So, I tentatively have the internet. LG is a company with a large South Korean presence. I happened to find the default password for an LG Wireless router. I also happened to find an LG Wireless router within my range.... Click, click, dot, dot, here I am....

So.... 5 days.... 5 days since my last smoke. I guess it's okay, I don't really know how to ask for them anyway. The only thing I can say is Kham-say Hamh-ni-dah. Which means thank you. Koreans seems pretty amused when I hack some Korean together.

Oh, so Korean bathrooms. Besides the squat, (see previous post), seem not to use Western conventions such as the shower curtain. It seems they find it easier to make the bathroom walls and ceiling out of metal and let the water go where it will. We have a drain in the middle of the floor, hoping to catch all the spare water. It is weird.

It's only 9:30pm here (7:30am 2/2/09 Michigan time). I'm rather tired. Mel is already in bed, struggling to overcome the jet-lag. I wish to join here, but fear the 5am suddenly awake because I've already had too much sleep. 14 hours is a lot.

I'm too lazy for pictures. Deal with it.

In America we use 110 volts as the standard. In Korea it is 220. In addition, the plugs are different. We have two rectangle-type plugs, they have two circular plugs. There is rarely a third prong/ground in Korea. So, most of our stuff plugs in fine with the aid of an adapter. It seems many manufacturers had the forethought to allow their items to convert voltage as necessary. However, not all items do....

If you buy a dvd in Japan, you can't play it in an American DVD player. The same is true of an x-box or a Wii game. In addition, these manufacturers do not allow their items to convert voltage. It's like an additional step to keep you from circumventing the region coding. Incidentally, said region coding is illegal per the standards set by the United Nations. But politics is so conveluted that no one notices. Anyway.... in order to use a lot of our region locked items (x-box, wii, ds, ect...) we have to have a transformer that takes 220v and turns it into 110. Exciting stuff. Well if would be, but we popped the fuse in the x-box power brick by plugging it into the 220 without the transformer. So sadly we have to wait for someone to send us a replacement before we get to play again.

So, I don't know if I've written on it before, but there's like 60 zillion types of trash here. We recycle, and that's great, if you speak korean. We're suppposed to seperate into paper, plastic, food/organic, misc, metal, ect.... So we're lost. We have some pink bags. We think those are misc. We know there's these big yellow bins for the organic. We're going to sneak the cats' poop into those late at night. HOLY SHIT! Litter is expensive! Cats are still mostly thought of as vermin in korea. One visitor actually asked if they bite! I laughed at them!

When I arrive at school I take my shoes off. Then I put on other shoes. House shoes? Inside shoes? Basically sandals. Everyone wears socks and sandals. Or if you enter someone's house, you're socking it up. You must take off your shoes. A guy delivered our couch... he took off his shoes.

Korea is a strange place and I am tired.