Love/Hate Relationship

I'm starting to realize that Korea and I have a bit of a love/hate relationship. I try very hard to always be grateful for the opportunity I have to live in a foreign country (hence the love), but there are just days when Korea makes it really hard (thus the hate). Don't get me wrong....aside from my own personal issues (which would largely be the same no matter what city, state, or country I lived in), I've loved living here. But then I encounter some frustrating or annoying thing and start to miss America in a serious way. So Korea, let me count the ways I love/hate you:

Weather
LOVE: Living in a place with discernable seasons again. I missed you, Fall.
HATE: That these seasons include a month of monsoon rains, soul-suckingly hot, humid summers, frigidly cold winters, two months of yellow dust blowing in from Mongolia and only one blissful, beautiful month of autumn. Koreans are the only people crazy enough to want to live here.

Transportation
LOVE: All the excellent means of public transportation even if every subway stop has 12 different entrances and you sometimes have to walk a mile to transfer to another line. But at least the ride is cheap. Taxis are also plentiful and sometimes cheap, depending on the traffic (which can get pretty ridiculous).
HATE: Every Korean person who gets behind the wheel of a moving vehicle. There's a stereotype about Asian drivers for a very, very good reason. It's like all rules of sanity and logic immediately fly out the window when the ingition is turned on and wheels start moving. They don't follow any traffic laws (traffic lights are optional; we've seriously been honked at for stopping at a red light before), they weave in and out of traffic, that's if they acknowledge that there are such things as lanes to begin with and they have no respect for right-of-way or the common sense rules of merging. Throw in tiny streets with lots of blind turns for good measure and it's like playing one insane, never-ending game of bumper cars.

Cuisine
LOVE: Trying new dishes, sampling different cuisine and eating a traditional, non-western diet. I've found some Korean foods that I simply adore like bulgogi, kalbi, moo, and Korean apples.
HATE: SPICINESS. Burning off your taste buds is not always the way to best enjoy your food. Also, these people eat some seriously weird stuff.

Food Markets
LOVE: Getting to browse and purchase interesting items at the Korean markets like fun flavors of gum (my favorite is floral gum), candies, and drinks. They have some interesting produce items but my favorite is the Korean apple. I can't explain it but Korean apples are 12 times better than other run-of-the-mill apples you can get in America. (Honeycrisp apples come close to the Korean apple.) Also, I love, love, love that you can buy whole cloves of garlic that have already been removed from their papery little encasements. I really hate trying to pry garlic out of their skins.
HATE: That even though I (praise the Lord) have access to the commissary and regular American products, I still can't get my hands on many speciality items like gnocchi, exotic or unusual spices, good baking supplies, and a wider range of organic/natural foods. I'd also kill for a decent corn tortilla. I might have to learn how to make them from scratch (like I did with gnocchi).

Garbage
LOVE: Actually, there's not much I love about the Korean way of dealing with garbage, but I do appreciate that their system requires recycling and forces me to be more mindful about the amount of waste I produce.
HATE: In Korea, you pay for your waste. I actually find this to be a smart solution to unncessary waste, but it does create quite a headache. You have to buy two different types of bags: one is a general waste bag (which will cost you in the neighborhood of 500 to 1000 won per bag....think of it as spending $1 per tash bag you throw out.....it starts to add up quick) and the other is a small yellow bag for scraps of food. See, there are no garbage disposals in Korea. Instead, you have a huge trap in your sink which catches all food particles bigger than a grain of rice which must then be emptied into this bag. Since there are just two people in our household, I often don't fill up one of these bags in a day, and it sits around, collecting flies and (if I forget to take it out) fouling up the kitchen. All glass, plastic, paper, and aluminum must be removed from the general waste and separated into individual containers. But really, it's those food bags that really bug me.

Pests
LOVE: No longer being tormented by pillaging ants.....
HATE: .....but instead must deal with all the flies that spontaneously appear in our sinks and food bags.

