Monday, March 8, 2010

Is My Cup Really Half Full?

The longer I stay here the more, I'm driven absolutely insane by all of the funny customs in Korea. One of them that gets me the most is the lack of hydration. For a culture that is extremely healthy it makes no sense to me why they really don't like to drink water. Having to go an entire meal without getting a drink of...anything is a new experience to me; God-forbid the food is spicy or has a displeasing taste! But nevertheless, after lunch everyone heads over to the water dispensers and grabs these teeny-tiny cups and gets literally a swish of water and leaves. Why? Most of the time the teachers I eat lunch with skip water all together. In my head I am saying, "do you guys ever get thirsty, or am the only one that's dying of thirst and wants to wash out my mouth because my breath is kicking after eating that kimchi?" I asked my co-teachers about this, and most of them respond in bewilderment or simply can't understand why that it is so strange to me.

Yesterday after lunch I even offered to make my co-teacher coffee, since she always makes it for me and I wanted to test out my non-drinking theory. So I put in the packet of coffee and cream and filled the cup and handed it to Ms. Che. She looked at me as if she felt both sorry and ashamed to tell me that I've added too much water, thus making her coffee undrinkable. So she dumped out the coffee and filled it to where it barely reached one fourth of the cup. Again, why? Another example, this morning I had some delicious orange tea but I took two sips of it and it was gone! Talk about cottonmouth!

It's things like that that make me laugh throughout the day. It's laughter my body needs especially "these days" which is one of the many random English phrases Koreans love to use. My days at work have gotten very mundane and counterproductive due to my lack of teaching. I think I officially go into the classroom tomorrow, but in Korea you never know until two minutes before your class starts. I'm dying to go in and teach; I've gone a little insane sitting at my desk everyday from 8:30-4:30pm. I always used to laugh at those people who "have no lives", and have so much spare time they comment under every picture and reply to every email within 5 minutes....well I've definitely become that person. From January to March I've had so much spare time to the point where I don't even want it anymore. And to top it all off it was lightly snowing when I walked outside this morning. Anyone that knows me knows the two things that put me in the worst possible mood: hunger and cold weather. This morning I had both, well tomorrow is a new day.


1 comment:

  1. You've got a cool blog and I love water! There's 5 water bottles all over my room! (of which I am very grateful for!)

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