big fruit, small coffee & who am i to not mention traffic, again?

Today I saw a Korean kid (maybe 19 or 20) wearing a shirt that read, "UP YOURS".  It was kind of enduring in a weird way.  He looked like such a nice kid too, so his shirt really was not doing him any favors.  If there was a kid in the states wearing a shirt like that, you know he would probably be a complete hellion, trouble maker, so I am unsure why I find a Korean kid wearing it to be kind of adorable.  Part of me wonders if he knew what his shirt meant, or if he thought it was just a neat looking shirt.  Kind of like American kids getting Chinese symbol tattoos, that they think say something like, "love prevails" but it really says, "you stink".

In Korea, you can only buy bananas by the stalk.  None of this mamby-pamby stuff, of breaking it down to 3, 4 or 6 bananas.  If you want bananas here, you are buying 20.   Same with strawberries.  They don't come in those small containers that I am used to, with maybe 8-15.  Here they come in containers of about 30 or 40!  Even at the street vendor stands, you can't purchase these items in "normal" quantities.  I don't know why yet.  Tomorrow I am going to the Korean girl's coffee shop, so I will try to get the skinny on the mass quantities of fruit.

Oppositely so, beverages here are very tiny.  When my coteachers gives me a cup of coffee, it is about 2 tablespoons worth.  Even if they are using a normal sized coffee cup, it is only filled up less than half way.  What gets me is that the choice coffee here, is this individual instant pack stuff that is full of both sugar and cream.  It has to have at least a tablespoon of sugar alone in it, so when you get 2 tablespoons of water, to one tablespoon of coffee, to one tablespoon of sugar---well you can imagine how pleasant it is!   I started bringing my own coffee cup to one of my schools, because the coffee they serve is in these small little paper cups (the kind a dentist might give you to rinse), and then I take it to my desk and dump it in a normal sized coffee cup and top it off with water.

Now back to the traffic:  I saw my first motorcycle wreck yesterday.  It literally happened in the exact intersection that I had crossed over, less than 30 seconds prior.  At first, I thought it was a trash cart that people pull around here, because all this 'trash' went flying, but as it turned out it was motorcycle parts.  Fortunately he was wearing a helmet and he was alive, because he was moving his upper body.  I am sure one of his legs broke though, because it looked like the bike smashed one of them and had it pinned pretty good.  It was really scary to witness though, and unfortunately I don't think it will be the last. 

Today I experienced what they call "dynamic korea".  I went to school and my classes were cancelled.  But I didn't know they were not going to happen, until nobody showed up.  So today was officially "desk warming".  I sat in my classroom without talking to a soul for 8 hours straight.  It was not fun at all.  Nobody knew why my coteacher or the students did not come to class, or at least they weren't able to communicate with me, which I am sure is what happened.  I had to double check my schedule a few times to make sure I was supposed to be at this particular school today, as I started getting worried that I had my days mixed up.

This weekend I am buying a camera!!   I am stupidly excited.  I will start posting pictures of my neighborhood and everything else very soon.