Culture shock in Korea - cross-culture awareness tag

Today I will share some culture shockers in South Korea. Disclaimer: these may not shock you or shock you depending on your background. This post is for culture awareness and nothing else. Let me just list them down without wasting time:

(1). Removing shoes when you enter the House, some traditional restaurants too and some facilities. You just have to remove your shoes at the door as you enter the house. Early days I used to forget to remove shoes but now I'm pro at removing shoes at the door. It actually keeps the floors cleaner.

Leave the shoes at the door!

(2). No hand shakes for greeting just bow and greet though some people believe in handshakes so you only give handshakes to the those interested in them.

(3). Sleeping on the floor, most people prefer sleeping on the floor and most families do not have beds, not that they do not afford them but because of the health benefits of sleeping on the floor. OK!

(4). Warm floors; At least the floors will be warm in winter.

(5). Make up on the bus or subway, of all the places Korean women/ladies/girls are comfortable to do their make up in public places. 

(6). Kindergarten for dogs just like the way we send our kids to kindergarten here in Korea there are pet kindergarten. Pet maintenance is top notch and very costly too.

Pic 2015 with Mong my friend's dog.

(7). If your dog p--ps in the pavements you clear the mess, I saw many dog-owners clearing the mess and sometimes I get surprised to see some not clearing it. Review on dogs going to school.

(8). Mandatory army trainings for a certain period 'for all men'

(9). You pay for throwing away furniture or electronic appliances such as fridge, tv. The trick is if you wanna throw away better sell or give away.

(10). In general Korean society is not very judgmental (compared to where I come from) so most women drink alcohol and they really don't understand if you say I just don't drink beer. 

There are many other culture shockers and I will try to share them in next blogs. Thank you for taking your time to read these culture shockers. 

Zero waste lifestyle ruined! My new strategy!

 I can boldly say I am trying to live a zero-waste lifestyle. As you all know it is difficult to completely eliminate non-biodegradable waste from our daily lives, especially now that food take outs are common. At our university we went on a serious buy-take-out week due to sanitizing measures in September to early October. The amount of trash that we generated those weeks was so huge!  For one meal, one would get a plastic bag, plastic spoon wrapped up in plastic, plastic container of the main meal, another one for soup or separate salad, yogurt container and of course biodegradable chopsticks wrapped in paper. Maybe with a picture or pictures you can figure out how much trash we generated in a day. 

Food packaging 'single use items'

Sigh!!! Sad, right? So sad that a 30-minute meal generated this much waste, non-biodegradable! Hmm it's so disturbing. Anyway, in Korea the recycling seems to be efficient and it's rare to find piles of rotten garbage.

Back to my routine during the sanitizing week. Due to daily temperature checkups and all, it was a wise decision to reduce contact tracing by eating at the closest place so I avoided going off-campus but resorted to the 'plastic packed meals'. Though some days I just chose to reduce my carbon print by going home and eat plastic free lunch. 

Every step counts though it would seem insignificant. I later started to seriously plan on reducing my carbon print. It is my responsibility to make a positive impact on the earth for future generations. 

My new strategy towards zerowaste is to always carry reusable shopping bags whenever I go for shopping, refusing excess plastic packaging, carry my own basket when buying fruits and vegetables in the mart, go for bottled products than plastics etc.

I hope you enjoyed reading my ZEROWASTE LIFESTYLE. Please feel free to comment and share any zerowaste lifestyle tips, together we can save the environment.

Korean winter diary "my first snow"

I'm always feeling cold even from the lowest fan wind. I studied in Midlands/Zimbabwe for 2-years, where lowest temperatures are recorded. Believe me the Midlands winter compares to Korean fall or spring. Korea is extremely cold in winter.  I'm talking about negative temperatures! I first saw snow in Daegu, but it wasn't thick like what we saw on news in other places like Seoul. 

Later on, I realized I was in the hottest city of Korea 'the Beitbridge/Kariba weather city' in Daegu. People around me used to say Seoul area is even colder, but I said no, a cold is cold there is no colder place to me. Yeah, Daegu winter was freezing cold. The 3-winters I spent in Daegu were freezing cold, I used to layer up like a Christmas tree. One could just recognize my eyes of-course since they were the ones exposed. As you can see, in the camel jacket below.

Left: me in camel jacket and my friend Nini in white, on a snowish day at Keimyung University, Daegu, December 2011.

8-winters later, I'm used to cold now but I don't like winter!

Thank you for reading my winter diary. Now temperatures are dropping and I have started layering up! Please leave a comment if you can, do you like winter?