Culture Shock (From My Own Culture)

We landed in Augusta just before midnight on Friday. That was pretty much the longest Friday ever, because we woke up at - oh wait, we didn't wake up because we stayed up that entire night - at 4:30 AM to catch a 6:00 AM bus. My flight didn't leave until 5:45 PM. Then I traveled for like 19 or 20 hours to arrive at 11:38 PM; by the clock it only looked like 6 hours. That day lasted as long as a normal day, plus 13 hours.

Walking into the Augusta airport was one of the first of many mind-blowing experiences I've had in the past couple of days. It was so familiar; WE HAD BEEN THERE BEFORE and had never expected to see it again! The last time I'd been at that airport, I was saying goodbye to Joe with his mom and dad because he was leaving for South Korea.

We got our rental car and stepped out of the airport to see a huge American flag. We drove to our hotel along familiar roads, and we're in the hotel where we always stay when we're in Georgia, and it's just so weird.

We went to IHOP for dinner that night at like 1 AM. That was our first American meal. I was really excited and excitable and I wanted to tell the waitress lady that we had just gotten back from South Korea for the first time in two years, but I didn't. We had a pretty good meal and then went to the hotel and slept until 10 AM and then spent the whole day touring homes with a realtor.

After we decided to buy a house while we were still in Korea, I read the internet about pretty much every single house on the market in Augusta. Once we got here, we had about 11 or 13 places to see. Our realtor took us everywhere we wanted to go on Saturday, which was very nice, and took us to an extra place that I had seen and then taken off the Maybe List...and then fell in love with anyway when we saw it. It's a foreclosed $25,000 split-level from like the 60's or 70's with a pretty much perfect layout. It's sunny, it has a decent-sized kitchen (decent-sized everything else, too,) and one bathroom. There's a second bathroom, too, that had been entirely gutted. There's also probably another $25,000 and 3 months of someone's life in repairs, and tons of competition for the property. We were too tired to talk about financial/house stuff when we got back to the hotel, so we went to sleep. Then for some reason we woke up at 4:00 AM on Sunday, hungry and not tired anymore...so we went to McDonald's and, you know, crunched some numbers, and decided that the fixer-upper just wasn't going to work out. Not at this stage of our lives. I was really sad to let it go. And also really relieved, because since we'd decided on it, I had been incapable of thinking of anything except for how to win the bid for the house with the one chance we would have.

Maybe next time. Next time we look for a house, we can buy a giant project and pour sweat and blood and tears into a place where we'll keep uncovering surprise problems. That would be so great.

For now, we're going for Choice #2, a move-in-ready place that has spots we hate (which makes me happy, because now we can still have major - but not too major - projects to undertake together.)

Like, look at this room:

It's right off the kitchen, as you can see. With the location of this room in the house's floorplan, between the kitchen and the bedrooms, there's nowhere to put furniture, so it's just like a really wide hallway...with a fireplace in it. With the wood paneling and the dark floor and the fact that that room has zero windows, it's REALLY dark. We call it "The Lair." We want to put windows on either side of the fireplace and take out at least the upper cabinets of that part of the kitchen that connects to the room; that would really open everything up (and make a gigantic mess of the ceiling. Making a mess of a ceiling is always a terrible idea.) Then again, we might just move in and decide we have better things to do with our money and live with the flaws. But it's fun to imagine the possibilities. Not optional: painting dat paneling.

If we actually win the bid we'll put in tomorrow. Losing this place would mean settling for choice #3 or, PLEASE NO, #4.

This is so exciting!

This morning, after we went to McDonald's (AND KRISPY KREME!, eating away my sadness at that we wouldn't be bidding on a house where the basement might have been leaking,) I wasn't in the mood to go back to the hotel and be bored. So we went...TO WAL-MART for the first time in two years.

I took pictures. This is a Wal-Mart, obviously, like you probably just saw earlier today.

This was our Commissary. At least five of them could easily fit inside the Wal-Mart.

