Field Notes II

• All the women wear high heels everywhere. And I do mean everywhere: on the subways, to the park, to the beach, up the mountain......

• My hair is all the rage. Actually, my hair and my eyes, but particularly the hair. It's long, it's blond, and it's soft. The kids will run their hands through it, try to braid it, mount it on top of my head in a big mess, take fistfuls. I was sitting at a restaurant a couple weekends back when the hand of a grown woman came at me from the side just to stroke my locks.
  

• Right behind my hair, pencil cases are also the rage. It's all about how cool your pencil case is. They're decorated with everything from cartoons to pop stars to princesses to race cars to candy to random English phrases. Some of them have built-in pencil cases, dry erase boards, stamps, electronic games.
  

• There are no copyright laws in Korea, which is why all the music sounds the same. And why you can buy things with Gucci, Dior, Armani, and Prada stamped on it for a 1/4 of the normal price.

• Public peeing is not uncommon, especially since there aren't many trees in the city. I've seen kids relieve themselves in the street; taxi drivers pull over when nature calls and use the nearest sidewalk. The other day Amy and I were sitting at the local convenient store when a guy walked up right beside us and took a leak right there. Though it wasn't very pleasant, I was laughing so hard I had to walk away.

• There are a lot of words that are the same in Korean and English such as lemon, mango, chocolate, massage, bus, cellphone. Most kids don't realize this and with surprise when they first hear you use one. The other day I said "tomato" and one of my students gave me a thumbs and a "good job" because he was convinced I was speaking Korean.
  

• McDonald's delivers.
  

• When we go on field trips, the parents send enough food for their kids AND us teachers, which is awesome.

• They have started putting up glass doors along the subway station tracks. Korea is the world leader in annual suicides and the most common means to end one's life is to throw themselves in front of the subway.

• I go jogging in the park now that the weather is nice; bright and early - 6:30am, and get more "hellos" and high fives then you think would be available at that hour. 3x's a week there is an aerobic group that conducts under the bridge and I am very inclined to join them.
  

• I spotted this house on a hiking trip a couple weeks ago and was aching to go inside and check the layout. It's like a tunnel!
  

•