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!

A Few More Cultural Differences From The Wedding

So I realized there were a few more things I noticed during the wedding last weekend that struck me as surprising cultural differences (or perhaps just different from what I've seen in the States). At weddings I've been to in the US, the large majority of women wear skirts or dresses, but at this wedding most women wore dress pants and blazers. Some women in their twenties wore short skirts or dresses, and the older female relatives of the bride and groom wore traditional Korean clothes called hanbok (interestingly, the male relatives all wore Western-style suits), but dress pants were definitely the norm:

I also thought it was interesting that besides toddlers (whose parents dressed them up in fancy skirts or little sweater-vests) all the kids at the wedding wore jeans and sweatshirts:

Another thing that was unexpected was that I was given a pretty ticket that allowed me to enter the luncheon hall and eat lunch. Maybe that's because anyone can attend the wedding ceremony but there's only enough food for a set number of people? 

And the last thing from the wedding that I wanted to share, that was wildly different from what I've seen in the States, was after the bride and groom were married by the officiant, their friends put on performances for them. One friend sang a song for them with music playing in the background, and then six of their friends (three guys and three girls) did a two-minute-long choreographed dance for them which was pretty hilarious. I tried to upload it but the file was too big so hopefully I'll find another way.

I got another surprise today, more than a week after the wedding! After school the teacher whose wedding it was came up and handed me a little incense canoe from her week-long honeymoon in Phuket! (It's really popular for South Koreans to go to Southeast Asia or Europe on their honeymoon.) She thanked me for coming to her wedding, but I felt like I should be thanking her! My mentor teacher told me it was common for people to bring friends and family souvenirs from their honeymoon, which struck me as so nice for all the guests but probably a lot of work/money for the newlyweds. I'm quite pleased with my little gift from Thailand though:

A Korean Wedding

My first post! Very exciting. Also exciting is the fact that on Saturday I had a cultural experience worthy of my first post- I attended a Korean wedding! I love weddings (I'm a romantic) and I've always wanted to go to a wedding outside the US since a wedding is one of those life ceremonies that is important in (almost?) every culture, so I was thrilled when my mentor teacher asked me on Friday if I wanted to go with all the teachers/administration/staff at my school (a grand total of 16 people) to the first grade teacher's wedding on Saturday. Two things may strike you as odd about that invitation- 1) I was invited to the first grade teacher's wedding by someone other than the first grade teacher, and 2) I was invited 1 day before the wedding. I think that in Korea it might be okay for anyone to attend the actual wedding ceremony, and being invited to things at the last minute is very common here- but I'll save the subject of spontaneity for another post. So less than 24 hours after being invited, I put on the one nice dress I have here and carpooled with the kindergarten teacher and my mentor teacher to the city where the wedding hall was. The wedding ceremony didn't seem to have any religious aspects, so I'm not sure if Korean Christians also get married in wedding halls or in churches, but I've seen a lot of wedding halls in Korea so I was excited to see the inside of one.

We walked up to the second floor where we posed with the flower arrangement that our school sent and admired the beautiful professional wedding photos that were on display:

L-R: Me, my mentor teacher, the kindergarten teacher, and another nice teacher

I was surprised to see the bride several times before the wedding started! Right before the ceremony she came out in her wedding dress and a tiara and went into the bride's room where she took photos with the groom's parents and her mother:

Doesn't the bride look beautiful?

The wedding was held in this room, which only had 80 chairs, but about 50 people stood in the back of the room and in the hall to watch the wedding (and have side conversations- there was no hushed silence like at the American weddings I've been to):

The aisle was unique: raised and see-through with artificial flowers inside:

The front of the room was really brightly lit with electric candles (and a blue candle on the left for the groom and a red candle on the right for the bride):

The ceremony started with both mothers walking down the aisle, lighting their children's candles, bowing to each other, bowing to us, and sitting down in special chairs up front:

I was surprised by what happened next: the bride and groom walked down the aisle together, bowed to the officiant, and bowed to each other:

After that the officiant spoke some Korean that I didn't understand, and the groom said the equivalent of "I do" in a way reminiscent of a soldier saying "Yes sir," and then without saying vows, exchanging rings, or kissing, the groom and bride became husband and wife. The first thing they did as a married couple was to bow to the bride's mother, the groom's parents, and to us. After the groom bowed his head to us, he actually got down on his knees and bowed to us!

Next the couple blew out the candles on their wedding cake (which we didn't eat later- though I left right after the wedding luncheon so maybe they do eat it at some point).

Then the couple walked down the aisle together and two fake trumpets sprayed metallic streamers on them as they walked:

I guess that was the end of the wedding ceremony because some people got up and left. The bride and groom, however, turned and walked back up the aisle where they posed for professional pictures with family and then friends.

As we walked out of the wedding hall I saw men opening the wedding gifts (envelopes with money inside) and writing down who had given what amount in two books, one for the bride and one for the groom.

The teachers from my school and I walked next door to a big building where the casual luncheon was held. I was surprised that the bride and groom were nowhere to be seen; people just wander in, sit down with the people they came with, and enjoy a Korean meal of kalbi tang (beef rib soup) and of course rice and a thousand little side dishes:

I had fun at lunch sitting across from Yuju, the daughter of one of the teachers. And before we left I picked her up and she kept wanting me to pick her up again =)

It was so cool to experience a wedding that was similar to American weddings in some aspects (wedding dress, mothers lighting their children's candles, etc.) and yet quite different in a lot of ways (no bridesmaids or groomsmen, no vows, no rings, no receiving line, no reception in which the bride and groom are the guests of honor, no cake-eating, no dancing). Cool to see and really fun to get to be a part of! Congrats to the happy couple!