Shoes and Windows

Good morning! As I sit here and type my first blog post from Korea it is 5:30 am (3:30pm CST), and I am wide awake. Thank you jet lag. But don't worry I did sleep for 7 hours last night, because I did not allow myself to nap at all yesterday, my first full day. 

Besides funky time changes, in this blog post I want to reflect on two everyday household occurrences that Koreans probably don't even think twice about, but I will have to learn and adapt to. Number one: house shoes.  My whole apartment is wooden floors, except for the tile in the bathroom.  We have only a few small rugs, for example in front of the kitchen sink.  Instead of having lots of big rugs or carpet, everyone wears house shoes.  House shoes are like slippers that don't keep your feet warm.  The purple in my house shoes matches my sheets ;).  I also bought a pair of waterproof bathroom shoes, that I wear in the bathroom instead of having rugs.  My bathroom shoes are blue to match my blue polka-dotted shower curtain.  It feels weird to me to always be wearing shoes in the house, and I can tell I'm dragging my feet a lot more because of them.  Hopefully that doesn't become a habit! 

Number two: windows.  We have huge windows in almost every room and an enclosed, three-foot wide porch along two sides of the apartment.  On the porch, from the inside out there is glass, screens, and bars (I'm on the second floor).  Only every other pane of glass opens to reveal a screen.  The windows in the apartment have multiple panes of glass and a few screens.  These windows look out onto and open up to the porch. So I've got to make sure the porch windows are open and the multiple layers of apartment windows are open if I would like to have a breeze, that usually carries city smells, waft through my apartment.  Yesterday, I spent quite a bit of time just opening and closing windows.  

I know shoes and windows are pretty trivial, but it's different than what I am used too.  I look forward to the day when house shoes and confusing window panes become the new normal to me!