Public Announcements

There are lots of public announcements in South Korea. Some of them take the form we are used to, like signs above highways letting drivers know traffic conditions. But even these are slightly different because they also tell you the day's air quality. Bad air quality is a huge problem here and anything past level orange you really aren't supposed to go out unless you have to. So every time you get on the highway you are informed about what the current levels of ozone and PM2.5 are.

We also get regular public safety announcements on our mobile phones. Since we've been here we've had warnings about high temperatures, low temperatures, excessively bad air, public safety officials hunting wild boar (there was a bad swine flu epidemic in the early fall), and today we got a warning about the corona virus going around Asia. That announcement was a bit entertaining because we were warned to do the usual things, like frequent hand washing, but also to mind our "coughing manners" and to wear face masks.

All of the above announcements are always in Korean, but with translation apps and context we can usually figure out what the announcements are about. The one kind of announcement we still can't figure out is the loudspeaker announcements. These come about once a week, but not on a regular schedule. We can clearly hear the announcements even from inside our (concrete) house. We've asked neighbors what's being announced, but we haven't gotten clear answers—even from the Korean-speaking neighbors. The best answer we've gotten is that it is "community matters." I guess it might be things similar to the text messages we get, but Korea is a pretty high-tech society and mobile phones are ubiquitous. Also, the loudspeaker announcements are much longer than would be needed to communicate all the other kinds of messages. It's just one more mystery for the foreigners!

Food Delivery

Just after Christmas an amazing thing happened: we can now get food delivery! We were told that you can get anything delivered in Korea, but it so happened we moved to the one area where that was not true. Since we're in the middle of farm country, and on the particularly unpopulated side of the army base, we have not been able to get food delivery. I suppose that there's enough new neighborhoods now on this side of the base that the delivery services added our area on. So we've been exploring all the new options. I've been particularly impressed with the packing of the food. Here are some examples:

Thai: Each container had a kind of plastic sticker lid that you peeled off.

Indian: Naan (folded into the shape of the bag it came in), biryani and raita, plus two curries. Interestingly, no rice on the side!

Turkish: For some reason there are about five Turkish restaurants all just off base. And they're all amazing! We got nicely organized kebab platters with a couple of sides.

Pizza! With our very own disposable pizza bag to keep it warm. The pizza wasn't amazing, but it also didn't have any of the unusual toppings Koreans tend to put on pizza. The oddest we've seen is shrimp, potato, and corn. I think you can also get squid pizza!

Vietnamese: In the center is a bag (bag?) of broth set into a plastic bowl. To the left and right are noodles, meat, and vegetables to add to the broth. The ones on the right are also bags (again, bags?!)

We've been thoroughly enjoying the luxury of food delivery. Too bad it didn't happen before I came down with pneumonia!

Totally-Not-Target

China is famous for ripping off American (and presumably other countries's) brands. However, it seems Koreans do it a bit too. My Korean tutor has been showing me around town after my lessons, and this week she took me to a "store that sells everything." Here it is:

The name of the store is Taiso. And they do, indeed, sell a bit of everything. Unlike Target, however, the only food they have is snack food. Otherwise, it's almost exactly the same thing as our version of a 'stuff store'. 

One interesting thing I found out was about food storage containers. In Korea, you can almost only get glass ones, not plastic. I asked why and my tutor said it's because Korean food is so strong you can't wash the oils and flavors off of plastic. I was glad to hear her say that because I find Korean food to be quite... pungent. I'm not really a fan yet.

What Does 'Clean' Really Mean?

We have a housekeeper that comes once every other week to help out with some of the heavier housework. She is originally from the Philippines but has worked in different places around the world. So far she's mentioned working in Saudi Arabia and in Germany, where she met her husband, an American contractor who now works here in South Korea. She cleans houses here to help pay for her mother's dialysis treatments back in the Philippines. Her English is near-fluent, so we have all sorts of interesting conversations while she's here at the house.

Yesterday she told me something I had never heard before: the general consensus among Asians is that Americans are pretty dirty. She, (she was quick to assure me) being married to an American and having lived outside of Asia most of her adult life, doesn't necessarily agree, but that's what other Asians tend to think. She was worried that I would feel insulted by that, but I didn't. Every culture has opinions on every other culture they know about and human beings can't help make comparisons with each other. Europeans for example, tend to think Americans are far too concerned with cleanliness. However, that idea did get me thinking.

One reason Asians might think Americans are not clean enough is that we tend to wear our shoes inside our houses, at least in many areas of the country. Certainly movies and TV shows reflect this habit. Most people in Asian countries really don't understand this habit and are super strict about no shoes in the house. You take your shoes off at the door and the houses I have been in have designated areas for shoes and plenty of spare slippers on hand for visitors to wear. Asians also generally sweep and mop their floors on an almost daily basis. Based just on this criterion, Americans are not as clean as Asians.

However, the circumstances behind this difference in habits also makes a huge difference. South Korea is considered to be a developed and wealthy country, but outside of the bigger cities it is still appears to be well within the 'developing country' category. The roads are narrow, roughly paved, sometimes not at all, and good sidewalks are rare. There is good trash pick-up and littering isn't a huge problem, but in some places the trash will pile up on the sidewalks or on the side of the road for a day or two. There are also plenty of stray dogs and cats (and probably other small animals) roaming around. And what is true of South Korea is even more so true of most other Asian countries. All this to say, your shoes will get a bit dirtier in Asia then than they will in most places in the U.S. This makes the shoe-and-floor criterion of cleanliness quite reasonable here.

On the other hand, as far as I can tell, this is the primary criterion of cleanliness around here. In person and on expat forums we hear complaints about Koreans not washing hands after the toilet, not using tissues on their noses, and spitting in the street. This is by no means true of all Koreans, but it is wide-spread enough to be noticeable.

Additionally, directly after this conversation with my housekeeper she offered to show me how to make chicken Adobo, a well-known Filipino dish. The first step was, I learned, to wash the chicken under running water. I had just washed a load of dishes, which was sitting in one side of the sink. As she washed the chicken, all of the clean dishes got sprayed thoroughly with chicken-water. Then the spoon she used to taste the sauce got dipped directly into my container of sugar. I rolled my eyes a bit internally and re-washed the dishes after she left. I'll probably let the sugar problem go since it will get heated one way or another before we consume it anyway.

So, really, what does 'clean' mean?