Last time I wrote about the cultures and traditions involved in eating out in Korea. This time I am going to be talking about how home life is different. In order for you to understand how different it is, I should probably explain what my homelife was like back in South Africa.

I have lived in a few houses and with a number of other people, so each experience has been different. Living with my parents involved everything being kept spick and span. Half of the house was carpeted to keep the warmth in, and you had to make sure that your shoes were clean before you were allowed to step on the carpet or fear the wrath of my mother and her screaming. The other half was tiled and the rules were a lot simpler - keep it as clean as possible, but you don't have to check your every step.

When I moved to University, I moved into residence and my style of living changed a lot. I had a small room for myself and the rest of the house was shared with seventy other girls. Our rooms were our own space and we could do what we liked with them (which in my case meant that there was always a layer of clothing covering the floor) but the rest of the house was shared and we had to book TV time. In addition, our meals were served a good five minutes walk from our house and in winter, this wasn't a walk that anyone was keen to make.

After two years of living in residence, I moved in with four of my friends into a small house. The house itself was some form of national monument and had a history - the floorboards were made from the wood of a ship from the 1800s (or something like that) and our next door neighbour enjoyed telling us stories about how the original tennant had murdered his wife in the fireplace and the house had been haunted ever since. We also enjoyed making up stories about the house, theorising about how it must have been occupied by a giant and his midget wife because of the varying doorway sizes - sometimes so tall that Richard (who is a great deal taller than me) couldn't reach the top and sometimes so short that he had to duck (literally) to walk under them. At 5'3, I never had any trouble, but I think that I was the only one in the house who never hit her head on the kitchen doorway. The kitchen itself was our pride and joy (Michael's in particular) because it was fairly large and the oven and stove meant we could cook for ourselves, something that was sorely missed in residence.

Something that was shared in my experiences in all the houses was that I never went without a maid. There was always someone coming in at least once a week to do cleaning, washing, laundry, ironing and other little jobs around the house. This meant that while I did try to keep as tidy as possible (often not very successfully) there was always someone to help out. When I tell the people that I have met here how much I miss having a maid, they look at me as though I am an absolute snob, but what you have to realise is that in South Africa, where unemployment is through the roof, you will be hardpressed to find someone who doesn't. It provides a form of regular employment for people who cannot afford to find anything better.

So, now that I have rambled a bit about my homelife in South Africa, let me tell you about my homelife in Korea. The first thing I learned when I arrived at my new apartment is that, like in the restaurants, you must take off your shoes on entering anyone's apartment. This was a huge adjustment for me to make - I am not used to walking around barefoot. It was discouraged in my parents house and it makes me feel uncomfortable walking around anyone else's house in nothing but my socks. It's not that I think their floor is dirty, it just makes my feet feel exceedingly naked.

The next thing that I learned very quickly was that Korean apartments have paper-thin walls. I learned this on the first night when I got woken up at 3am by someone arriving home and clipclopping up the stairs in their high heels, walking into their apartment and starting the water to have a shower. For the first few weeks that I stayed in Korea, I relied on sleeping pills to get a good night's rest every night. Once the pills ran out, I resorted to earplugs and then finally realised that I had gotten used to the noises and could in fact sleep on my own.

I arrived in Korea towards the end of winter, but it was still pretty damn cold. On the first night, I was woken around midnight by my landlord who arrived to turn my heat on. I thanked him profusely and went back to sleep in my toasty apartment. The next morning I woke up to have a shower and realised that the water was freezing. I couldn't figure it out. Was the geyser off? How did I switch it on? Being new and not wanting to complain, I suffered for a good two or three weeks before finally approaching my co-teacher and asking her what to do. That night she came around to my house, walked into my apartment, pressed a button on my wall and left. That was the night that I learned about the heating button and it was also the first night that I had a decent shower in the country.

The shower itself in Korea is very different from anything that I have experienced before. It basically consists of a shower-head placed above the sink in the bathroom. The whole room becomes the shower which means that pretty much everything in the room gets wet. It took me ages to get used to this, and I am still not entirely comfortable with it. I can't wait to get home and have a proper bath again.

Living in a single apartment in Korea means that everything is small. There is a small bathroom, a small main-room that doubles as a lounge and bedroom and a small room at the back for doing laundry. This also means that there is a very small kitchen and this has been the bane of my existence here. I am not a big cook and never have been, but I do like to throw something together on the odd occasion and I have had no real desire to do that here. There is no space to chop anything. There is no oven. There is only two small stove plates and a sink. My kitchen isn't even big enough to fit my fridge and microwave which live in the main room with me.

Another thing that I quickly learned about Korea is that everything must be recycled. Koreans are pretty strict about this and make sure to separate their paper, tin, bottles and food remains into different packets. I am not so good at this, and though I seriously tried in the beginning, I have since given up on the attempt - everytime I put my garbage out, my landlord would filter it anyway, so I no longer attempt to do this myself.

Anyhow, these are just some of the differences that I have been dealing with regarding my homelife in Korea. The next lesson in culture will revolve around traveling.
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