Clear As Mud

    I've decided that the reason people are required to have a passport is because it serves as a disclaimer. When one sees the words, "Passport Required" while purchasing a plane ticket, they might ought to read, "Confusion and Misunderstandings Inevitable". This is because the kind of travel that falls under the label "Passport Required" will bring you into a different county and therefore many things will in fact be different. For this reason, some things might be difficult (if not impossible) to understand. So really, a passport is just a little book displaying stamps from all the different places where you've been completely confused at one point or another. "Oh look! Pete's been perplexed in Pakistan!" "Hey! Doug's been dazed in Deutschland!" "Wow! Mary was muddled in Mozambique!" The more stamps you acquire, the more potential you have for "What the......????" kind of situations.
   I'm dedicating this post to the things, thus far, in Korea that I simply don't understand. Whether bewildering, baffling, or befuddling, I have found my fair share of things here that mystify and astound me, and I think most of them are pretty funny so let's see if we can't all laugh together!
    This post is gonna be quick and dirty. Just a real rough list of some items with perhaps a few pictures thrown in for fun. I hope you enjoy and (more importantly) if you have insight to any items on the list.... I hope you can explain them to me!  

A Few Things About Living in Korea That Confuse and Intrigue Me: 
1.   The 82 different ways to pronounce just about everything in Korean, not including mumbling, yet somehow I still manage to be misunderstood by, oh, just about everybody!
2.   Why milk is served room temperature at school.
3.   Kimchi.
4.   People hacking and spitting all over the place, including girls.
5.   "Indoor" school shoes that the kids wear out on the playground.
6.   Individually packaged cookies, packaged inside a larger box.
7.   Ajumma hats.

8.   Ajummas.

9.   Why Korean people sweat but don't have BO.
10. Public bathrooms with toilet paper holders, but no toilet paper.
11. 6th graders (but I'm pretty sure that's a world-wide phenomenon).
12. The number of zeros involved with won. Why 1,000? Why not just 1?
13. The razor blades all the kids keep in their pencil pouches.
14. How Korean women are able to hike all over town in 3-inch heels and not seem to be bothered in the slightest.
15. This sign.

 
 
16.  The sample-table that is set up by the milk aisle at the grocery store on weekends so you can sample the milk before you buy it (cuz if you don't know by now......).
17.  Mini-TVs on the dashboards of taxi cabs.
18. "Konglish" (aka Korean-English).
19.  Man-purses and super, super tight man-jeans.

20. The concept of turning down chips, crackers, etc on the grounds that they are too salty.... as you are shoving a giant wad of seaweed into your mouth. 
21.  Why my 5th and 6th grade boys hug and kiss and hang all over each other.
22.  Eastern-style toilets.

23.  Pushing and shoving to get into the subway first so that you can end up standing with the rest of us cuz, that's right, it's crowded!
24.  Sugary garlic bread.
And my personal favorite......
25.  Glass doors in the middle of nowhere, leading to nowhere at the subway station!