5 Things No One Tells You About Living in Korea.A travel pick

1.) you may be an oddity. after you get to recognise korean human beings, they’re nearly constantly amazingly great. i assume this is real for most of the people inside the world virtually. but the preliminary reception in korea as a foreigner is a touch unusual. until you’re going to be living in one of the popular neighborhoods in seoul that get a number of site visitors from human beings from all around the global, you’re most probable going to be a novelty for the humans on your city. you'll get stared at. you may get pointed at. you will listen humans whisper (or in some instances, loudly shout) in korean “foreigner!” once they see you. salespeople will argue over who has to help you, due to the fact they’re worried you’ll lead them to communicate english. once in a while, people won’t need to sit down through you on the educate or bus, due to the fact you're one-of-a-kind. in eating places, they'll mechanically deliver you a fork in preference to chopsticks. while you buy groceries, you might not be allowed to strive clothes on because the salespeople are involved your big foreigner frame would possibly stretch out the clothes.
2.) the winters are genuinely terrible. humans had genuinely tried to warn me about this, but i was overconfident. i grew up in a place with extreme seasons–in spokane, it’s regularly inside the one hundred’s (fahrenheit) in the summers and nicely under 0 within the winters. so once I heard the winters were extraordinarily bloodless in korea, i scoffed.
3.) western meals is honestly difficult to locate outdoor of seoul. this is essentially actual of all overseas food. while you’re looking for a little taste of domestic, probabilities are the grocery stores or local eating places won’t be of any help to you. we might regularly journey busses and subways for 2 hours into seoul to attain costco, places that served sandwiches, indian meals, italian meals, and many others. our little metropolis had some overseas meals, however in the main, it become narrow pickin’s.i truly love korean meals, but for me, growing up in the united states in which the meals choices are so varied, it changed into beyond bizarre to eat the same styles of things every. unmarried. day. i love kimchi, but i will’t believe liking something enough that i would voluntarily eat it every meal for my entire existence. it became a big life change to consume like that–and while i didn’t hate it, i might have luckily welcomed a little more range in my eating regimen, as a minimum at my college and whilst we went out to consume. i survived by means of doing numerous my own cooking
4.) the societal norms are very extraordinary from the west. a few times come to thoughts: to begin with, sexism is alive and nicely in korea. in case you’re a woman, you’ll probable sense disrespected in some unspecified time in the future during your live, truely for being a woman. matters which can be unlawful or that might get you sued within the us, canada and europe are the norms in korea. for instance, my faculty precept, a person, felt completely cozy telling me to my face “you’re very lovely.” at the same time as that sounds excellent, it made me extremely uncomfortable. if i had a boss say that to me in the us, i would probably record them to human resources. i was additionally advised such things as “women shouldn’t smoke in public” and a pal of mine mentioned that her faculty instructed her women weren’t being protected in an after-college sports pastime for teachers.

the second huge societal norm that comes to thoughts is get dressed style–in korea, it’s considered inappropriate to show cleavage, bare backs, shoulders or clavicles. however, micro skirts and shorts are all the rage, or even fundamental college instructors will put on those minis to paintings. this is basically the complete opposite of america–i remember in school having to expose that my skirt or shorts had been longer than my finger recommendations when my hands have been down, however we had been allowed to put on tank tops and lower-cut tops.
5.) in spite of all of this, it’s very clean to stay in korea. this could sound like a peculiar assertion, however here’s the component–when you’re a teacher in korea, your lease is paid, food is cheap, public transit is reasonably-priced, heavy drinking is not unusual and encouraged and ordinary, you would possibly sincerely have much less obligations than lower back home (outdoor of work that is). these items make it clean for existence to be comfortable, on occasion too at ease, and that i’ve heard many humans whinge that it’s clean to get in a rut in korea, or to experience like you may’t go away because existence is simply less complicated right here. it’s nearly like going lower back to university–many people in korea re-enter a party section of existence. i’m now not pronouncing this to be judgmental, it’s truely some thing i’ve heard a whole lot of expats whinge approximately. korea has a big drinking subculture and it may be easy to get sucked into it if you want to celebration.