It's the little things that make the difference

Some of the little things that are by now commonplace to me, but may seem interesting to an outside observer.

In Korea we don't have V8 vegetable juice drink. We have V19!

You don't pay a monthly fee for trash collection. You pay by the bag, having to buy special orange trash bags at the store. From the perspective of economic theory this type of use based taxation is more efficient and leads to less excess household waste disposal costs.

The literal translation of the formal greeting and goodbye in Korean is "Are you at peace?" and "Remain peaceful" respectively.

The home heating comes through hot pipes beneath the floor rather than a radiator. This decentralized heating makes the room seem cozier, and nicer for the obligatory shoeless foot.

On a related note, it makes the traditional eating posture of sitting crosslegged on the floor more comfortable. Actually this practice seems to be paying off - before when cold I could just barely touch my toes, and when warmed up get a knuckle or two on the ground. After just a few months here I can almost touch my palms to the floor.

TV - USA wins this battle overall, but I do have about 50 channels of cable including CNN, and a channel that shows some English movies as well as CSI. The sports channels show a lot of soccer, golf, and baseball. They show Korean league basketball, but very little NBA which is too bad because the Korean league is about 1/2 step beneath college ball. Some sports that don't get much press time in America but are common to see over here include billiards (we're talking no pockets, 3 balls), indoors volleyball, table tennis, and baduk - there is actually a dedicated baduk (go) channel. The other channels of regular Korean programming are hard for me to watch, but I will have to try when Korean progresses to the point that I can understand a little of it. They have two kinds of shows - crappy reality / game show, and drama which might not be bad but I don't know enough yet to judge.

Intercity transportation is cheap. A 1 hr train ride to the local city Jinju is about $2. A Taxi can get you anywhere in the city for less than $4. All the way to Seoul, at the opposite corner of the country, is about $30 (and 5 hrs) by train.

More to come ..