- 1. High heels are ideal footweal for any location. Caves? Mountains? They have the stability of mountain goats, and I'm clearly a wuss.
- 1.5 Small feet + high open-toed heels = Elf Feet. Naturally, Korean have smaller feet than Westerners, which is to be expected considering their natural smaller bodies. The current shoe style style for women right now, are these wickedly high, thick strapped, open-toed heels. What Korean women don't realize, is that the combination of tiny feet (made tinier by the shoes) and the tiny high-heeled shoes, give off the impression that the woman is top-heavy. Not sexy ladies!
- 2. Knocking on the bathroom stall door before entering is remarkably clever and helpful. How many of us have sat in a bathroom stall where the door won't properly close? And end up using one hand to keep the door closed and the other hand awkwardly using the toilet paper? In Korea you don't have to worry about that, because before any Korean enters a bathroom stall they usually knock! Although me figuring out why they were always knocking, took awhile.
- 3. Being too cheap to pay for hot water results in no one washing their hands and a great market for hand sanitizer! Heat is expensive in Jeju, so most restaurants don't bother to have hot water run through the restaurant bathroom. So from what I've seen, usually Korean women are NOT washing their hands. This, for me, led to some confusion, as Koreans insist you wear a mask when you're sick, and yet don't seem too fazed by the lack of hand washing.
- 3.5 Please stop putting cloth towels in public washrooms! Ew!
- 4. Throwing paper advertisements onto the streets is not littering, it's a legitimate form of advertising!
- 5. A big thank you to Jeju society for not making me worry about being robbed! For once in my life I've actually been carrying cash in my wallet, something I would never EVER do in Canada. Due to Jeju history, no one really steals out here. Despite there being tables of items out on the streets and no one really looking, no one really takes anything!
- 6. Another big thanks! If you forget something at a restaurant, the workers will actually run out of the store and chase you down to return it. I know that if I ever lost my wallet here, not only would it be returned, but the money would be there as well.
- 7. LEDs on your scooter is not sexy! I'm sorry, but outfitting your tiny weiner scooter with a blue glowing light underneath it, is incredibly lame.
- 7.5 Having 3 guys on one motorbike with no helmets is not only dangerous, but also slightly homo-erotic. I know many Koreans don't even recognize the possibility for people to be gay, but come on.... this is up the same alley as the drunk men whose hands fall a little too close to their friend's bum!
I will add up more as I remember these small differences between my home and Korea, but for now enjoy these awesome bits of 'facts' that I've noticed during my stay here!
My friend and I did the same tradition as the last festival, which is writing down our wishes for the new year on a piece of paper, and hanging up it up on some rope. Except at this festival, my wish was burned up with the rest of the haystack it was attached to.
One other thing they did have was kite flying! Now that may sound a little dull, but they had the the largest kites I have ever seen! Not to mention a giant flying Spongebob! And if that wasn't incredible (or random) enough, they later on had kites with flashing LED lights!
