There's an Electric Blanket in my Shower

It's cold in Busan! I'm not talking six feet of snow cold, but more like born-and-raised-in-southern-California-so-I'm-not-used-to-daily-temperatures-in-the-30s-and-40s cold. This week has been especially cold with some days actually dropping to the mid to low 20s. I'm doing okay as far as keeping warm, because I'm basically just not going outside. Only when I have to do I travel outside, which is probably three or four times a day max. In my apartment, I've been using my heated floor to keep the room warm and at school, the first thing I do when I walk in the English classroom is turn on the heater. There are two areas though in which I've been finding it hard to beat the low temperatures. The first one is my bathroom/shower. The second one is my co-teacher's car. The title of this blog gives you an idea of how I've managed to handle that first area. The second one I haven't really handled yet.

The day I was diagnosed with the flu, my co-teacher mentioned to me that she wanted to buy me an electric blanket to help keep me warm. I politely declined, because truthfully, my apartment stays very warm when I use the floor heater. That coupled with my bedding, which are basically blankets, actually keeps me so warm, that sometimes it's uncomfortable and I have to sleep without the covers on. Now, I know what you're thinking. Why don't I just lower the floor heater, so my room doesn't get so warm that it actually makes me uncomfortable? Basically, it's taken me a long time to figure out how to get the dang floor heater to work at all, so now that it is, I'm not going to mess with it. Especially since sleeping without the covers on isn't exactly a problem. So anyway, as happens often, even though I declined and even flat out said I didn't want it, my co-teacher bought me an electric blanket anyway. I realize that she's just trying to be nice, I do, but I was really upset she bought it for me. I think it just stems from months of only being able to make about 50% of the decisions in my life, while Korea and Koreans made the other 50%. Many times I feel like my co-teacher thinks I'm lying when I say I'm okay or that I don't want something or that I don't need something. Plus, you've seen the size of my apartment! I don't have room for anything! Immediately when I got the blanket and knew I wasn't going to use it, I had no idea where I was going to put it! I've had to get real creative with how I'm storing stuff in my apartment. I even have my suitcase packed, not because I'm ready to leave, but because it's a viable place to store stuff. I'm telling you, I'm out of ideas! Underneath my bed is completely full of stuff, which slightly worries me, because of the floor heater. That sure would make for an interesting blog if I was to wake up one night to flames under my bed! Let's hope I don't have to write that one sometime in the next two months. Okay so back to the blanket. This thing just sat in it's package in the middle of my apartment floor for like two weeks, until I finally figured out how I could make use of it.

Every morning when I wake up, my apartment living area is nice and warm due to the aforementioned floor heater. What's not warm is my bathroom/shower. It's actually the coldest part of the whole place. Ceramic tile everywhere does not exactly trap heat overnight, so needless to say having to walk naked into a refrigerator at 7 a.m. isn't exactly fun. And if you remember, I don't have the luxury of a constant flow of warm water from the shower either. I have to turn it on and off through cleansing and rinsing. This is honestly just the worst way to start the day, and you just feel so helpless, because there's nothing I can do about it. If I can't get regular Koreans to listen to me, what chance do I have in getting the Korean weather gods to listen to me?! I'm not overstating it when I say, my whole life changed when I realized that I could use my electric blanket to keep the bathroom warm overnight. It was the perfect idea! Plug in the blanket, turn it to max hot, lay it on the ground, close the door and wake up to a heated bathroom. I felt like a genius. So, I tested it out and for added measure, I stuffed a face towel in the bathroom window sill, hoping it would help stop any heat from escaping and any cold air from coming in. The results haven't been as awesome as I had hoped, but it's definitely alleviated the problem. Basically what the blanket does, is heat the floor of the bathroom. It doesn't have much of an effect on the overall temperature of the room, though I'd say it does bring the temperature up at least a couple of degrees. It's enough to make my morning shower experience way more pleasant than it was. Just stepping onto warm tile really helps, believe it or not. So every night before I go to bed, I wipe the floor clean of any water that might be there, then use that towel to stuff the window sill, and lay the blanket out on the ground. Then in the morning, I remove the blanket and enjoy my shower. In total this probably takes about an extra three to five minutes of my life everyday, but it's totally worth every second. Yes, this is what my life and blog have become. Sorry folks.

