The Weird Thing About Korean Bathrooms

Or rather, things. Or rather, Alfred.

Sorry, that is a joke with an incredibly narrow scope, but I'll leave it in and see if anyone gets it. Maybe I'll give you a prize.

ANYWAYS. I figured that since I spend so much of my time thinking about bathrooms, I'd better make a post about it, in hopes that after taking the time to write about my problems, they might plague me less. Here's hoping!

1. Where the hell is the toilet paper?

Before I moved to Korea, I never realized how lucky I was to be able to assume that all bathrooms would have toilet paper. I took toilet paper for granted. It was always there, unless I forgot to buy it. It was something I could count on.

Not so in Korea! I'll be the first to admit that I've become weirdly fixated on the toilet paper situation in my school in particular, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem. For example, there are 8 stalls in the staff bathroom. Chances are, on any given day, that there will be one, maybe two stalls with toilet paper. Even better, sometimes there will be a few stalls with no toilet paper, and one stall with four rolls. It boggles the mind.

The next rung on the toilet paper crazy ladder actually makes some logical sense but still bothers me.

Perfectly illustrated here is the problem of which I speak. Instead of a toilet paper dispenser thingy in each stall, there's one big roll near the entrance to the bathroom, and you've got to take what you need and hope you chose wisely. The one thing about this that makes sense is that it's easier for the cleaning people to refill the roll, since it's only in one place. But still. Come on. I feel like it leads to wastefulness, because I see people taking EXTREME amounts of toilet paper. Maybe they're just working on their mummy costume.

But all of these situations are better than all the many, many, many bathrooms that lack toilet paper entirely. Pro-tip: never travel without a pack of tissues.

2. Where the hell is the bathroom?

Beyond taking toilet paper for granted, I've apparently been taking bathrooms for granted all this time. Now, I know that public bathrooms can be pretty hit or miss depending on where you are, but I always used to expect that cafes and restaurants would at least have a bathroom. As I've learned, that's not always the case.

At first I thought that many cafes and restaurants just...didn't have a bathroom. But that didn't make sense. Surely the workers couldn't ALL be robots? Even in Korea that seems highly unlikely. Finally, after working up the courage to actually ask someone where the bathroom was, I found out it was often outside the actual establishment, probably shared between several different places.

Finding these bathrooms can be pretty harrowing, especially if you're drunk and only partly understood the directions. Was it the first left? The second? Go up one floor? Around a corner? Have I wandered into a creepy alley where I'm going to get murdered? Oh, no, there's the bathroom. As of this post I haven't been murdered on the way to the bathroom, but if I stop posting without explanation, well..it was nice knowing you.

Also, you haven't known fear until you've had to use a squatting toilet while drunk, in a skirt, and wearing heels. Sorry if that's a TMI mental image for you but this is what life is like here. Sometimes it's scary.

3. Where the hell is the soap?

The answer? It's on a stick.

Just sort of grasp it...and move your hand up and down...yeah just like that.

I see the logic behind doing soap this way. It can't fall anywhere, and it doesn't sit somewhere getting all weird and scummy. On the other hand, I just feel really...dirty...every time I get my hand soapy with this. There's really no way to touch it that doesn't force you to realize how phallic it is. Maybe it's just me? Somehow I doubt it.

Anyways, for whatever reason these are the issues that occupy my mind these days. Anything you find weird about bathrooms? Have you ever used soap in a more awkward way? Tell me in the comments!

Hooked on a Feeling

I love beginnings. First day of the new year, first day of school, first month in a new apartment. There's this sense of possibility, this sense that now you can finally do all those things you meant to do. You can change the things you meant to change, get going in a different direction. I have a really bad habit of getting...lazy toward the end of something. If I'll be moving in a month or two, I have no motivation to organize my apartment. If the semester is about to end, I have no motivation to rearrange my classroom or find more interesting lessons. I know it's a terrible way to feel, but alas, I'm stuck in the brain I'm in.

It's nearly the end of my first week back to work, and I've already gotten more work done that in the entire couple weeks I spent deskwarming. The best thing so far, and certainly the most useful in the long term, was a massive overhaul of my lesson plans. I had them kind of...vaguely organized, by grade level or type of class, but the whole thing had become not unlike that one drawer in your kitchen where you just dump all the stuff that has nowhere else to go. It was shameful.