This is the orange juice selection at Wal-Mart. (The orange juice I had at McDonald's this morning tasted like soap.)

OH MY GOODNESS, LOOK AT THAT SELECTION. Even looking at the picture is blowing my mind. Just...wow. Wow. At Camp Carroll, our entire selection of orange juice, yogurt, and pre-made cookie dough was kept in a refrigerator unit one quarter of the size of that massive row of orange juice.

And the yogurt section!

THAT IS ALL YOGURT. How is that even possible? At Camp Carroll, the freezer containing most of the frozen foods - ice cream, waffles, Hot Pockets, frozen pizzas, seafood, meat - WAS THE SIZE OF THIS YOGURT SECTION.

I know you get the point, but here's the coffee, just real quick.

Wow! That's a lot of coffee!

Joe and I grew up with orange juice aisles the length of moving trucks, and we didn't even know how crazy that is.

Also crazy was when I landed for a layover in Detroit at the end of my flight out of Seoul and I could understand the conversations of everyone around me.

"...had her baby on Monday..."
"...he hadn't eaten or dranken in a month..."
"...showed up an hour early..."

Me and Joe talked about how we've been so used to tuning out the voices around us because we can't understand Korean. Hearing what people talk about made me wonder what they were talking about in Korea. Probably pretty much the same stuff.

Also, whenever I think of talking to our family and friends, I check the clock and automatically subtract an hour and switch between day and night to find out what time it is where they live. Like, it's 11:30 PM right now, so I'm like, okay, it's 10:30 in the morning at my parents' house...BUT IT'S NOT, BECAUSE WE'RE IN THE SAME TIME ZONE NOW.

All this has made us glad to be home. Other countries are pretty great, too, but...that was a lot of orange juice.

We'll be even happier to live in America once we have a house and can stop worrying about bids and inspections and loans and get on with our lives.

A List of Things About Going Back

It's been 1 year, 9 months, and 1 day since July 25th, 2011, when I left America.

Here's a list of things about going back.

1. Haven't seen our families or pets since then and am super excited to see everyone

2. Haven't driven a car since then and am super excited to see my car again

3. I'm tired, I've been awake for over 24 hours because I never went to sleep last night, and my flight doesn't even leave for another 3 hours and 45 minutes. I'm sitting on the floor in the airport with my back against the wall and my computer plugged into an adapter plugged into the wall. I had to buy the adapter because Korean plugs are different and I didn't bring any adapters from our apartment sadface. It would be fantastic if I could just lay on the floor right here and take a nap. Then when I woke up my stuff might still be there. I'm bored.

4. Having Wal-Mart and a lot of superstores will be convenient, but I'll also spend a lot more money on stuff just because it's there, while here our PX was tiny and only had...not much. We had to order a lot of stuff online. Sometimes I just wouldn't get around to it, and I'd know the thing must not have been worth it. Wal-Mart = no waiting period = kinda bad

5. All the stuff we own that we've purchased over the course of our marriage that's in a storage unit probably getting eaten by mice right now? We get to see that stuff again! And probably throw away a lot of it because being over here with minimal stuff has taught us what we really need!

6. A new exciting thing is that we're going to be looking at houses to buy when we get back. Then I'll get to PAINT. In 5.5 years, Joe and I have only ever painted 1 room together. The rest of the time we were in rentals where we couldn't do that.

7. On North America the continent, the United States takes up a lot of room. In South Korea, it only takes up little tiny patches of room, and you have to walk to those little tiny patches for it to even kind of seem like you're in America, and even then, the America is diluted by Korean signs and employees. When we go home, everywhere we walk and drive and go will ALL be America. There will be English everywhere, and people who look like us, and I'll have to stop talking about things that you can't talk about in public, because the people around me will definitely be able to understand me instead of just maybe.

8. I'm worried about going back, because what if it's not that great in the USA, or too normal and boring? But that's a stupid thing to worry about because life can get normal and boring over here, too. I'm sad that our adventure is over, but really it's more "accomplished" than "over" because we got to see the things that were important to us. I just don't want to get home and be like "Wow, is this all there is?" But I'll probably like it.