Now about my co-teacher's car. I think I've mentioned before how frugile Koreans seem to be with everything. Well, my co-teacher is like the frugile queen. Why should I be surprised that she doesn't use the heater in her car in the winter, when she didn't use the air conditioner in her car during the summer. These things are seen as luxuries. I'm not kidding, she doesn't even have an air conditioner in her apartment! Even her daughter complained to me about it once! Anyway, every morning I make the cold five minute walk up hill and wait for her to pick me up in front of a McDonald's. When she arrives, I hop in the car and remain cold, because like I said, no heater. I'm sure you'd all agree with me, that it's such an awesome feeling to get into a nice warm car when you've been standing outside in the cold. If someone is coming to pick you up and it's cold, you're just so looking forward to that moment when you get in and the heat hits you like a warm embrace from the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man. I know he was a bad guy, but seriously, imagine how awesome a hug from him would be. Or the Michelin Man! Anyway, she does turn on the heated seat function her car has, which is nice, but when I can see my breath in the car all the way to school, that's a problem. Today when we came to school, she turned on the heater for the first time, because apparently the low 20s is when it's finally okay, and pigs started flying. I swear it looked like it was her first time using it. She was messing with it so much I had to laugh. Anyway, it was a very comfortable car ride to school today, of which I'm hoping is the first of more to come. One can dream.

Earlier this week, I went out to dinner with my co-teacher, after-school English teacher, vice-principal and principal. My vice-principal, after-school English teacher and me were the first ones to arrive, so we sat and talked for a little bit. My vice-principal speaks practically no English, so it was up to the other teacher to translate for both of us. He actually started talking about how much the school was going to miss me and how he understood why I was going home. He even got into some story he was reading about a French man who visited Korea a long time ago and fell in love with a Korean girl. The man took her back to France with him and the girl had a very difficult time adjusting to life outside of Korea, and this story made him think of me. He mentioned how he was worried about me when I first got here, because it was my first time in Korea and wasn't sure how I'd adjust to everything. Because of the language barrier, I really don't get the chance to talk to him very much. I'm sure with the "translator" there, he saw it as a great opportunity to chat as well. It was just a really nice moment that we shared. Even the dinner was very fun and as I sat there I thought about how lucky I was to have been placed in a school with such nice people. Like I said, it was just a nice moment. That is of course, until the end of the dinner when the whole meal with a beverage vs. meal without a beverage debate somehow started again. It's been months since I've had that conversation with anyone, but it's now come up twice this week! The other time was when I was teaching the teachers and we were going over "habits." I was naming habits and asked them to name one, and one of the teachers said, "I know! You always drink water with your lunch." That's not a habit!!! It was the way she was so excited to say it too, not because she felt she actually thought of a habit, but because she thought it was a bad habit. I've even tried to meet them in the middle on this, by saying "Okay, so maybe some doctors say it's not okay, and some doctors say it's okay. We just each believe different doctors." Well, in Korea, logic like that doesn't work. It's one way and that's it. That's just how it is here. I explained how drinking water with a meal isn't a habit, but maybe always eating your kimchi first or always eating your kimchi last would be considered a habit. I don't know that it helped or that she cared. Like I said, I know she just wanted to bring up that drinking with a meal is bad thing to do.

I'm just a couple days away now from my winter break. The past couple weeks back from the flu have been pretty standard at school. We finished up the textbook for each grade and have been watching Christmas movies and singing Christmas songs ever since. The English room even got a Christmas tree, which is nice. I must say, there have definitely been a lot more Christmas elements around here than I expected. It's still nowhere near the level of back home, but it's been nice to occasionally see and hear the sights and sounds of my favorite holiday. I even got a package this week with a bunch of homemade cookies from my grandma, which is always something I look forward to during the holidays. Thanks grandma!

Next week I leave for a week in China, which I'm really looking forward to, despite what Mariana might tell you. It's going to be really cool to visit a place with so much history and culture. I'll be sure to tell of my tales on here when I return.