Things I WON'T miss...

As the day to leave gets closer and closer, my feelings about leaving Korea are very bittersweet. It's like graduation day all over again. You look around at all the people you've interacted with everyday and realize, "I will probably never see any of these people ever again..." and you get a little misty eyed whereas the day before you had been throwing your homework in the air screaming "FREEDOM!!!"

There are lots of things I will miss about Korea. However, there are also many things that I definitely WILL NOT miss.

My apartment


No dryer, tiny, kneeling to put away all my clothes, tiny, no oven, TINY... I'll be pretty happy to have space to store things again.

My bathroom


Even more than the apartment itself, I will NOT miss my bathroom! I am very ready for a toilet area that is separate from my shower, thank you very much! In fact, when I'm feeling really homesick and ready to leave, I start counting how many showers until I go home (2 more showers!!!).

Air drying clothes


Scratchy towels, cardboard jeans, little lint balls on all my nice shirts... I miss the fluffing effects of a dryer.

Pushy sales people

While I LOVE the shopping here in Korea, I will NOT miss the pushy sales people! In some places, they will follow you around the ENTIRE FREAKING STORE and comment on every little thing your eye falls on, and even things you couldn't care less about.

No online banking!

I am currently having banking problems. I went to the bank this week with a Korean friend to help me transfer most of my money from my current bank to my American account. Well, apparently because I am a white foreigner (as opposed to a Korean American, who would not have this problem, apparently) I have to get a document to prove that the money I've been paid has actually come from Chungdahm. The document got to us TODAY so I can't send any of my money to my American bank until MONDAY. MONDAY!!! Cutting it a little close, aren't we? And before you say anything about how I should have done this a long time ago, yeah, yeah yeah. I KNOW. It just never happened, okay?

So, it might just be my current predicament, but I am really not liking the lack of online banking here. Grrr...

Squat toilets

Never used them. Never will. That's not an adventure I really want to have. Sorry.

Random nasty sewer smells on the street

The sewer lines are very close to the surface of the street here so you sometimes get a nice whiff of, well, POOP.

Communication

Though it is rather freeing to get to say pretty much whatever you want in public and know that people will only understand maybe half on what you are saying (at most), it can get rather frustrating. Especially when it comes to things like TALKING TO YOUR DOCTOR. The language barrier does get a bit annoying... and I really only have myself to blame for that since my Korean is, um, abysmal. As in, non existent.