The Tortoise and the Hare

Korea is the tortoise. I am the hare. After I arrived I was repeatedly told that Korean's are never on time, nor do they ever do things when they say they will. This is fine, I don't mind waiting a few extra minutes for the bus or the answer to an important question...but I do mind when you tell me I will be getting my apartment furntiture on Monday and it doesn't arrive until Wednesday.There is a big difference between sleeping on the floor until Sunday night and sleeping on the floor until Tuesday night. I guess it is something I must become accustomed to seeing as I will be here for a year. All whining aside, I did receive my furniture (pictures to come) and I finally have a bed to rest my weary body upon. For anyone that doesn't know, I highly enjoy the fine art of home decoration and design. I moved everything around to where I like it, and it felt really good to play house after not having a place of my own since July. The movers thought it was perfectly acceptable to put my bed in the kitchen and my refridgerator between my bathroom and my armoire, and with enough HGTV viewing hours to get a pilots license, I knew better.

I feel I must devote some time to the Korean public bus system. It has been interesting getting to know my main mode of transportation for the next year. Were you aware that someone, in their infinite wisdom, thought that making busses manual instead of automatic was a great idea? And worse yet, that Korea would say yes, let's spend billions of Won buying as many of these stick shift busses as we can? Yes Ladies and Gentleman, this has happened, and I must say that I never got car sick before having to ride on these dreadful contraptions. And heaven forbid you get stuck standing on one of them. I was standing the other day and thought I was going to fly out the front window. There are a select few chairs that have yellow seat covers on them. This means that if the bus is full and an old person or pregnant lady get on, and you are sitting in a yellow chair, you must give it up to said old/pregnant person. I fully believe that this has nothing to do with respect or values, and more to do with the fact that old/pregnant people have a higher likelihood of falling over, so the Public Bus President made this a rule for legality purposes.