This isn't even my final form.

So folders. Wow. Much organize.

The only issue is that I'm not entirely used to the new system yet so I lose things from time to time, but in a week or two I'm sure I'll have worked out the kinks. I also actually put all the stuff I do into my Google calendar so maybe I can become less of a disorganized asshole but we'll see. Don't expect much.

The other big change I'm working on is actually exercising. Trying to get more healthy is something I work on from time to time, but before I came to Korea, I'd let things get quite out of hand, and my general dumpiness an unhealthiness was really bringing me down. When I first got here, the novelty of everything really jumpstarted my ability to make the changes I'd wanted to make. However, one thing led to another, and I got...comfortable. A dangerous feeling.

Anyways, I figured I could use the momentum of the new semester give my butt the kick it needed to get up and moving. I bought food that is healthy and easy to cook. I looked at that Google calendar I'd made and worked out the times when I knew I'd be able to exercise. I'm about to join a gym.

One problem I always face when I make changes like this is the feeling that I need to make a HUGE change or change a lot of things RIGHT THIS SECOND, and then when I'm not able to do it perfectly, I get discouraged and give up. I think it's related to being a perfectionist, or maybe because a lot of things were easy for me when I was younger, so I just avoided anything difficult...

The other big project I'm still working on is organizing all the notes I've taken on my classes. Every class I make a brief note about how it went, and students who were particularly good, what worked in the lesson and what didn't, that kind of thing. However, it's such a snarled mess that it's not actually very useful. My plan is to devote a notebook to these notes that I can update every week, with each class on it's own page. That way I'll be able to see how the class changes from week to week, see if there's a trend, that sort of thing. I'm not sure it'll be useful, but once I make it I'll do a full report.

Do you prefer beginnings or endings? How do you stay organized?

No Direction Home

Wow, it's been a long time. All my grand intentions to keep up on my writing while I went back home for 2 weeks evaporated under the pressures of 3 towns in 2 weeks and more family and friends to meet than seems possible. I didn't even see everyone I wanted to, and I still felt like I needed a personal assistant just to manage my social calendar.

The oddest thing about being back home for two weeks was the way it made my life in Korea seem almost...unreal. As if it was nothing more than a very vivid dream. Now, part of this was caused by how much jetlag was addling my brain, making everything a bit more confusing and strange. It was a scary feeling, though. Before I moved to Korea, my life wasn't great. I was done with Seattle, and I felt like my life was on hold, like I wasn't moving in any useful direction. I was anxious all the time, frustrated, unclear about what I was supposed to be doing with my life.

Moving to Korea marked a huge change for me, not only geographic. I have a great job, a purpose, the feeling that I'm actually moving forward with my life. I'm happier, way less anxious, and problems that used to floor me seem much more manageable. So the feeling that all of that wasn't real that kept lurking around the edges of my brain was really scary and upsetting. Fortunately it was easily dismissed by a quick Kakao message to friends in Korea, or a browse through the pictures on my phone. Now that I'm back to Korea, it's Seattle that's started to fade back into unreality, but frankly? I'm pretty okay with that.

Returning to Seattle for two weeks made me realize something that I already suspected- Seattle isn't my home anymore. Before I even left Korea, I hesitated before ever saying I was "visiting home". "I'm going to Seattle," I'd say. Or "I'm visiting my family." Somehow calling it home stuck in my throat, even in regards to my hometown. Yes, many of my friends are there, but plenty of new friends are in other places. Yes, my family is there, and that's important, but what with Facebook and Skype and all the convenient ways to communicate over the distance, I don't feel a strong need to necessarily live near said family. Then again, I've always been the sort chomping at the bit to get out into the world, with less of a need for the nuclear family unit. Just don't tell my mom, okay?

So all this musing begs the question: where is my home? I may have felt the comfort of a homecoming when I stepped out of the taxi in front of the bakery near my apartment, but I don't really have strong feeling of home here yet. Seattle, Port Townsend, Sequim...I felt like a visitor in all three. In Korea I will never entirely belong, I will always stand out; that's okay with me, but in the long dark tea-time of the soul I do wonder if I'll ever find a place I can really put my roots down. Then again, Groot doesn't seem to have roots and he's doing just fine. Maybe I just need to become a space bounty hunter. Problem solved?