the (curtain) ban has been lifted! / skirmish in the streets

this one's for you, drewry. ask and ye shall receive.

part one: the (curtain) ban has been lifted!

That's right, folks, the rumors are true: I've found a shower curtain. I know you were all terribly concerned about this matter, so please allow me to elaborate...

This no shower curtain business has sucked the very life out of my mornings. I thought I could adapt, immerse myself in the culture, but I tell you I just didn't have it in me when it came to a watery bathroom floor. First of all, the water gets everywhere and makes the bathroom prematurely dirty and rife with soap-scummery. I'd have to clean the bathroom once a week (and my parents already know that I find this to be excessive) to keep up with it. Furthermore, if I ever want to enter the bathroom post-shower, I have to do so at the risk of getting my feet/socks/shoes wet and draggging dirty water all over the apartment, thus dirtying the whole floor. It's been menacing my life since I arrived.

Over the weekend, I heard that shower curtains do, in fact, exist in this country. Not only that, but they exist in Kim's Mart (the supermarket next door that I frequent). Apparently, they're just not widely used. One of the teachers from another school told me as much, and he's Korean-American, so I knew he knew what was what.

Tonight, I scoured the mart. Stores categorize their items strangely here, plus I'm illiterate. Add to this the fact that the store housed one shower curtain rod and one shower curtain (in separate sections... strangely), and you can imagine the ordeal that I went through. It took me about 20 mintes to find the rod, and 20 more to find the curtain. But I emerged victorious. I had never imagined the sheer unbridled joy that a rubber-ducky speckled curtain and a spring-loaded rod could bring me.

When I got to the register, the checkout lady chuckled a bit at my purchases. It was a knowing chuckle that said, "Oh, those silly foreigners and their silly shower curtains." Then again, for all I know, she may have said it out loud. I smiled and nodded, for I have no idea what's going on. Turns out she speaks decent English, because she then asked me what school I worked for, and we chatted about a couple of the other teachers there that she knows. It was grand, but not nearly as grand as tomorrow morning's going to be.


part deux: skirmish in the streets

Last night, when I got out of work, I witnessed the first of what I hope will be many altercations between Korean citizens and Korean police. I learned something about the Korean po-dippers last night: They will take more shit than American Jakes would ever, ever tolerate.

I have no idea what this scuffle was about. All I know is that when I came out of Ivy school, there were about 5 cop cars with lights all alight, and about 30 rubberneckers watching the scene unfold. There was a woman and a man who appeared to be the key players. Both of them were screaming something and fighting the fuzz. The woman was being contained by one cop, and the man was scuffling with about 5 cops. These two were fighting the cops, and the cops were kind of just fighting back. No tasers, no nightsticks, just a lot of pushing and shoving, back and forth, for about 15 minutes. The cops would grab the agitators, the agitators would push the cops off of them, and so on and so on. It was ridiculous. After said 15 minutes, my coworkers and I realized that things weren't going to escalate anymore and that this dance would continue indefinitely, so we left.

On the walk home, and later last night, I learned from the more experienced teachers that this is generally the way of police behavior in Korea (although they certainly wouldn't be so forgiving to a foreigner such as myself). I suppose that within the context of the culture, it makes perfect sense. In America, a cop has to know that if he doesn't contain the situation, someone's likely to get shivved or capped. Not so in Korea. Apparently, most "fights" in these parts consist of a whole lot of yelling and collar-of-the-shirt-grabbing. Haha. Also, as I told my worrying mom on the phone this morning, 5-year old girls walk the streets alone at night. It's a pretty safe place. I wonder if the cops even carry pepper spray.

Moral of the stories: buying a shower curtain and witnessing a police brawl are equally exciting in Korea.


Peace and prosperity to all!
Kelly-Teacher

PS. For those who care, apparently we are actually 14 hours ahead now, not 13. This is due to the fact that you guys set your clocks back a couple of weeks ago, and apparently we don't here. Who knew?