Door
LOVE: That in addition to our dead bolt, our door also has an automatic lock system so you can open the door just by punching in a code onto a number pad. This is nice for times when I'm just running out for quick errands like throwing out the garbage or going for a run and I don't have to worry about carrying keys with me. I can get in and out of my house with just those codes.
HATE: That everytime the door closes, it automatically locks itself, which is annoying when I'm just stepping out into the hall to get my groceries or bring in our bottles of water. David, who thinks about stuff like this way to much, hates that the hinges are on the outside of the door and not the inside. You also can't really "leave the door open" for visitors unless you prop open the door somehow. And if the door isn't properly closed all the way, it'll start beeping at you. Loudly.

Walking
LOVE: That Koreans are a very mobile people (and that the women seriously hike up mountains in heels. Better them than me, I say). They walk everywhere and don't mind tackling a long set of stairs. However, Korea would fail on every level of the American Disabilities Act because there are very few ramps, escalators or evelators most places.
HATE: That even though Koreans are great walkers, they have no awareness for others on the sidewalk with them. They drift from side to side (kind of like how they drive), making it nearly impossible to get around them and never watch where they are going. Korea has even launched this whole "advanced civilization" campaign to encourage Koreans to walk on the right side of the sidewalk, follow traffic laws, and basically act like a well-behaved people. They even went so far as to put arrows in every subway station (on the stairs, pathways, escalators and more) marking the correct direction and pathway to follow but even this has apparently proven too difficult for them to master given the number of people I run into even though I am following the recommended flow of traffic.

Shopping
LOVE: That you can buy just about anything you want in Korea if you know where to go and get a pretty great deal on it (if you know how to haggle in Korean, which I don't, so this doesn't apply to me). From Namdaemun to Dongdaemun to the wholesale flower market, Koreans are a people who love to shop. If you can't find what you want, chances are that you can find someone who can make it custom-made.
HATE: That I will never be able to purchase an item of clothing or a pair of shoes from 95% of the stores here. Now, Korea has some interesting fashions (mostly because they seem to think that any article of clothing will go with any other article of clothing regardless of color, material, or style) but I have seen some adorably feminine dresses and cute shoes that I wouldn't mind buying. If you happen to be larger than an American size 4, however, you are simply too big for Korean clothing. See, Korean men (I'd like to blame only the men but it's probably not all their fault) like their women to look like prebupescent thirteen-year old girls with no discernable breasts, hips or curves. The clothing stores perpetuate this by refusing to sale larger sizes. If you even step foot into some of these stores, the sales associates will immediately shake their heads and say, "No size for you!" and shoo you unceremoniously out of the door. (I've never had this happen to me personally because I haven't wanted to step foot in these stores, but I've heard this tale again and again from many, many women.) Shoes are similar. I have on occasion seen a size 250 shoe (about a size 8.5 US size) but nothing larger. There are Korean women out there who don't fit the female mold and I often wonder where they go to buy their clothes. I know that there are some stores that specialize in 큰옷 (kun-ot) or "big clothes" (doesn't that make you feel good about yourself?), but other women who've shopped at these stores say that they aren't really for sizes 6-16 but for overweight women. So, apparently you either have to teeney tiny or obese to clothe yourself in Korea. Online shopping is my friend now.

Cell Phones
LOVE: That Korean cell phone plans are cheap, cheap, cheap. Koreans love their technology.
HATE: That I still haven't figured out my phone because most of it is in Korean (even though it's on the English setting). Plus, unless your phone is turned off, it won't automatically go to the voicemail if you don't pick up your phone so you kinda just have to hope that someone will pick up their phone or you have to be annoying and keep calling them until they do pick up. Also, before my actual alarm goes off, a woman first says, "It's such and such time. Time to get up!" but it's in Korean so it doesn't do me much good and I've gotten very, very sick of that woman's voice. The last thing I want to wake up to is someone yelling at me in a foreign language.

Oh, it's definitely a love/hate relationship. But most of the time, it's love.