to do this or just hate how gross things are, but that's the way it is.

When you're walking around and you need to throw something out you either have to carry it until you get to the subway/ home or hold onto it until you find a trash pile and just drop it in top.

Today I was walking home and there was this huge puddle of blood (knowing this road someone probably got hit) and how did they take care of it? Someone literally dropped a towel over the worst of it and walked away. Yummy. So the towel sat there and got run over by cars and I wonder how long it will take to get cleaned up...if at all.

Come to think of it...there's a shop there that I don't think has been closed since I've been here. I hope it wasn't that poor old woman that owns it.

So I'm a little behind...

So more than a month after my last post (sorry!)

I'm going to have LOTS of free time coming up...three weeks of deskwarming.  Woohoo.

But that doesn't start until next week, for now I'm just going to give you this picture and the site it's from:


This is from http://koreanstudentsspeak.tumblr.com/

I thought it was really interesting to look through from "I want to dream, not study"  and "Dokdo (or east sea) is ours" to "I love K-Pop".

Until next week...