Observations: Sounds, Smells, Tastes, and Feelings

Continuing with my sensory observations of Korea:

Sounds of Korea:
- Car horns: Koreans blow their horns a lot more often than in North America, but certainly not as incessantly as in Vietnam.  Something that is unique to Korean horns is the variety of horn sounds.  On top of your regular sounding 'honk honk', there's the 'fading foghorn' which is a three second horn that starts loud and then gets softer, as well as the 'ice-cream-truck' horn that blares a quick little diddy that can be heard by anyone within a kilometer.
- Roving truck vendors: A number of times in the past, on Saturday mornings, when I'm trying to sleep in, I'm awoken by an extra loud, loud speaker giving some sort of automated message in Korean. At first, it sounded to me like some sort of communist public announcement calling everyone to the city square for an important government message.  Later on I realized it was just someone selling something (usually fruits or vegetables) out the back of his or her truck and felt like everyone (including those still in bed) would like to hear about it.
- Construction: If these truck vendors don't wake me up, the construction at 6:00 a.m. usually does.
- K-Pop: Korean pop songs are everywhere.  It seems like every store plays the same K-Pop songs over and over.  And every Korean's ring tone is also one of those K-Pop songs.
- If a store or coffee shop isn't playing a K-Pop song, there's a chance that they are playing a very inappropriate American rap song .  One coffee shop downtown only plays these songs, and it plays them loud.  The funny part is, I'm sure the person responsible for such a horrible music choice has no idea what the words are.  And there we are sipping on our hot chocolates listening to songs we wouldn't even here on radio stations back home because the lyrics are so bad.
- Korean: Of course this is an obvious one, but to be living in a place where I don't speak or understand the language a strange reality, when you think about it.

Smells of Korea
- Jukto Market:  I've never been in a place with such a variety of strange smells.  I haven't lived on the coast before so the smells of the sea are new to me.  These smells are everywhere in this city, and are especially concentrated in Jukto Market.
- Scented Toilet Paper: strange eh?
- Cigarettes: Either Koreans smoke more than North Americans or a lot of the foreigners of Pohang smoke or both.  I'm pretty sure it's both.
- Barf: This past weekend, there was this one spot on this one road where someone must have puked out everything they had.  I know it has been there for a number of days because I scooted through it three times.
- Urine: Korean men have a tendency to just go wherever, whenever.  So every once in a while, you get an unpleasant whiff.

Tastes of Korea:
- There are a lot of new tastes which are a part of Korea food.  I won't dive into all of them now, but suffice it to say that most of them include either kimchi, red bean paste, or the red Korean spice that is in almost everything here.
- My favourite food in Korea has become Pizza Toast.  This one small road-side shop makes it for 2,000 won (2 bucks) and it's wonderful.
- Makkoli and Soju: Korean rice wines.  Makkoli is decent, and Soju is just rubbing alcohol in my opinion.
- Sweet potato chips: it's hard to find chips that are salty, not sweet.

Tastes Not In Korea:
- Cheese:  This isn't completely true; some foods do include cheese here, but they're usually foreign foods.  It is impossible to buy regular mozzarella or cheddar in Pohang.
- Spices: Almost all spices that I grew up with are not found in Korean foods or grocery stores.
- Good chocolate

Feelings of Korea:
(I realize that these feelings don't have anything to do with the sense of touch, but that's ok).
- Scooting!: such a great feeling.
- Confusion: when a person is talking to you in Korean and expects you to understand, but you just can't.
- Frustration: when my students don't understand the words that I'm saying, but I just keep rattling on oblivious to it.  (Hmm these last two are similar aren't they).
- Fatigue: I'm tired often.  I try to get enough sleep, but it just never seems enough.  Maybe it's because I can't sleep in on Saturdays.
- Contentment: when I'm spending time with friends and I realize how lucky I am for all I have here.
- Sadness: when I wish I could be back in Toronto or Grand Rapids or Gallup to be with those friends and family.
- Uncertainty: about what I'll do after Korea.  Excitement is a part of this too, because I have a lot of options.

Two weekends ago was Chuseok and I'd like to add some pictures from that, but our internet connection isn't working really well lately.  So maybe later.

Thanks for reading,
Michael