Differences Between the USA and Korea: Part 1

Please keep in mind that everything I say here is my personal experience in Korea and I'm sure there are places here where things are different. But I will do my best to tell you what it's really like, the good and the bad. So, here are the differences between Korea and America that I have noticed. If there is a specific subject you would like me to expand on, please comment and let me know, I'll do my best to explain in my next post.

1. School

• Classroom: In Korea you stay in the same classroom with the same people all day. The teachers are the ones who move classrooms. You have to leave for classes like gym, but you're still with the same people. The schools run on a weekly schedule instead of a daily one. The classes are fifty minutes long and we have ten minute breaks in between. Many people go down the little mini mart thing we have a level below us to buy snacks and drinks during the breaks. One of the other odd little rules they have is that you can't wear your shoes inside the school. You have to wear these rubber slippers and change your shoes every time you go in or out of the school. Most of the classes have very little student interaction and participation and are basically just a lecture by the teacher. Some of the teachers are more interactive and actually ask questions, but it depends totally on how they prefer to teach. The students don't generally ask questions either. There's always at least a couple people sleeping in every class, if not over half the class. The only class no one sleeps in in my school in Industry, and that's because of the teacher who will not hesitate to punish them which leads me to my next point:
• Corporal Punishment: It's used pretty widely in my school, but I've heard from other exchange students that their school doesn't use it all, so I guess you never know whether you'll get a school like that or not. Even though quite a few of my teachers use it, I've noticed a lot of patterns. None of my female teachers do it all. The only thing they've ever done to punish students is make them stand at the back of the classroom so that they can't sleep. And the male teachers I have that hit students often times only punish the boys. I only have one teacher who uses physical punishment on the girls as much as the boys. Now don't get me wrong, none of the punishments are serious or really hurt that much. A lot of the students just laugh when the teacher calls them to the front of the room and it's all a big joke, so don't go thinking my school intills us with fear of authority figures, 'cause it doesn't. I've only had two experiences of serious punishment that actually seemed to matter. The first was when the whole class had to squat/walk up and down the hallway a couple times and then do various exercises. I was thankfully exempt from that as I was the foreigner and didn't do anything wrong... I guess. The second time we all had to sit with our legs tucked under us on top of the desk with our arms out, books on top of them, for over twenty minutes. It hurt my feet a ton, but I was glad I did it too. I don't want to be excluded, I want to feel like a part of my class, so despite the pain I was glad I did it.
• I would like to note that their are A TON more things I could talk about in my school life, this is a very general summary.

2. Bathrooms

• Public: Bathrooms here are very iffy. Firstly, you never know if there's going to toilet paper. Sometimes there's just a roll in between the rows of stalls and you have to get some before you go. Other places don't have any. And in some older bathrooms you have to throw the toilet paper away because the toilet can't flush it. Also, not all bathrooms have any way to dry your hands after you wash them. And not all of them have soap either. And sometimes if you're in an old building they might not have normal toilets, but squat toilets. But then some newer buildings even have electric toilets with different buttons on the side. You really never know what you're gonna get when you walk into a public bathroom.
• Private: I can only really tell you about my toilet, seeing as I've only been to like two other peoples houses here. My toilet has a button on the side, not a handle to flush it. It also has a little panel thing on the right side that has a few buttons on it. It a few different squirting options, which I find very strange. As for the rest of the bathroom, I can speak with a bit more certainty about what most of them are like outside of my own home. The whole floor is tiled and there often isn't a separation between the shower area and the rest of the bathroom or the separation isn't much, like in my bathroom I just have a panel of glass and a slight lip in the floor to direct the water flow. And most people don't have full size towels. They really are quite small here. I usually end up using two to actually get myself dry instead of just not dripping wet.

3. Restaurants

• In America there are different kinds of restaurants, such as Mexican, Seafood, Grills, etc. Even though there are different categories, there's still usually a pretty wide variety of foods you can choose from. But in Korea most restaurants only have one or two types of food, with maybe three to ten variations of it (but there are always a lot of side dishes to go with it). So when you go out with friends, you generally all have to agree on what you're eating. If you want to eat something else, you have to go to a different place. But note that this excludes the western restaurants you find here, like Outback or others. Fast food is a bit different. There only a couple different kinds of Korean fast food places. All the others are American, like McD's, Burger King, and KFC. Most of them are either chicken or pizza delivery places. The only other one I've seen is called Lotteria, which the Korean version of McDonald's. And most places have a delivery service, which is always done by motorcycle, never by car, as it's much easier to navigate the traffic on a bike (by the way, those delivery guys are absolutely crazy drivers. I've can honestly say I've almost been hit by them multiple times).
• The inside of restaurants are also different. About half of them are like America and are just tables and chairs set up. But the other half have very low tables without chairs, just little mats to sit on (you do a lot of sitting on the floor in general in Korea). Also, in almost every place I've been to that isn't fast food, you do at least a little bit of the cooking of your food, if not all of it. When you get things like Samgyupsal (grilled pork) you do all the cooking yourself on the little grill that's in the middle of the table. You can pick and choose which side dishes you want warm and which you don't and how well done you want the meat. Other dishes like Deokbokki (spicy rice cake things) are pretty done when you get it, you just have to heat it up. Oh, and most restaurants give you a wet thick napkin thing to clean your hands before you eat.
• The way people eat is probably the most notable difference. In America every one orders what they want and all eat separately. Here you all choose what you want together and get a big dish and all eat from the same place. Koreans are very not germaphobic. They share food all the time and couldn't care less who's taken a bite. So we all just stick our chopsticks in and go all out. Also, in America it can be considered rude to take big bites, but that is sooo not true here. I have seen people put incredible amounts of food in their mouth at one time. They also often make noise as they eat, but I've noticed that that mainly comes from older people. Teenagers like to be quieter (except when it comes to soup and noodles).