11 things about my day that might surprise you

 

1) Before leaving for school this morning, I turned off my heated floors. (Instead of heating air Koreans heat the floors which in turn heat the air.)

2) I filled up my water bottle with water that I had boiled last night in my electric teapot, which is one of my favorite appliances of all time now. (I boil my own drinking water because I've been told that the tap water isn't very safe here.)

3) Then I boiled more water and filled up my travel mug to take to school. At school I added an instant coffee packet (which includes creamer and sugar, of course, Koreans like sweet coffee) and voila, coffee. (The adjustment to instant sweet coffee wasn't easy, but it was necessary. Now I enjoy it.)

 

4) For breakfast I had my usual: a roll filled with red bean paste. It's sooo good!

 

5) When I arrived at school, I changed into "school slippers" (we would call them sandals) in the front hallway, and put my shoes in a shoe cabinet cubby hole. (Don't worry, I won't wear sandals with socks in the States.)

6) To get into the English classroom where my mentor teacher and I spend our days, I used a funny-looking key to unlock the padlock on the sliding wood doors and removed the nail from a hole that keeps the doors locked in place. (I personally have never seen such a locking contraption before.)

7) I bowed my head a little and said "anyeonghaseyo" to every adult I saw in the hallways or cafeteria to be respectful and polite.

8) Right before lunch I washed my hands at two huge metal sinks in the hallway outside the cafeteria like all the other teachers and students.

 

 

 

9) I lined up with other teachers and students in the one lunch line in which we took chopsticks and a spoon (there are short chopsticks and small spoons for the littlest kids) and were served lunch by four nice cafeteria ladies (the first serves us rice, the second serves us veggies and meat/fish, the third serves us soup, and the fourth serves us kimchi). Students and teachers eat together at the same tables, but today it was only me and my mentor teacher at the table. (Important to note- friends sit across from each other in Korea, not next to each other. The first day of school I sat next to my mentor teacher and she moved.) There is no drink with lunch, but after we've cleaned up our plates (i.e. moved all leftover food into our soup bowls and dumped that into a trashcan, stacked our trays and bowls, and placed our silverware in a tub of water) we drink a small cup of hot barley tea.

10) This is just a cute (or tacky, depending on your taste) keychain, right? Wrong. It's my bus pass! I put money on it at a convenience store, and I used it this afternoon on the two buses I took home from school. I have a one hour commute in the afternoon.

11) On my walk home from the bus stop, I ran across this old woman drying things on the sidewalk and (possibly) threshing this plant. Every week she has something new drying on this stretch of the sidewalk, but this was the first time I actually saw her.

And that seems like a good way to end my short account of a day in Korea- I can't imagine that happening in the American cities I've lived in!