I'm so tired. I think I have movies. I'll go do that now.

Leaving

When Joe told me he was going to be stationed in South Korea on a hardship tour - alone, without me, for a year - I was devastated. Then I looked up South Korea on a map, because I had no idea where it was. I'm not even sure I knew there was a South Korea. Everyone knew about North Korea, of course, because of the movie Team America: World Police, but I don't think I ever made the logical connection that having a North meant there was also a South and probably a war.

Four months later, after a lot of stress and uncertainty and paperwork and a little bit of crying and a good-bye in an airport and a move into my first ever single-girl apartment, I was on a plane to that little country at the end of an Asian peninsula.

We had heard that families usually weren't allowed to accompany their soldiers to Korea, that people just did their one year and went home. It turned out, though, that after a bunch of paperwork, Joe was approved to bring me over...he just wasn't approved to bring our stuff.

So I pawned off our pets on our parents and carefully packed two thrift store suitcases with what I estimated to be my 70-pounds-each weight limit. (I turned out to be pretty wrong, and that was expensive.) I felt like I was setting out on an Oregon Trail adventure: I was taking into the Great Unknown only my two suitcases with only my most precious and necessary belongings. I had clothes, pots and pans, silverware - sadly, I lost most of my wedding-silverware butter knives to airport security in Atlanta - our blender, our crockpot, our DVD collection, and - wow, did I really fit all this stuff into those suitcases? - a keyboard and a mouse and a set of computer speakers for when we'd order a new computer for me. (Fun fact: The clothes I brought got worn to shreds while I was over here, because it's super hard to find American sized clothing in Korea. One of my friends and I pretty much had each other's wardrobes memorized and noticed whenever the other got something new. It was funny.)

I was so incredibly happy to be on that plane over here. SO HAPPY. Almost every day, I've been consciously thankful to have had this great chance to be with Joe in Asia when so many other families weren't coming over.

Unless you count a cruise to the Bahamas, Korea was the first time I'd ever left America. I remember the layover in Japan, where for the first time I saw signage where the primary language wasn't English, and the long bus ride from the airport, the first time I saw rice fields outside the windows. I remember having no idea what to expect from this country.

I've fallen in love with South Korea. I never would have guessed that I would feel such fondness for a country not my home, that I would find another city as vital, fast, fragile, stunning as New York City. But South Korea is optimistic and hardy and hopeful and strong, and Seoul at sunrise is breathtaking.

This is where I lived, what I saw every day. I'll leave in the morning. And then, the day after that, when I'm gone, the sun will rise and everything will look like this again. Where I am, it'll be night. The rainy season will come again, and the rice will be sown, and another field will be sold for more apartment buildings, and in ten years, you won't even be able to recognize Waegwan.

The Love Hotel

Love hotels are places, mostly in Asia, where people go to have sex. Often, entrances to these places are discreet, and you don't even have to interact with the front-desk staff; you select the room you want from a bunch of pictures on a wall, push a button, pay a machine (hourly stay or nightly stay), and your key is dispensed. Some rooms have themes, like the Hello Kitty bondage room, or maybe a castle theme, stuff like that.

Love hotels are often associated with Japan, and since we were going to Japan for a week, I thought it would be an interesting cultural experience - and funny - if I booked a room at a love hotel for us. I decided not to, though, because that would be disgusting and weird.

And then I accidentally did.

The day before we left, I found out that there was a mixup with reservations, and we needed a room for one night. I found a place online in the right price range without paying too much attention to the details. There were a few pictures, it looked fine. Anyway, we'd be leaving in the morning - what's the worst that could happen?

This?

Our taxi driver had trouble finding the hotel. When we finally got there, we were already kind of confused and upset, because either we'd just paid $100 for a 30-minute taxi ride or the airport money exchange service hadn't given us the correct amount of money. (We had just paid $100 for a 30-minute taxi ride.) And apparently the taxi driver had dropped us off at the back door of the hotel?

