5 ways Korea changed me
Since I've been spending most of the last 2,5 years here in Korea, some of my habits and preferences have changed.
There are probably so many more items that should be on this list but let's start with 5 along with a small bonus one. 👍
1. Like an old couple..
Now and then we have guests for dinner or are guests ourselves and I can say that as guests we go home quite early... at least compared to what I'm used to from Sweden.
Our guests also go home quite early (late is like 10pm?) so I usually have time to tidy up everything after the little party before hitting the sack.
In school I learned about some things a guest should think about and do to be polite at someone else's home in Korea. Along with taking off shoes and greeting elders and eat the given food well was also this; don't stay too long.
On the contrary, in Sweden, I always had the feeling that leaving too early is worse than leaving at a late hour. It seemed a bit rude to me to leave a party or dinner after just one hour or two. So at first I felt a bit confused and disappointed when my korean guests would leave IMO way too early!
But not anymore! XD I love that having guests doesn't have to take up the whole day and half the night.
Too many times in the past I would stay too long at friends homes and be sleeping half of the next day. 😴
2. Skip the salt!
I find myself eating less salt than before. Before going to Korea I used to salt my food a bit and I guess Swedish food is rather salty so when TY came to Sweden to visit I kept hearing him complaining that so much things were salty.
To him, our home cooked food was all right but everything bought was almost always salty.
And I felt like "come ooon! It can't be that salty! It's just a sandwich!"
Nowadays it's almost the opposite, TY often tells me to put more salt in the food because its not salty enough and to me it tastes fine! XD
So especially last summer when we went back to Sweden I got a small shock. Why is everything so salty??!! :O XD
3. Effective?
I don't know if I got less lazy but I just can get so much more done in one day than before. Maybe because a lot of people here is busy and running around so it affected me too?
Before I often got stuck while planning and planning but nowadays I instead start with planning a bit and then just DO or at least get started with my task.
I'm still not as effective as I would like to be, but hey! one must celebrate the small improvements too, right?
4. Snackin'
Friday nights are for staying home and being cozy and Saturdays is when the sweets come out, right? No, not here.
We snack a bit here and there any day of the week here, be it a Tuesday afternoon or Saturday night or a short tea time during service. XD But even so, I don't really eat more snacks and sweets than before. By eating much smaller portions and almost always sharing with someone else (usually TY eats more than half of my stuff) results in me basically never eating too much snacks. 👍
The typical size of a bag of snacks here in Korea is like 50 gram? Maybe 80? Whilst in Sweden a normal bag of snacks would be 200 grams.
And one must always share snacks with friends here. So yup, the portions are way smaller.
5. Less sipping Here's a point that is not so positive. I drink less water than before. I used to drink 1-2 litres a day without trying much.
I drink waaay too little nowadays. Probably less than half a litre water. : /
There are several reasons to this that I can think of. One is that our glasses here is tiny compared to what I find in my parents cupboard - about half size maybe? And we often don't even fill the glasses up when we drink here.
The second reason is that one doesn't really drink water while eating. There are always water to drink at the restaurants (either hot or cold) but it seems that people usually drink after eating rather than during.
Perhaps I drank more before simply because of the food being saltier?
Bonus - "ok bye?"
I don't say 'bye' when I hang up on the phone. It still feels a bit weird but I just don't.
I still say it when I talk with friends and family in Sweden but never ever on the phone with someone here in Korea.
So what do we say?
Most often we just stop talking - which to me is a bit confusing. "Is she done talking or should I just wait for the 'click'?"
I've heard of somewhat of a manner rule that when talking on the phone the older person should hang up first because it would be rude to click one's senior.
Sometimes we do say a bit longer 'yes' like 'yeee' or 'uuuuh' to show that we got it and it's time to hang up. ^^