In the pouring rain, very strange... ♫

It rained here today, for the first time since I came.  Rain really is miserable stuff.  Overall, I definitely don't miss it.  But something about the rain falling outside as we sat in a warm apartment eating pancakes and listening to Jack Johnson... and hearing it outside when I woke up this morning... it really felt like home. ♥  The weather yesterday was very homey too, because it was so mild and springy out and just felt normal in terms of temperature... as we were walking around the city I kept getting this weird feeling that I was in Vancouver.  We also spent a lot of time at a park near Seohyeon station yesterday afternoon and it was just so nice to be outside in nature for a change and not be freezing cold either.  The cab driver who drove us from the subway to the park was very friendly.  He asked us a lot of questions about where we were from and why we came etc. (Katelyn spoke to him in Korean) and then he sang "ABC" for us in English... fitting the letters to the tune in a very different way than we do, but he got them all in!  Haha.

"Ooh I think I've broken something!" (Humongous carrots)

The carrots in this country are massive.  I mean seriously, check out these photos of an average Korean carrot - with a Lord of the Rings carrot alongside for scale:

Does that or does that not look like something Merry and Pippin would have come away with after having "been into Farmer Maggot's crops"?  That or Giant Despair's "grievous cudgel"... either way, I'd say it definitely falls under the "oversized" heading.

Also in produce... I saw apples selling for 2,000 won each the other day (almost 2 bucks.)  A cantaloupe goes for 14,000!

Subway Staredowns

It's interesting being part of a visible minority - I get stared at pretty much every day.  By older people for the most part - I guess they must be less accustomed to seeing foreigners about.  I take the subway to work every day and evidently I'm somewhat conspicuous, because I seriously catch someone gaping at me every time.  I usually don't get a seat and so I often end up standing right in front of the people who are sitting so that I can hang onto one of the hand grips that hang above them.  The other day I was standing there minding my own business and I glanced down to discover this elderly Korean man staring straight up at me.  I met his piercing gaze with a frank one of my own and he continued to stare unabashedly.  So I just stood there and tried to act naturally for the duration of the ride despite having this gimlet-eyed stranger a mere two feet in front of me.  Quite amusing, and just a little disconcerting. :) 

"The good garbage? How do you distinguish that from... the bad garbage?"

"Are you a garbage man?"
"Nah... but I hope to be one one day..."
- Family Ties

Garbage here is a pain in the proverbial butt... or, if you take a less selfish point of view, very sensible and efficient at cutting down on waste. :)  EVERYTHING has to be recycled and ALL and ONLY food garbage has to be disposed of in its own bin.  To make sure you actually do this, the rest of your garbage can only be thrown away in special pink bags that cost more than a normal garbage bag, so that you do your best not to fill them up fast.  So once you've filled up five separate containers of different kinds of garbage in your apartment... you get together with your roommate to cart all the stuff downstairs and outside where you freeze your fingers off in the numbingly cold weather, sorting everything into the correct bins... of which there are like 70... it's quite confusing trying to figure out where different types of plastic or paper go, and a little Korean man comes and attempts to communicate to you that you're putting stuff in the wrong place or else just follows you around taking out things you put in and moving them... haha.  I've heard he sometimes yells, but have yet to experience that.  (I complimented him once on something he was wearing, and he said "ya, I found it in the garbage - picked it up on my rounds."  Just kidding.  He doesn't speak English, and I don't think he's an environmental artist either.)  The food garbage is very smelly and gross and you have to make sure there's no plastic or anything mixed in with the food.  (So, for example, if you had a container or bag of expired food, you couldn't just toss the whole container.)  I must admit, it's a very good system for making people actually think about what they throw away. :)