Squatter

Today as I was utilizing the facilities in Korea I realized that I haven't talked much about the bathroom situation here. Some bathrooms are fully equipped with a toliet, toliet paper and the like. Some are not. First of all I should let you know that with the wierd building setup comes a weird bathroom setup. Like I said before bulidings aren't just one business. There are many businesses in one building. With that comes the bathrooms, which are shared by all the different businesses. So in the hallway that has many businesses is usually a bathroom that those businesses share, sometimes one bathroom on each floor, sometimes not. With that comes dirty bathrooms with squatters and frequently no toliet paper and by that I don't mean they are out of toliet paper, it isn't offered. Everyone carries toliet paper with them...Here is a picture of such a bathroom. This is a cleaner facility but I have seen much, much worse. Not hard to use or anything like that but it is different and I have become accustomed to it. Also, today I was taking the subway home and on the way I did some shopping. I don't know if I have mentioned it before but the subway stations here have stores inside. A wide range of goods are available underground. Some stations are like a mall and some have no shops. It is dependant on the number of people that use the station and how old it is. Stations that house 2 different subway lines are most likely to have many shops. Anyway, so I was shopping. The lady that owned the clothing store came up to me and started touching my hair. She was saying "beautiful, beautiful". Then she put her hand on my stomach and I think called me skinny...I can't imagine that because I am not as skinny as most Koreans...But I also don't think she was calling me fat, so I have no idea. The point is that she just came up to me and felt like she could put her hands all over me. I didn't really mind just thought it was amusing.



So my last day of the conference is finally over. Today we were supposed to have two classes, an hour for lunch, then presentations of a model class. When I got back from lunch there was only two other teachers there. So the three of us gave presentations and then went home. The professors that were leading the presentation class really liked my ideas and said that I had some good ideas. The others did well also. Between the three of us I got some really good ideas and got to go home early. Painless and finally OVER!!!

Weird food of the day: dog. Yes, I ate it and everyone said it would taste like chicken. I personally think it is a little more like deer. It is darkish in color and very tender. We had to take some Korean teachers with us to order it because they don't want to serve it to foreigners because they know we won't eat dog in the west. Many of our teachers won't eat dog, in fact the Koreans that took us all ordered chicken. It isn't that common to eat dog anymore. It is hard to know the exact feelings of the Koreans, it is a traditional thing from the past but is becoming less common.

My dog food...The gang: (Left front around to right front) Karen, Jody, Kelly, Hannah, IikYeong(sorry about the spelling), Amanda, Tammy, Matt, Lydia, Gene