We went in. The lobby was a tiny room with a low ceiling. There was a display case on our right full of lingerie and what appeared to be a wide selection of lubricants, and, on our left, no one at the front desk. We called out a few times, and a heavy girl in her teens who looked like she needed a shower came out to help us. "Check in?" I said, and gave her my receipt printout from Expedia. She smiled and nodded and pointed to a sign on the desk asking whether we'd be paying by cash or credit. I pointed to the paper, where it said something about how we'd already paid. I don't think she was used to getting Expedia reservations, she couldn't read English, and since our phone didn't work in Japan, I couldn't really do anything. She got out her phone and typed into a translator, "Payment method?" I shook my head and said, "We paid online." She didn't understand. I smiled apologetically and held out my hand for her phone, so I could type in, "We already paid online," and pointed at the paper again. She smiled and held up a finger for "one minute" and made a phone call. While she was on the phone, I looked at the products in the display case and inspected the wall with the glowing pictures and buttons. A couple had just come in and quickly selected a room, gotten a key from somewhere, and left in the elevator.

Considering the display case, the room-selection wall, and the "back door," we had begun to become suspicious that we were in a love hotel.

She hung up, typed, "I understand," and gave us our key. We stuffed ourselves into the extremely small elevator and went upstairs. The hallway looked clean, like something from a normal hotel. When we got to the room, we - or I, anyway - were still stressed over not knowing if we'd gotten the right amount of money from the airport, about having no access to the internet to figure that out, and about having apparently actually reserved a room for us in a love hotel, so I was completely not in the mood to be excited by the features of our room instead of just really grossed out.

The room had a little foyer with a safe. Beyond the foyer was the sitting room, with a steep, narrow-stepped staircase leading to the bedroom. That was cool; we'd never stayed in a room with two floors before. The staircase was decorated with some pictures and a fake window.

The living room, which somewhere had speakers playing a soft, relaxing, repetitive tune of like ten notes, featured a change machine, a slot machine, a lingerie & lubricant vending machine, and a karaoke machine. And a glued-down statue of a cockatoo.

Attached to the sitting room was a vanity area with a sink and mirror. Beyond that was a small, warm room with a toilet in it. (The room, it turned out, was warm because it had been heated by the toilet seat; the seat had a console full of buttons to control the two different types of sprays and the heat. A warm toilet seat feels like someone was sitting there for an hour before it was your turn. For some reason, heated seats are really common in Japan.) There was another room off the vanity area containing a shower, a big jetted tub, a small television, and a decorative shop window thing with a weird display of Christmas tree lights and fake roses. At the flip of a switch, the room would go from normal lighting to a blue overhead with lighting on the fake rose display. So romantic.

Also in the bathroom was a scary thing on the wall, controlled by a dial near the lightswitches, that made steam.

And this sign illustrating how to operate a shower attachment which appeared to no longer be in there.

And this vaguely creepy bathing seat which I think is supposed to accommodate testicles.

Upstairs, in our bedroom, was another TV with another karaoke machine. There were two remote controls; one allowed you to control the projector installed above the bed which projected whatever was on the TV onto the wall across from the bed. At the head of the bed there was a control panel with numbered buttons. Each button represented a different lighting scheme for our lodgings, both upstairs and downstairs. Near the control panel was a "personal massager" which was plugged in somewhere, some complimentary condoms, tissues, the phone, normal hotel room stuff. Attached to the ceiling of the room was a color-changing LED disco ball thing.

I would have a picture of the projector in action, but about six of the ten channels on the TV were...not...good...for me to take pictures of and put on here.

Oh, the outside:

And the hotel-logo boards in the parking lot you to use cover your license plate so no one knows it's you:

So, that was the love hotel. My accident with the reservations led to one of the most bizarre experiences we've had yet. And once I calmed down and got over the impulse to disinfect the room - it actually looked as clean as most places we've stayed, and a lot cleaner than some - we made the best of it!